From: floydb@rpi.edu
Subject: re: Internet based quote service
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 16:15:46 GMT

In article <1992Nov12.152143.28329@siesoft.co.uk> stuart@wstuart (Stuart Hood) writes:
>lott@bogner.informatik.uni-kl.de (Christopher Lott AGSE) writes:
>: In article <foo> james@engrs.unl.edu (James Nau) writes:
>: >In article <1992Nov6.110412.9686@uklirb.informatik.uni-kl.de> I write:
>: >>
>: >>    Copyright violation is the fundamental problem with creating a
>: >>    public database of stock information.
>: >
>: >Would this fall under the same category as the phone-book case?
>: >I thought two years or so ago that the courts said the information
>: >in a phone book couldn't be copyrighted.  But, I don't recall much
>: 
>: Here is what's behind my note.  A while back (year?) there was a discussion
>: about creating a public DB on the net that would hold stock info.  The
>: real problem is filling the DB.  Scanning prices from newsprint is apparently
>: not reliable, and anyhow those lists are copyrighted.  Data given out
>: by paid services are available for "one-time use" or some such restriction.
>: What restrictions does ClariNet place on its subscribers?  Surely there
>: are some.
>: 


stuff deleted


>Any interest?
>
>Stuart.
>-
>--
>S I E M E N S  Stuart Hood === Siemens Nixdorf House, Bracknell, Berks, UK
>-------------  Phone: + 44-344-850892          Email: stuart@siesoft.co.uk
>N I X D O R F  - Never let ignorance stand in the way of a good argument -


As indicated, this was brought up before and for all of the above reasons
it would take more work than was generally available. The very relative
term "free" must be evaluated with respect to how much work people are
willing to commit. A critical mass of people jointly putting in a 
minimal amount of time (e.g. adopt a few stocks, adopt a paper, etc.) might
be able to pull it off....


If everyone agreed on a few comprimises I believe this could be done a lot
more readily. The comprimises first:
 
1) data would not be complete. There may be days or weeks of gaps in a 
   particular company's database records. An exception report could be 
   generated and posted to misc.invest in order to solicit data, but still
   there would be NO guarentees for completeness.

2) data would not be accurate. Given the need to collect data on one stock
   from multiple sources the system could only take the "average" of that
    data, not having an external data source to validate against.

3) data would not be timely. Some minimum time-slice would have to be agreed
   upon in advance. The smaller the time-slice (minutes, hours, morning
   & afternoon, daily, weekly, etc.) the greater the problems with 1) and 2).

4) data "format" would have to become public domain/shareware (i.e. no one
   should be able to profit from the data). This may necessitate the inclusion
   of bogus company data and/or innocuous inaccuracies in 'published' data,
   in order to leave a source signature.

If the details of these general guidelines can be established then it is
left to some enterprising individual or team of individuals to program the 
following modules:

1) automatic data receiving module (parsing incoming e-mail)

2) data integration module (adding parsed data to a database)

3) data publishing module (posting database reports)

4) exception reporting module (listing critical gaps in data)

Once the modules are tested and ready to go then individuals should be
prompted to begin submitting data. A strict format guideline should be
made availble, possibly included with each exception report posted to the 
net.

I would be interested in three types of database, two of which would be
directly user supported, the third would contain aggregate data.

1) Company profiles, minimally including: name, business description,
   phone, address, incorporation date, symbol and market (NYSE, AMAX, etc.),
   current earnings, shares outstanding (float), 52 week high/low (calculated),
   current EPS (calculated), annualized dividend and % (calculated).

   This database would have one record per company.

2) Periodic stock pricing information, minimally including: high, low,
   last, (or bid/ask), volume, current P/E (calculated), and symbol.

   This database would have multiple records per company, linked by symbol.

3) Quarterly aggregate data, minimally including: earnings, shares outstanding 
   (float), stock high/low (calculated), earnings and current EPS (calculated), 
   dividend distributed and % (calculated), and symbol.

   This database would have multiple records per company, linked by symbol.


hope this helps...

barry

ps
 
I have neither the computing resources nor the software to impliment this
project, though I could draw up specific programming requirements and data
based formats for those who take on this project.

pps

To the best of my knowledge the data per se are not copyrighted and prior
dicsussions regarding published format etc. it accurate. However, someone
should get a legal opinion on the matter before embarking on this journey.