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 EDGAR database available to the public, on the Internet, for free, and in an at least moderately clueful manner.

So I pulled the plug.

A sign appeared on the web server saying "this service will terminate in 60 days. Click here for more information."

When you clicked, you got a page with source code, usage stats, cost figures, and configurations to run the system, and a series of "click here" links if you felt that termination of the system would somehow inconvenience you.

The first "click here" link was "click here to send mail to Newt Gingrich," the hip young Speaker of the House. The next was "click here to send mail to Al Gore," the hip young Vice President. They both had email accounts and were very proud of them.

The third "click here" link was "click here to send mail to the Chairman of the SEC." Chairman Arthur Levitt, a grand old man of finance, didn't have an email address, so we created one for him. A couple of days later, the 17,000 messages he received were printed and delivered to the SEC front desk.

Coincidentally, the SEC had scheduled an EDGAR Industry Day meeting, which we weren't invited to, so we crashed it. After some theatrics, one of the Commissioners came up and asked some simple questions, like how much it would cost to run the service and who the users were.

The Commissioner evidently briefed the Chairman, because that evening Chairman Levitt called the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal and said the SEC was going to offer this EDGAR database on the