Another HN user kindly pointed out to me in a related thread that the Gov't has modified their terms to specifically prohibit the use of RECAP. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5059847
But, really, even with a 100% populated RECAP, all lawyers use PACER for their real work. The fact that any joker in the world can upload documents to RECAP makes it unsuitable for anything you are going to put before a judge. RECAP is fine for bloggers, though.
"any joker in the world can upload documents to RECAP makes it unsuitable for anything you are going to put before a judge" == FALSE
For those documents that have been uploaded, RECAP's database contains bit for bit the same exact documents that are on PACER and nothing more.
It's verified using an SHA1 hash. For example, see the document entries for http://ia700504.us.archive.org/29/items/gov.uscourts.mad.137.... PACER does not provide hashes, but if you are worried that a document might have been compromised you can always download it from PACER and run the hash yourself.
RECAP is the Wikipedia of law. Crowd-sourced, free, usually reliable -- but if you are relying on its accuracy as part of vigorously defending your client's interests to the best of your abilities, you have failed.
EDIT: I think requiring PACER to provide SHA1 sums free-of-charge would probably be, on the whole, a good thing.
"How do I know that the documents provided by RECAP are genuine?
Unfortunately, you don’t. We rely on RECAP users to donate documents to the repository."
I.e., any joker in the world can upload what they want to RECAP. It's a very useful service, but any actual lawyer relying on RECAP instead of paying pennies to get the documents from PACER is probably committing malpractice on his clients.
If you take out the words and meaning of "fee exemption" you get something close to what you said.
A regular user who happens to download less than $15.00 per month is not a fee-exempt user. They are someone for whom, in the words of the website, "fees are waived for that quarter."
[See this page and look at the questions "How much does PACER cost?" and "Can the user fee be waived?": http://www.pacer.gov/psc/faq.html ]
The Judicial Conference of the United States determines the PACER fees and appears to draw a distinction between the quarterly "fee waiver" available to all accounts and a "fee exemption" granted by a court after making the requisite findings (e.g., exemption is necessary to avoid unreasonable burdens and to promote public access to information, research is for academic/non-commercial use, etc.).
Sources:
Reports of the Proceedings of the Judicial Conference of the United States at http://www.uscourts.gov/FederalCourts/JudicialConference/Pro...
March 14, 2001: "no fee … [will] be owed until an individual … accrue[s] charges of more than $10 in a calendar year. … providing a basic level of public access consistent with the services historically provided by the courts."
March 16, 2010: "In order to encourage use of … PACER … by the public, … users [will] not be billed until their accounts total[] at least $10 in a one-year period. To increase the amount of data available without charge … users [will] be allowed to accrue $10 in free usage quarterly, instead of yearly, before they would be charged."
September 13, 2011: "… the current waiver of fees of $10 or less in a quarterly billing cycle be changed to $15 or less per quarter so that 75 to 80 percent of all users would still receive fee waivers"
September 23, 2003: "exemptions to the fee are only to be given upon a showing of cause, are limited to specific categories of users, may be granted for a specific period of time, may be revoked at the discretion of the court, and are only for access related to the purpose for which the exemption was given."
March 15, 2011: The Electronic Public Access (EPA) Fee Schedule provides for exemptions … upon a showing that an exemption is necessary to avoid unreasonable burdens and to promote public access to information. … [T]he Conference approved, a modification of the EPA fee schedule to include the following sentence: “For individual researchers, courts must also find that the defined research project is intended for academic research purposes, and not for commercial purposes or internet redistribution.”