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New Databases Available in 1994
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For Immediate Release For More Information: December 21, 1993 questions@radio.com

Key Speech by Vice President Gore Multicast on Global Internet Network

Three New Government Databases Put on Internet by Internet Multicasting Service in Response to Gore Speech

Washington, D.C. - Vice President Gore spoke today at the National Press Club, presenting the Clinton/Gore administration's first major address on our Information Superhighway. The Internet Multicasting Service multicast this speech live over the global Internet computer network. Over 200 comments and questions from the general public were received before and during the speech by electronic mail. Mr. Gore was asked some of the questions and at the conclusion National Press Club President Clayton Boyce presented the Vice President with a floppy disk containing all the electronic mail received before 12:50 EST.

This kind of instant feedback from the public to policy makers is a concrete example of the vision spelled out by Mr. Gore. Recent statements by the Vice President and by Congressional leaders outline a key principle: access to advanced information services must be available in our inner cities, our schools, our libraries, our homes, and throughout our society.

In response to the call by Vice President Gore and Congressional leaders for wider accessibility by the public to government information, the Internet Multicasting Service, a non-profit corporation, today announced that it will be making available on the Internet a series of databases including:

Federal Election Commission 1992 and 1994 Election Cycles Federal Reserve Board Releases for 1993 and 1994 U.S. Patent Office Full Text/APS Format for 1994

Purchase of these databases is funded through donations from private industry and complement our NSF-funded research project to investigate Internet-based dissemination of the Securities and Exchange Commission EDGAR Database for 1994.

In the case of the Patent database, we will work with Gregory Aharonian of the Internet Patent Service in Cambridge, Massachusetts who will provide additional processing on the database, a role similar to that provided by New York University for the EDGAR database. The database has approximately 50 Gigabytes per year.

When Congressman Edward Markey calls for "two wires into the home" and Vice President Gore calls for access to all Americans to our information superhighway, they spell out fundamental principles for the information age. Equal access and multiple service providers should extend beyond fiber optic cables all the way up to the information that moves over the wires. The two wire principle should be extended to the two byte principle: Data paid for by the American taxpayers must be broadly available to the American public and not sold off to the highest bidder.

For each of the three databases announced today, the government agencies were extremely cooperative and supportive of our efforts. All of government can learn by the examples set by the Patent Office, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Federal Election Commission.

Industry and government can both learn from our demonstration projects and from our research. Can we ignore the possibility that there are ways to reduce federal expenditures for information dissemination by a factor of 100 and broaden public access to public information? How can a few hundred thousand dollars in research grants and donations by corporations possibly endanger a thriving billion dollar per year retail information industry? As Vice President Gore said today, "we are committed to preserving the affordability, diversity, and availability of information."

The Internet Multicasting Service is a non-profit corporation chartered in Delaware which operates the world's first "cyberstation." From our studios in the National Press Building in Washington, D.C., we send out multimedia data that includes government databases, National Press Club luncheons, messages from Santa Claus, radio and TV programs from public broadcasting, readings by famous poets provided by Harper Collins, and the "Geek of the Week" interviews. Send mail to info@radio.com for more information.

Funding for on-line access to information is provided by our sponsors, including Sun Microsystems, O'Reilly & Associates, UUNET Technologies, MFS Datanet, Persoft, and by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

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