It’s been more than a year since Sun Microsystem’s Jonathan Schwartz complained about the Securities and Exchange Commission being slow to recognize that the Internet exists. He and others lobbied for changes to Regulation FD, a 1934 law about guidance and disclosure to investors.

Why wouldn’t blogs serve the role of a press release, he asked? He put it much better than that:

“we have to hold an anachronistic telephonic conference call, or issue an equivalently anachronistic press release, so that the (not so anachronistic) Wall Street Journal can disseminate the news.”

This week, there was a breakthrough. The SEC’s Special Counsel recommended that the SEC give some leeway with an ‘interpretive release’ so that companies could use web sites and electronic channels to release public information.

Too bad the announcement came via this long, convoluted press release from the SEC. I guess they don’t have someone like Cabinet secretary Mike Leavitt to bring some clarity to this via digital means.

Schwartz hasn’t commented on it yet.