RECAP allows people to search and use PACER documents for free.
RECAP is a free extension for Firefox (it's PACER backwards), with the tagline: "turning PACER around." If you're a PACER user, you install the Firefox extension, and any documents you access via your PACER account automatically get uploaded to a public archive (hosted by the Internet Archive folks). If the document has already been uploaded, the extension alerts you to that fact in PACER, so you can access the open archived one.
Most court documents can be found via PACER, the court system's own online service, which charges $0.08 per page. PACER notes that it's charging for the documents to cover its own costs of managing its system.
The documents are public domain, and people can do whatever they want with the documents once they have them. Creating a public archive is one option. The real question is how many PACER users will actually participate in the program in order to make this a truly useful resource. At launch time, the public database has about a million documents, but the question is how quickly will it grow? No matter what, conceptually, this is a fantastic idea that hopefully will help to open up public domain court information that has been locked behind PACER's paywalls for too long.
https://www.recapthelaw.org/
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090813/1544075868.shtml