"any joker in the world can upload documents to RECAP makes it unsuitable for anything you are going to put before a judge" == FALSE
For those documents that have been uploaded, RECAP's database contains bit for bit the same exact documents that are on PACER and nothing more.
It's verified using an SHA1 hash. For example, see the document entries for http://ia700504.us.archive.org/29/items/gov.uscourts.mad.137.... PACER does not provide hashes, but if you are worried that a document might have been compromised you can always download it from PACER and run the hash yourself.
"How do I know that the documents provided by RECAP are genuine?
Unfortunately, you don’t. We rely on RECAP users to donate documents to the repository."
I.e., any joker in the world can upload what they want to RECAP. It's a very useful service, but any actual lawyer relying on RECAP instead of paying pennies to get the documents from PACER is probably committing malpractice on his clients.
He added to his comment to say that you can redownload all the documents from PACER to make sure none of them were altered. Which gets you absolutely nowhere.
RECAP is the Wikipedia of law. Crowd-sourced, free, usually reliable -- but if you are relying on its accuracy as part of vigorously defending your client's interests to the best of your abilities, you have failed.
EDIT: I think requiring PACER to provide SHA1 sums free-of-charge would probably be, on the whole, a good thing.
"any joker in the world can upload documents to RECAP makes it unsuitable for anything you are going to put before a judge" == FALSE
For those documents that have been uploaded, RECAP's database contains bit for bit the same exact documents that are on PACER and nothing more.
It's verified using an SHA1 hash. For example, see the document entries for http://ia700504.us.archive.org/29/items/gov.uscourts.mad.137.... PACER does not provide hashes, but if you are worried that a document might have been compromised you can always download it from PACER and run the hash yourself.