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Reprinted with permission from Corporate Crime Reporter.

[Corporate Crime Reporter is published by American Communications and
Publishing Co., Inc. 48 times a year. ISSN Number: 0897-4101.
Principal Editorial Offices: 1322 18th St, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
Telephone: (202) 429-6928. Editor: Russell Mokhiber.]

LETTER TO CONGRESSMAN MARKEY, SEC CHAIRMAN BREEDEN, CALLING FOR
PUBLIC ON-LINE ACCESS TO SEC EDGAR DATABASE GAINS SIGNATURES

         A letter expressing "distress that the public will have only
limited access to the Securities and Exchange Commission's new
computer database" and calling for a revision of the SEC's contract
for the database has gained the support of more than 100 scholars,
computer professionals, journalists, corporate executives and other
users of SEC information.
         The letter, addressed to SEC Chairman Richard Breeden and Rep.
Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts), chairman of the House
Subcommittee that oversees SEC activities, asks that the public,
which paid for the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and
Retrieval System (EDGAR), be allowed to purchase online access and
that the SEC take other steps to broaden public access to the EDGAR
database.
         The SEC will soon require corporations to file public
disclosure reports electronically. The reports will be stored in
the SEC's EDGAR database. The SEC is spending more than $60 million
to develop EDGAR, a system that will allow about 650 SEC employees
to have online access to all SEC filings.
         The letter was drafted by Jamie Love, an economist with Ralph
Nader's Taxpayer's Asset Project. According to Love, who may be one
of a handful of people to have read the five-inch thick SEC EDGAR
contract with BDM, Mead Data Central and Compuserve among others,
the SEC plans to limit public access to the database to terminals
in SEC reading rooms in New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C..
         The SEC database can also be purchased from private vendor
services, such as DIALOG, SEC Online, and Mead Data Central's
LEXIS/NEXIS, but at prices ranging from $45 to $84 per hour, not
including search charges and charges as high as $20 per record
retrieved.
         "The public should have the right to subscribe to online
access to EDGAR from remote locations," Love wrote in the letter.
"For most subscribers, the cost of the subscription should be based
on the incremental cost of providing such access. . .The
information in EDGAR is collected at taxpayers' expense to inform
the public. We should not have to pay commercial firms to receive
something that has already been paid for once through taxes."
         In an interview, Love said that people "anywhere in the
country should be able to go to their computer and dial up EDGAR --
Why should someone in Nebraska have to travel to Chicago or
Washington to get information they could just as easily get with a
phone call?"
         But Ron Plesser, an attorney with the Washington firm of Piper
& Marbury, who often represents private vendors and the Information
Industry Association, told Corporate Crime Reporter that providing
online access to the public would be "a tremendous undertaking."
         "It would be a very different kind of system, a much more
expensive system," Plesser said.
         When told of the letter, David Copenhafer, deputy director of
the SEC's Office of EDGAR Management, said he hadn't seen it. "I
know who Jamie Love is. I have not seen the letter yet. If it has
to do with the issues that he is interested in, I don't think it is
going to be possible to give you an immediate response to his
concerns. We would probably want to look at it carefully and try
and respond in writing. This is a fairly sensitive area, and I
don't feel comfortable trying to respond over the telephone."
         John Penhollow, director of the SEC's Office of EDGAR
Management, could not be reached for comment on the letter.
         Love also charged that the EDGAR contract would "significantly
diminish SEC control over one of the world's most important and
valuable financial databases."
         According to Love, under the present SEC plan, the official
government record of the transactions will be in microfiche, but
the machine readable copy of the EDGAR database will be stored on
computers owned by Mead Data Central, and "the government will have
only limited rights to access its own database."
         "Before the SEC can provide the public online access to the
EDGAR system or produce new electronic information products or
services, it must gain permission from Mead Data Central," Love
wrote. "Since Mead itself plans to sell SEC information to the
public, it will have little incentive to cooperate in efforts to
expand public access to the data directly from the government."
         The letter calls on the SEC to revise the EDGAR contract to
ensure that the government receives a current and complete copy of
all filings in machine readable form, and that electronic versions
of public records received and stored in the EDGAR system are
available through the Freedom of Information Act.
         Also pledged to sign the letter are Patricia Glass Schuman,
President of the American Library Association; a number of
reporters; Mitchell Kapor, President of the Electronic Frontiers
Foundation; Marc Rotenberg, director of the Washington office of
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility; James Galbraith,
Professor of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin; and
Jerry Berman of the American Civil Liberties Union.
         The letter makes the following additional points:
         * The SEC should sell CD-ROM products that meet the needs of
libraries, journalists, economists and other researchers.
         There are a number of CD-ROM products the SEC could easily
make available to the public from the EDGAR database. Many
libraries want to buy CD-ROM versions of annual reports and 10-K
filings. CD-ROM versions of these information products are far more
useful than microfiche or paper products, since they allow the user
to use software to search the information on the basis of
particular characteristics. These products currently are available
from commercial vendors, but at prices as high as $20,000 per year,
which many libraries and researchers cannot afford.
         * EDGAR information should be made available through the
federal Depository Library Program.
         The federal Depository Library Program is designated to
promote universal access to federal government information. The SEC
should participate in this program, which began in 1857 and
currently involves more than 1,400 libraries nationwide.
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James P. Love, Director            voice:    609-683-0534
Taxpayer Assets Project            fax:      609-258-2809
7-Z Magie, Faculty Road            bitnet:   Love@pucc.bitnet
Princeton, NJ 08540                internet: Love@pucc.princeton.edu