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BAILII Funding at Risk?
BAILII, the British And Irish Legal Information Institute, reports that its future is at risk because of a funding shortfall.
Like its Canadian counterpart CanLII, BAILII seeks to make access to primary legal materials free to everyone via the Internet. They are members of the Free Access to Law Movement which seeks to ensure free, open publication of legal information throughout the world.
According to exchanges on the UK-based LIS-LAW listserv, a few major sponsors have withdrawn financial support and further support from the Ministry of Justice is “under review”.
Can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m minded to conditionally donate some cash. My condition is that they realize that their modest resources will not produce a better search than Google and remove their stupid robots.txt
I can think of other improvements I’d make were I rebuilding it from scratch, but for me right now that single issue is the major showstopper.