From the ever-opinionated Tim O’Reilly, waxing on for profit opportunities emerging from not-for-profit ventures. To Umibot, the most interesting part of this post was the history of online access to SEC filings (thank you Carl Malamund). In brief, the combination of antiquated computer systems, bureaucrats dismissive of public access (“who would want THAT?”) and government contractors equal intransigence, but Carl explains the much better in the first person:
In the summer of 1993, I was helping my friends at Sun Microsystems give a demonstration of the Internet to the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance of the U.S. House of Representatives. It was a typical Internet demonstration: we hauled a couple hundred boxes of equipment into the U.S. Capitol, set it up overnight, and did a bunch of “the future is here” show-and-tell. Live video coming in from Russian satellites, cell phones hooked up to the net, yadda, yadda, yadda. Everybody was suitably impressed.
After the demonstration, Chairman Edward J. Markey, came up to me and wondered if I could look into something that was bugging him. His subcommittee had responsibility not only for the telecommunications industry, but also for oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission. A bunch of Nader’s Raiders had been sending in petitions to the subcommittee asking why the SEC filings weren’t available on the Internet. The initial reaction from the SEC was that the reason the data wasn’t on the Internet was that it was technically impossible, and that even if the data were available the only people interested in SEC fillings were Wall Street Fatcats and they didn’t really need subsidized access to data they were willing to pay for.
If something is technically impossible, I get interested. I looked at the EDGAR system and decided it was worth taking a crack at it. Our first cut at the problem was to try and work with the SEC. Chairman Markey’s Chief of Staff asked the SEC to come in and discuss the idea of giving us the data and letting us put together an Internet site. There was a bit of pushback, to say the least.
The problem was the 70′s era data processing system that the SEC had put in place in the late 80′s. The deal was that EDGAR was way too rough for consumers to digest. It needed, to speak the MIS lingo of the time, “value-add.” Who would add value? Well, the SEC had cut a contract with a data wholesaler who would add value. The wholesaler, in turn, would sell to information retailers who would add even more value. Then, the information would be sold on the retail information market to the Wall Street crowd who had an interest in the data. Obviously, if we gave away all this information on the Internet, it would subvert our entire Free Enterprise System.
In that meeting with the SEC and the Chairman’s staff, my favorite moment was when we got to the question of why in the world people would want to see EDGAR data. I maintained that the Internet was full of lots of people—students, journalists, senior citizen investors—who were dying for access to this data. The SEC felt that only a few people would want to see EDGAR documents, and besides the Internet (or “the ARPANET” as they kept referring to it) “didn’t have the right kind of people.”
This would be a good teaser for a Hollywood blockbuster. Fortunately, the Concerned Citizen won out here, but it took a while. Not yet the case for open access to mass transit information. something Umibot is passionate about.
The take-away in graphics:
