If politicians and bureaucrats hadn't been inflicted upon us naturally, we'd probably invent them anyway--for entertainment purposes, if nothing else. After all, who but an elected official, Louisiana state legislator John Travis in this case, would say "I can't believe that we are going to let a majority of the people decide what's best for this state."
Deserving honorable mention is the Patent and Trademark Office's Richard Maulsby. In response to concerns that Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) records would no longer be available free-of-charge on the Internet, Maulsby responded "we're not in a position to offer all of this information [to taxpayers] for free." Although Maulsby claims that the PTO relies entirely on fees paid by companies and applicants, he seems to have forgotten that taxpayers pay for the desk he sits at, the phone he uses, and the information he's hoarding.
What prompted Maulsby's comment was the demise of government-database dissemination by the Internet Multicasting Service (IMS), an organization run by Internet pioneer Carl Malamud. Since January 1994, IMS has made available to Internet users (at http://www.town.hall.org) a variety of government databases, including the Congressional Record, U.S. Patent Database, and the Security and Exchange Commission's "Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval" (EDGAR) database. EDGAR contains corporate records ranging from shareholder proxy statements to notices of corporate takeovers. Access to government databases via IMS has been amazingly popular. IMS has sent out 3.1 million SEC filings since January 1994, averaging over 16,000 documents per day. Additionally, the nonprofit organization has distributed about 1.6 million patent documents during the same period.
One reason IMS access has been in demand is that it can cost as much as $600 to obtain online EDGAR data from commercial services like Mead Data, Lexis/Nexis, and Disclosure. Although these businesses provide added value, you still get the same raw data via IMS. Likewise, Moody's and others sell CD-ROMs containing EDGAR data for up to a $1000 each. All in all, commercial repackaging of EDGAR data is a $250 million-a-year business that is bound to grow, as corporate electronic document filing becomes mandatory in 1996.
Yet, in an interesting turnabout, SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, Jr. declared that Internet distribution of SEC filings is of the "highest priority." Likewise, SEC Commissioner Steven Wallman said that he'd "like to get back to the original concept that the public has immediate access to this information for free." Neither Levitt or Wallman have made any concrete proposals as to how this should happen, however. Instead, an SEC spokesperson said that the database might be put on a government BBS or the White House Web site. Obviously, Levitt couldn't comment on other government databases, such the PTO's.
Malamud claims that, when it comes to electronic distribution of government documents, the SEC and PTO really don't have any choice. The recently passed Paperwork Reduction Act, a key part of the GOP's Contract with America, requires that government agencies go online with records and related documents. In the meantime, Malamud has been lining up private assistance from the likes of MIT, NYU, Sun, MCI, Time, R.R. Donnelley, and others. "We've done two years of public service, thank you," Malamud said, noting that he has personally financed parts of the project.
In short, it's time for IMS to move forward in fulfilling its charter of developing new users of the Internet--and for the government to live up to its obligations to its citizens.
But back to patents.... In a blow to the rapid development of a truly interactive Internet, it appears there's a patent pending on the concept of executable content--like that provided by the Java programming language and supported to a lesser extent by leading Web browsers. According to recent accounts, the patent, held by the University of California and licensed exclusively to Eolas Technologies, covers the use of embedded program objects ("applets") within Web documents. The patent also covers the use of any algorithm which implements dynamic, bidirectional communications between Web browsers and external applications.
As we're used to seeing with university technology-licensing programs, "Weblet" technology was developed by a faculty member who then gained exclusive rights through an "outside" company. Once again, publicly funded R&D ends up benefiting private interests.
In this case, Dr. Michael Doyle, a University of California professor--and coincidentally the CEO of Eolas--developed the technology in 1993. The first application was an interactive, 3-D medical visualization used in conjunction with the Mosaic-based Eolas browser. Interestingly, Doyle received his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was tangentially associated with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, which developed Mosaic.
I guess luck really is what you make it.
Jonathan Erickson
editor-in-chief
Copyright © 1995, Dr. Dobb's Journal