Riverside County, California has changed their online court record search from free to fee-based.

  Los Angeles County, Calif. has it's Grantor-Grantee Indices online but for a fee to access.

  This is an interesting and disturbing trend that I hope does not continue.  I've encountered it in some DC records, but no place else as yet.

  Does anyone else see this trend:  either previously open records online becoming fee-based, or places that put records online that were not previously online and having those newly posted databases accessible by fee only?

  Mind you, this is not just for copies of the docs, but a fee even to conduct the index search.

  Seems like revenue generation in hard times.  I know that others have railed in years past against records online, claiming that more were coming off than going on.  While this obviously was not and is not the case, the greater danger seems to be records becoming fee-based online even in the basic index search.  This could get rough.