Subject: Access to federal judicial opinions Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 16:53:00 -0800 From: Alan Freed Organization: Paule, Camazine & Blumenthal To: citation@teo.uscourts.gov West Publishing has done an admirable job of compiling, annotating, and disseminating the opinions of federal courts for many years. West has also done an admirable job of making money for its owners while providing this service. Technological advances have now made it possible for the general public to have access to the same information West has so zealously guarded these many years. It is both unseemly and patently unfair that West should be able to continue its monopoly on this public information, and do so under the protection of federal copyright law. It would appear that the most effective way to eliminate West's monopoly is to eliminate the West pagination system and adopt the proposal of the ABA to replace it with a free, public domain system. In my law firm, we have been severely hamstrung by having to rely upon West to provide us with statutes and cases on CD ROM, and the software with which to retrieve and search them. The software is constantly malfunctioning, and the level of service we receive from West is substantially less than what one would expect from the holder of a monopoly. At least when AT&T ran all of the phone companies, you could count on prompt service and telephones that worked. Our next best alternative is to use the outrageously expensive Westlaw system, run by you-know-who. I urge you to adopt the ABA plan or any other plan that will permit the public free access to judicial opinions that should, as a matter of course, be free.