It's not that unusual. PACER's pricing was ridiculous, but, in principle and from a historical perspective, having to pay for access to information has been the norm. And for understandable reasons. Only a generation ago, access to court records naturally cost money, because neither paper nor file clerks' time is free.

It's only within the past couple decades that technology has reduced the costs associated with providing public access to court records down to a level where it's easy to contemplate making the service free to all users as part of the public budget.