Public access is unnecessary, but it’s already possible.

Raymond Mosley and Robert Tapella, “Amicus brief- Former Government Publishing Officials Raymond Mosley and Robert Tapella,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, https://www.eff.org/ar/document/amicus-brief-former-government-publishing-officials-raymond-mosley-and-robert-tapella

Cochran’s objections to the Federal Register are notable because they introduced thematic arguments against public access to the law that would reappear for years to come. First, he argued that government publication of the regulations was unnecessary because the only potential readers were industry lawyers and professionals, who could get copies of relevant regulations simply by asking legislators or agencies for copies.²¹ “[T]he attorneys in St. Louis and the business houses in St. Louis,” Cochran’s home district, “who are interested in Government regulations and Executive orders secure them if they need or want them.”²²

Second, Cochran argued that there were already “probably a dozen private firms in this country that supply lawyers and accountants throughout the United States with the regulations just as soon as they are printed.”²³ The government getting into the business of publishing regulations and thus competing with those private firms, in Cochran’s view, was “further encroaching upon the rights of private business.”²⁴

Based on these two arguments—limited interest in access to regulations and preserving private publishers’ profits—Cochran declared the Federal Register “a costly instrument to be published at the expense of the taxpayers,” and thus “an absolute waste of Government funds.”²⁵