Carl Malamud

Name: Carl Malamud Title: President, Internet Multicasting Service Age: 35 Education: Indiana University; bachelor's in economics and MBA Daily hours on the Internet: four to five Daily incoming e-mail: About 500 messages (all answered) Favorite Internet newsgroup: "I don't read news. I don't like it." Interests: Reading, music, cooking.

Government pooh-bahs live by the credo Information is Power. Here are a few of the guerrillas working to overthrow the resulting dictatorship. Carl Malamud has posted 20 million pages of federal court filings online for free, undermining the government's fee-based PACER system and leveling the playing field between rich litigants and poor. Malamud's Sebastopol, Calif.-based nonprofit, public.resource.org, has also posted administrative and building safety codes from all 50 states, defying their copyright claims (and their steep per-copy fees)

Government pooh-bahs live by the credo Information is Power. Here are a few of the guerrillas working to overthrow the resulting dictatorship. Carl Malamud has posted 20 million pages of federal court filings online for free, undermining the government's fee-based PACER system and leveling the playing field between rich litigants and poor. Malamud's Sebastopol, Calif.-based nonprofit, public.resource.org, has also posted administrative and building safety codes from all 50 states, defying their copyright claims (and their steep per-copy fees)

Name: Carl Malamud Title: President, Internet Multicasting Service Age: 35 Education: Indiana University; bachelor's in economics and MBA Daily hours on the Internet: four to five Daily incoming e-mail: About 500 messages (all answered) Favorite Internet newsgroup: "I don't read news. I don't like it." Interests: Reading, music, cooking.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday that it will open an on-line investment information site on the World Wide Web, the multimedia region of the Internet. The site, which will be used for the first time by SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt Jr. and Commissioner Steve Wallman on Thursday, will give people with computers access to SEC filings and other data on a 24-hour delayed basis. The site will be activated at 8 a.m. PDT Thursday at the agency's operations center in Alexandria, Va.

A nonprofit group's experiment that offered free Internet access to valuable corporate records will end Oct. 1, officials said Friday. The Internet Multicasting Service in Washington said it's unclear whether the government will step in to fund the popular project that distributes corporate filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Patent and Trademark Office. But Rep.

Some call it one of the government's "crown jewels," a vast computer database containing the secrets and dirty laundry of America's biggest corporations. Wall Street firms, corporate lawyers and others pay an estimated $250 million a year to be wired into this information gathered by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the government's watchdog for the business world.

In the olden days, the Alder kids used to send letters to Santa up the chimney. This year, like more than a million other true children of the electronic age, they filed their requests over the Internet. "E-mail is faster and easier, and you get a response," says the pragmatic Corey, your typical 11-year-old computer jock. The elder Alder typed in his little brother Sam's list (Legos, cap gun, Power Rangers costume) and sent it to Santa at the digital North Pole last week. One of them, that is.

It should be clear by now to anyone who spends a little time cruising around on-line that multimedia--pictures, sound, even video--is coming to cyberspace, albeit haltingly. But if you really want a glimpse of where the Internet is going and why it is the prototype for any future information highway, consider three of the most intriguing new technologies on the cyberspace scene.

Nearly everyone reading this column today has a fax machine. Oh, you may not have one of those overblown telephones with paper inside, but chances are if you're reading this, you have a modem, and if you have a modem, you in all likelihood have a way to send and receive faxes. That's because the great majority of modems sold today have built-in fax capabilities. Yet in my experience, surprisingly few computer users take advantage of this very handy function, which can save time and money.

Vinton Cerf sounded an alarm when some U.S. lawmakers wanted to fence off Internet pornography by creating an ".xxx" domain name: He didn't see how adult sites could be forced to move there. Persuaded largely by Cerf's arguments, the lawmakers opted instead for a ".kids.us" domain that kid-friendly sites could voluntarily inhabit and that would respect global differences by being an American address.