https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24086570
> I'm the director of Free Law Project. For the case mentioned in the article we actually did a full expert testimony figuring out roughly how much per page it'd cost to run PACER using AWS GovCloud and a handful of other assumptions. It was...half a ten thousandth of a penny per page, IIRC:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4214664/52/15/national-...
Government’s PACER Fees Are Too High, Federal Circuit Says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24085158 - August 2020 (149 comments)
That's missing my point. I too believe that the cost of serving static files is effectively epsilon. But that's not all PACER fees pay for.
Your point is taken, it’s simply a philosophical debate between public funding and user fees, and if the system is exposing the right folks to the relevant majority of costs vs socializing the costs broadly. My position is that if the costs are relatively insignificant, socializing them is simply more efficient. I accept others may have a different philosophical take. I suppose user and landing fees in US general and commercial aviation are a similar analogy for comparison in the support of fee collection.