In a letter to VicePresident Al Gore and Commerce DepartmentSecretary William Daley, Carl Malamud, the head of the nonprofit Internet Multicasting Service and aninterim professor at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, demanded that the Patentand Trademark Office (PTO) be forced to comply with a 1996paper reduction law and publish online complete and up-to-date patentand trademark registry files--which in some cases can pile up to 500 pages.
A hero among public-disclosure 
advocates, in 1994 Malamud created andmaintained a small PTO database and a massive SEC site, now known asthe Edgar Database, before that agency took it over 18 months later whenMalamud planned to shut it down.
Although the PTO publishes digital copies of the first page of every patent application filed over the past 20 years, Malamud said by July 1 he will dole out the cash and time to erect anexpanded PTO site. Then he plans to pull the site by year's end, hopingto stir up public outrage--a tactic he claims will put pressure on theagency to continue the service.
"One hundred and fifty years ago the patent office could meet its public disclosureobligation by providing a few patent libraries around the country. Wedon't believe that works in 1998," Malamud said. "There isno longer a question about whether people use the Net, and that this iscost effective."
Technology experts who work for the government acknowledge that digitizingfederal documents and offering them online isn't as hard as it may seem.But despite various federal mandates, some say there is an underlying forcestalling the drive to transfer miles of dusty paper files to the Net:the thriving commercial industry that stands to be threatened if all publicinformation actually becomes free and easy to access.
Moreover, public-disclosure watchdogs charge that aside from a fewimpressive exceptions, most government entities are not in compliance withthe Electronic Freedom of Information Act of 1996. The act mandates thatgovernment documents be accessible via the Net unless they are classifiedas confidential for national security purposes or contain trade secrets,for example.
PTO Commissioner Bruce Lehman contends that he has no problem with puttingdata at Net users' fingertips, but there are roadblocks. For now, the PTOdoes let visitors search the weekly Official Gazette Notices from 1995 to1998, which record patents and trademarks that have been issued.
Still, some patent application information is confidential and can't beuploaded automatically, he said. Also, the PTO is self-supported, he noted, sopatent applicants subsidize the current online offerings. In addition, theoffice rakes in $20 million from retailers who repackage the raw data andsell it to lawyers and citizens. For instance, a CD-ROM containing all the patent applications for a year costs $3,000.
"Somebody has to pay for these things," Lehman told CNET's NEWS.COM."[Retailers] are concerned about us offering services that would underminetheir businesses," he added. "If we put everything up on the Internet wewould lose sales [as well].We'll probably make more data available for free--we just have to balancethese interests as we move into the future."
The SEC apparently had the same concerns when Malamud started buying itsinformation from commercial services--such as instantaneous copies of publiccompanies' earnings reports--and making them publicly available andsearchable through his Web site. Today the SEC site gets 500,000 hits perday, and agency officials say retailers have not been hurt by the change.
"Carl Malamud is sort of the father of this. The chairman [of the SEC, Arthur Levitt,]determined that it was a good public interest to keep this data availableon the Net when Carl was preparing to discontinue his service," MarkBrickman, manager for the SEC's information technology infrastructure,said today.
"Pretty much it is an automated system now," Brickman added. "Our level-onedisseminators still get this information real time, five minutes after itcomes in. The SEC puts it up 24 hours later because we try not to interferewith those businesses."
The PTO is not the only government entity being called to the carpet forpicking and choosing which public files will be opened up via the Net.
Last month, the nonprofit OMBWatch issued a scathing report on the government's progress in complyingwith the Electronic Freedom of Information Act, signed by President Clinton in 1996.
The Defense Department and the Federal Communications Commission were twoentities OMB Watch applauded for their search services and stellarprogress. However, according to the policy analysis group, none of the 136government Web sites affected by the act were in full compliance with therules, such as establishing an organized site with a search engine fordocuments and supplying electronic forms, dubbed FOIAs, that journalistsor citizens can use to request hard-to-find or previously sealed governmentdocuments.
Congress must supply necessary funding and apply strict oversight to ensurethat public documents find their way to the Net, said Gary Ruskin of the CongressionalAccountability Project.
"The most important text of federal bills, like discussion drafts ormark-ups, are rarely put on the Net," Ruskin said. "The original versionor drafts passed by a committee always go up on [Thomas],but the lobbyists play games with these drafts in between and we ought tobe able to read them."
He contends there are endlessexamples of government data that should and could be online, but isn't.Ruskin is pushing for the passage of a federal bill that wouldlift the floodgates on one part of the legislative process. Thejoint-house effort aims to put Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports onthe Net. The tax-funded service provides nonpartisan analysis oflegislation for Congress members, but the reports are only available from privatevendors.
"An informed electorate is the most important facet in any republic. TheCRS reports are some of the best research the federal government does. Thereports are in plain English and are about important issues pending beforeCongress," he added. "If they have an electronic copy, how hard is this todo?"
At least one leg of the government says in most cases, the process is notthat difficult.
Directed by Congress, the Government PrintingOffice (GPO) has been plugging away since 1993 to create aone-stop cybershop for all three branches of government. The GPO hosts30 agencies' records and 70 public databases, which include more than100,000 publications.
"Once we get them, we produce the Congressional Record and Federal Registerovernight," said Andy Sherman, director of public affairs for the GPO. "By6 a.m. the next day, we post the equivalent in size to up to six dailymetropolitan newspapers or 200 pages."
The GPO never pulls documents down and receives 13 million to 15 million pagerequests per month.
The popularity of the GPO's system also lends weight to Malamud's theory:If more people have access to raw data, they will participate in thepolitical process. At the same time, existing niche markets will continue topay retail services for up-to-date, well-packaged information.
"In terms of people wanting direct access to the authentic information,some do want to go to the source and get it from the government directly,"Sherman said.
And the GPO has accomplished its work without a tremendous amount of cash."We were not provided additional funding to do this," he added. "It waspredicted that GPO-provided access for five years would cost $60 million, butit has cost under $10 million for that time period."
When it comes to the PTO, it almost is imminent that Malamud will carry outhis threat to post the PTO's full registries online. The outcomecould be different from his experience with the SEC, however.
In that case, he gave a 60-day warning to his users that the site was beingpulled, which, contrary to the SEC, he says was a personal decision, not amatter of funds drying up. Still, Malamud's plan worked. The SEC stepped upto the plate, took over the site, and even improved the online service.
He plans to use the same strategy with the PTO, encouraging angry users tocomplain to the vice president when he shuts down the site atthe end of the year. The chances are slimmer that the PTO will comply, butMalamud is undeterred.
"I've been working for several years to put government information online.I have paid $190,000 for U.S. government data so far," he said. "The [PTO] data defines who owns intellectual property--the real estate in thisinformation economy. This issue of making it fully available should not bea fight."