Your point makes sense, but for law-abiding citizens, it’s hard to justify: people are expected to understand and comply with the law, yet the practical record of how it’s enforced (dockets/filings) is paywalled. If the goal is to fund the system or deter abuse, that’s what general taxation and targeted anti-scraping limits are for, metering “public” records mostly punishes ordinary users and small competitors, not heavy institutional users.