A lot of commentators are missing the point. Caselaw is what lawyers rely on to determine what the law is. For years, there was a monopoly, the privately-held West Corporation in Minnesota. In the 1970s, the field became a duopoly, with the advent of Lexis. West eventually sold out to Thompson, the company is now Thompson-West. Computer-assisted legal research was extremely expensive. The Air Force set up FLITE, but efforts to access their database of cases failed. Manual research is effective, but paper publication meant you ran the risk of not knowing yesterday's results. In the 90's with the advent of the Internet, a lot of new players moved into the scene; some more successful than the others. Public-interest organizations sued for access to the cases, which, after all, were all in the public domain. There was a Washington-based group that called the caselaw the "Crown Jewels" of this effort--though EDGAR filings probably have more significance for the public. Time has provided a solution; access to anything older than the most recent 400 volumes of the Federal Reporter is really not needed, as any Thompson-West salesman will tell you. But these efforts to open caselaw to the public is not scammy and has nothing to do with shaming. In the United States, these cases state the law which governs our lives. I'm glad they've succeeded in the effort.