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Federal Courts Wary of Document-Sharing Plugin

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Federal Courts Wary of Document-Sharing Plugin, By Ryan Singel, Wired (August 25, 2009).

Yu, a Princeton University computer science graduate student, helped code RECAP, a Firefox-only plugin that helps lawyers who use the PACER system, the government’s antiquated computer system for federal court records. With the plugin installed, the user’s browser uploads whatever documents a user looks at in PACER to an online repository hosted by the Internet Archive.

Then when the next person using RECAP searches for that file, RECAP grabs the copy, sparing the user the cost for the document.

Federal judiciary spokesman Dick Carelli says the courts are reserving judgement until they’ve had more time to study the plug-in. But that hasn’t stopped warning emails and warning notices to PACER users that spread a bit of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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