On the other hand, some private sites provide law text free of charge on the Internet. There are two types of such web sites. One is producing its own data on the site and another is producing links to law text on other web sites which provide some law text. The viewer can search on the site. This site also serves users who wish to search the full text of the data.
Some legal publishers sell compact discs containing law text.
Non-academic people, who cannot access the academic resources and do not wish to purchase CDs, have no way to obtain free access to law such text databases of the government. Since 1997, selected decisions of the Japanese Supreme Court have appeared on the official site. Some famous and old Supreme Court cases have been translated into English and are available on this site. The resources on their web for Supreme Court cases before 1995 are limited. There were no sites for lower courts' cases.