 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Harvard Law School and Harvard University. Generally, my name is John Palmfree. It's a great pleasure of welcoming you here on behalf of the institution. It is a thrill that we have the ending synthetic final meetings for this round with Law.gov here at our campus and starting today with the Massachusetts-based day and heading to the broader, nationally-based concluding day tomorrow. By conclusion, I mean, of course, hurling into the next phase of getting it done, but hopefully coming to some common conclusions and consensus. I want to thank, in particular, our great friend, Carl Malin, but of course, who's been the person who spearheaded this process right from the start. I should note that when the Berkman Center, which is also affiliated here in this family-style event, celebrated its 10th anniversary, we gave out a couple of awards. And the chief award among those is the hero, really, of the movement in which we perceive our research to be situated. The hero to whom we gave the Berkman 10th anniversary award was Carl Malin, but as somebody who has embodied the spirit and the energy and the commitment to making available the world's information, particularly around the law and its connection to democracy, and to make possible what we think these technologies can do in the spirit of this great democracy and so forth. So, in the other piece of this is that Carl wasn't able to make it to our celebration team. He received a beautiful award, but arrived by video cards. I actually didn't marry both of whom were involved in important matters, trials, various other things going on. I think you were fighting more again at the time, if I recall. So, in a way, this is a chance to welcome Carl back physically to Canvas a few years later to thank him for his leadership and to stand beside him in what we think is really one of the most important conversations related to the Internet and society. Also, from the perspective of a library director, which I find myself now doing here at the Harvard Law School, I think this is possibly the most important thing we could be involved in. The notion that the basic law, the primary law of the United States in Massachusetts as well as the state level, ought to be free from copyright, ought to be available on the web, ought to be something around which we as professional librarians and information people can put context and make possible the kinds of direct democracy and broader, more vigorous democracy that lots of people are working on. So, it's from those multiple perspectives I'm just thrilled to welcome the group here. We have my co-convener is also Professor Lawrence Lessay, who needs no introduction. In this group, he'll give a talk after Carl comes up. I want to thank also Professor Phil Malone, who I think is here or maybe here, is working closely with the Access to Justice Commission and Judge Fine from whom we've here this afternoon. And in particular on the library staff, Michelle Pierce, who has been not only the open access librarian, a new job where we have a wonderful senior extraordinary person doing but also the driving force behind this event. So, on behalf of all of us in this broad sense welcome and for more heading into this episode since Carl Malone, welcome to the conference. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you John and Larry and Michelle especially for putting this together. I want to give a few remarks to kind of set the stage for what LawDoc is all about. And this is a two-day workshop that we're doing and as John said today is Massachusetts and tomorrow is the national wrap up. I want to begin with William Jennings-Vryton, who in his famous Cross of Gold speech said that changing conditions make new issues. That the principles upon which democracy rests are as everlasting as the hills, but they must be applied to new conditions as they arise. Well, the internet is a new condition that has arisen. And we must once again apply the principles upon which democracy rests. For the last six months, LawDoc has been a national conversation about our legal system, about how primary legal materials are distributed. And this conversation began in January at the Stanford Law School and it concludes this week on Tuesday we were at the Center for American Progress. And of course all national conversations should end at Harvard Law School, so I'm really pleased to be here. 15 workshops around the country have involved 650 participants, as we've examined the basic premise of LawDocGov. And that is the government institutions that make the law, entities that originate primary legal materials. These jurisdictions should make their work product available in bulk with no restrictions on use. And this work product should be held in authenticated, well-formatted, and complete repositories. And this principle goes across all three branches of government and reaches from the lolliest water district through the cities, counties, states, to the Supreme Court, the Congress, and the President. Now by primary legal materials, we mean the work product of these lawmaking institutions. And that includes the documents of primary authority, but also includes the supporting documents that issue that one must use to interpret the law. This is a slippery slope, a definition that's most clear at the peaks of our legal system, and it's a little murkier as we descend the hill to the lower jurisdictions. For the Congress, this means obviously the public laws, the statutes at large, and the U.S. Code. But also the hearings and reports and rules of the House. And given the place of the U.S. Congress in our society, this means that the full archive, all the laws and all the reports and all the hearings should be available and should be authenticated. Now perhaps for another legislative body such as a municipal council, the collection doesn't need to be nearly as complete, but even a municipal council should make available in bulk with no restrictions the current ordinances at the promulgate. For the Supreme Court of the United States, this certainly means all the opinions and the briefs and the oral argument should be available as an authenticated repository signed by the court and accessible to all. And as we move down into the 7,436 state courts, or the 3,140 counties, or the 19,289 incorporated municipalities, each with their own city courts, the definition of primary legal material should obviously be adjusted. PASER system for access to our federal trial courts is a good example of inequitable restrictions on access to the law. PASER has funded $129 million in 2009 expenditures for the administrative office of the U.S. courts. And that's a revenue stream they've come to depend upon. Birch's courtroom technology, large screen TVs, all sorts of things that are arguably necessary for the courts, and they're very low to relinquish that revenue stream. PASER has over one million account holders, and the administrative office of the courts is proud that they waive fees that are $10 a quarter or less. And they say that over 50% of their users don't end up getting billed. But $10 per quarter at 8 cents per page translates into four 30-page documents. You can't do a lot of legal research with four 30-page documents every three months. So you've got to think that perhaps the demand for these materials is artificially constrained. And we shouldn't forget, if you want to be one of those one million account holders, you have to have a valid credit card. And if you don't have a valid credit card, you can go petition a judge for free access. But I'm not convinced that petitioning a federal judge is necessarily a lower barrier to access. So what uses are not possible under the current system established with PASER? In Law Doc of, we've seen several very compelling examples over the last few months. First, many valid public interest uses of bulk data in PASER are essentially prohibited. When my organization was able to audit 20 million pages of PASER documents, which would have cost over $1.5 million to purchase at retail, we found 30 district courts in substantial violation of the privacy laws. That audit of 30 district courts led to a change in the judicial conference privacy procedures. But the audit was only a small portion of the federal district courts, and our audit did not extend to the bankruptcy courts. We can't afford the price to continue the audit, a price tag of millions of dollars, and a barrier to access at stock what we think is a valid public interest function dead in its tracks. Now, I put it to you that being able to audit the district courts of the United States for privacy violations, or for discrimination in the application of civil rights laws, or for discrimination in patent litigation by districts, or any other examination of how our system of justice functions is technically possible today, and it's only a paywall that keeps us from performing these functions. It's not just applications of legal research and public accountability that suffer when the law is not available. It's our system of legal education. A survey of 66 law schools found that 63 of them do not let their law students access PACER because of cost considerations. Our law students don't learn from our federal trial courts because of the cost. And the law students aren't the only ones who must suffer. Other semi-professional uses, journalism, business research are all self rationing because of the cost. Now, there are two other effects of a paywall on a system such as PACER. And the effects are both about innovation. Innovation in the legal market and innovation in government. Innovation in the legal market has been slow and painful for the last 20 years. And that's because the law has been parceled out to a series of exclusive concessionaires, private fences around the public domain. And that means that acquiring the rules of our society, what we call America's operating system, the code for how our legal system works, is an expensive proposition indeed. The estimate to purchase rights for a decent collection of case law statutes and regulatory materials in the United States is 10 to 50 million dollars. If you want to be an internet startup, if you've got a better idea for how to get to a lot of consumers, if you have a better citator or a checking system, you need big bucks to get started. That barrier to innovation is large enough that even Google took two years searching around for a decent collection of case law before they were able to purchase the cases they needed to add their Google Scholar product. Artificial barriers to entry have that little innovation in the private sector. And the innovation we've seen is big company innovation, which is of course useful and necessary and it serves large enterprises such as big law firms. But the mind-bending startup, the innovative new business model, the previously unthought-of niche player, those are not possible today. There is a flipside to innovation in the market and that's innovation within government. Judge Jay Rich Leonard, one of the architects of PISA, says that PISA was originated entirely within the federal courts without any external requirements. But one of the virtuous cycles of the internet is that we all learn how to do things better. And external requirements are good. Judicial independence should be independence from the other branches of government, not from the public. Before coming out to Washington, D.C., and then up here to Cambridge, I spent last weekend processing government videotapes. It's one of the things that our nonprofit does. For $25, the State of California's Department of Public Health sold me a fascinating two-hour training program about the safer processing of juice. It's valuable information for those thinking is opening a juice factory and it's pretty much obligatory if you're already in the business. Now the video had segments on agricultural practices and raw materials, on processing design and packaging, on cleaning and sanitizing and personnel practices, but the longest segment by far was that on the regulations, requirements and legal guidance for being in the juice business. If you want to make juice in California, you need much more than a good supply of mangoes. You need to know about these laws. Title 17 of the California Code of Regulations deals with sanitation in food plants. The Office of Administrative Law of the State of California asserts copyright over the California Code of Regulations and contracts at Barclays to publish this document. You can view the provisions on their website, but I can't make a copy that looks differently, one that's aimed specifically at juice people. For your juice business, you also need to be very familiar with the California Health and Safety Code Part 6, which is the California Food Sanitation Act. You want to be familiar with Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulation, particularly the standards on packaging or holding human food and on sanitation standard operating procedures. You will need to be fully familiar with the Haasip Regulations which are a detailed standards from on hazard analysis and critical control points from the Food and Drug Administration. The Haasip Regulations, in turn, incorporate by reference a raft of technical standards such as ANSI NSF standard number 7 for commercial refrigerators and storage freezers, which is $100 per copy if you want to do due diligence on your freezer. And I can't afford the license to republish that because there is no license to republish that technical document. And these documents are just a start and you will need to use the juice professional. You're going to want to be able to consult your public safety codes, all of which are only available from a designated exclusive vendor, such as a national electrical code from the National Fire Protection Association. Likewise, the building codes in your jurisdiction, the fuel and gas code, the plumbing code, the fire code, elevator safety code. You'll need your local municipal code, particularly the sections on zoning and factories and employment practices. Most of the municipal codes in California belong to one of the three major outsourcing companies, and over 50% of municipal codes in California have copyright restrictions. Now, my point is not that the ambitious juice entrepreneur is totally without resources to learn the law, but that if I want to create a new product or nonprofit site aimed at the juice people of California, and I saw that Californiajuicedudes.org is available, I have a hard time gathering the materials I need to set that site up. There's just too many copyright restrictions, pay walls and other impediments to access both legal documents. John Adams in his thoughts on government said a republic is an empire of laws and not of men. Now, if a republic is an empire, it's an empire that's been vulcanized by a complicated set of deeds, exclusive tendencies and contractual offenses. Walls and borders have split this empire, and their walls and borders have denied access to justice that make equal protection under the law and due process under the law a function of the size of your wallet. It's a tax for access to justice, and to me this is no different than a poll tax on access to the ballot box. The problem with an empire of laws is that empire implies that property implies that law is owned by the state, but the law does not belong to the state, it belongs to the people. James Madison emphasized the importance of the rights and the sovereignty of the people to access the laws when he stated that a popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both, and that knowledge will forever govern ignorance. A better geographical metaphor than an empire owned by the state to me is the shining city on the hill. Law.gov is an idea that we should all try to approach, not about who shall control the law. It's a hill we should climb. It's an idea to adopt, as John F. Kennedy said, that our governments in every branch, at every level, national, state, and local must be as a city upon the hill. Ronald Reagan called this shining city a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans. A city with free ports that hung on commerce and creativity, and there had to be city walls. The walls had doors and the doors were open to any known of the will and the heart to get here. It is not often that Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy saw eye to eye in the role of governments. So we are going to be talking about Law.gov for the next two days. I am really thrilled to introduce our next speaker, Professor Lawrence Lesig, who has been moving out of the world of copyright for a long time, but has been instrumental in getting a Law.gov movement up and running. You saw that we've done workshops in a dozen major law schools over the last six months. This wasn't because I've been able to call up the deans of all these major law schools, it's because Professor Lesig made the introductions and introduced us to the professors that saw that this was a good idea and that's really what made this possible. I know Professor Lesig was honored last night as one of the lawyers of the decade and certainly as far as the internet is concerned he has been the lawyer of the decade so I'm really pleased to introduce him.