Edgar on the internet: delight and dilemma

摘要

The Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) EDGAR database allows users to retrieve documents that contain important financial information from publicly traded companies. The EDGAR database was available on the Internet Town Hall from January 1994 through September 1995. The Internet Town Hall was a service provided by the Internet Multicasting Service, a non-profit organization that relied upon a government grant to distribute EDGAR data This site distributed almost 17,000 EDGAR documents each day. When the Internet Town Hall closed its service, the SEC responded to public demand for EDGAR decuments by making them available on its World Wide Web site. While the SEC is disseminating this information for free, numerous corporations are charging a fee for the same data. Although the free EDGAR database has been a boon to those seeking this type of information, it raises the following issues: centre dot How do the government's services compete with commercial information providers? What level of service does the government provide in regard to timeliness, customer service and access methods? centre dot What impact does the government's services have on commercial information providers and how is the private sector dealing with this competion? This paper will address the EDGAR system, the retrieval process and the above mentioned issues.