From: Owlsong@aol.com Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 11:30:48 -0400 Message-ID: <951019113033_48666873@mail04.mail.aol.com> To: Owlsong@aol.com, editor@eff.org, mnemonic@well.com, thomson@lawmail.law.columbia.edu, musenut@teleport.com Subject: Marty Rimm My two recent articles published in the Georgetown Law Weekly. OK to post to the net. Alan Lewine Plumber's Home Page #5 673 words Georgetown Law Journal Gives GULC Rimm Job Part 1 of 3 by Alan Lewine Warning: this article refers to material from the Georgetown Law Journal that some may consider offensive. The Law Weekly cannot be responsible for hirsute palms or other untoward effects which some readers may associate with such material. If I were the new editor-in-chief of the Georgetown Law Journal, I think I'd start by changing its name. Kathy Ruemmler, new editor of the most prestigious law review at one of the nation's leading law schools, doesn't feel that way. In an October 5 interview she said, "We're getting calls for new subscriptions. I think that's a good thing." On July 3, 1995 Time magazine published a cover story on "Cyberporn" that helped fuel the flames of the debate over decency in cyberspace. The author, Philip Elmer-Dewitt, based the story on an advance copy of an article in the Georgetown Law Journal. The Journal provided this same study to Senators Grassley and Exon to wave and quote as they stirred up hysteria for the "Communications Decency Act" amendment to the Senate Telecommunications bill. Why haven't you heard of this study? Why don't the University's PR flaks trumpet the vast influence we peddle? Simply because the "study" has been thoroughly debunked. A thirty year old undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University named Marty Rimm authored the piece. It was published in the "June, 1995" edition of the Georgetown Law Journal (which actually came out in late July). Titled "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway," the article purports to be an extensive study of content in cyberspace generally and of the Internet in particular. Unfortunately, Marty doesn't know what he's doing and the Journal never thought to check. Even Elmer-Dewitt soon recanted his own article, both in the July 24 issue of Time, and on the Usenet. The Time follow up piece acknowledged the "damaging flaws in Rimm's study." Elmer-Dewitt joined a flame war to post on the Usenet newsgroup < alt.culture.internet >, "I screwed up." Donna Hoffman and Thomas Novak, Associate Professors at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt, and Co-Directors of Project 2000 have published a lengthy and detailed critique of the Rimm piece. They cite dozens of specific instances of misrepresentation, manipulation, skewed reasoning, and methodological flaws. "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway" resembles the Holy Roman Empire. Rimm's "research" is about neither "marketing" nor the "information superhighway." Of 148 footnotes in the Journal article, only footnote 22 cites a marketing journal as a source. Rimm also conflates a brief and inaccurate overview of the Usenet newsgroup area on the Internet with a study based on descriptions of pornographic images as posted on selected private adult bulletin board systems (BBSs). These BBSs advertise themselves as adult sites and charge users for access time. They cannot be accessed through any online service or Internet dial-up provider. Commercial BBSs represent the private business ventures of their sysops. The article's most famous statistic says that "83.5% of all images posted on the Usenet are pornographic." Read it at page 1914 of the Journal or in the Congressional Record of June 26, 1995 courtesy of the good Senator Grassley. This statistic is misleading, overgeneralized, grossly inflated, and just plain wrong. Don't take my word for it. I borrowed these adjectives from the Hoffman and Novak analysis. I should make clear that I don't deny that sexually explicit material exists and may be easily located on the net. In fact, in the next couple of weeks, I plan to provide some addresses so you can see for yourself. I also understand parent's concerns with the materials their children may be exposed to through the net or any other medium. I do not discourage any publications or expression in any journal or forum whatsoever. I am concerned, however, when my school contributes to inflaming an already sensationalistic debate by publishing tripe like Rimm's in what purports to be a scholarly journal. Contact me by e-mail at < owlsong@aol.com > or through the Law Weekly. Let me know your thoughts, tips, questions or suggestions. Georgetown Law Journal Gives GULC Rimm Job Part 2 of 3 by Alan Lewine Law Weekly Last week, we took a look at the background of the publication of an article on "cyberporn." To recap, Time magazine published a cover story called "On a Screen Near You: Cyberporn" on July 3, 1995. Author Philip Elmer-Dewitt based the story entirely on an article by a Carnegie Mellon undergraduate named Marty Rimm, who posed as a team of researchers. Our own Georgetown Law Journal published Rimm's paper, "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway," as the central article of the June, 1995 issue, along with three commentaries. Scholars have almost universally condemned the methodologies apparently employed by Rimm. The data and interpretation in the Rimm piece, based on unpublished and unscrutinized data, have found few supporters. The conclusions drawn by some in Congress and elsewhere have great support in certain circles. I was surprised to find, in an informal survey, how few students, and even faculty and staff in the GULC community knew of the central role the Law Journal played in this summer's "Communications Decency" debate. Why not a higher profile on this groundbreaking publication by GULC's top journal? The article and resultant Time story are "bogus," a "cyberhoax," a "gross distortion," of "questionable validity," "cyberfraud," and "a scandal" as described in headlines found in the San Francisco Examiner, Media Beat, The Globe and Mail, The Press of Atlantic City, and HotWired respectively. What about all those 2Ls salting their resumes by slaving for hours checking cites? They didn't even figure out that Rimm had not completed his college degree. What about the flawed methodology? Generally a scholarly journal subjects an article to review by experts for soundness and accuracy. The current editor-in-chief of the Georgetown Law Journal, Kathy Ruemmler, had taken the reins before the piece was published and acted as a "conduit" in finishing the article and arranging the exclusive story with Time. Ruemmler said, "We're a law school! We don't peer review." She also said, "We felt completely confident of the accuracy of the material." Of course, a man with Rimm's credentials is easily trusted. His prior publications included two slim books: An American Playground, about his experiences with Atlantic City casinos, and The Pornographer's Handbook: How to exploit Women, Dupe Men, & Make Lots of Money. Satire? Perhaps. What seems to have happened here is a story of clever marketing by Rimm. He represented himself as a "team" of researches and brought the "study" to the attention of the Journal's editors, among others. The Georgetown Law Journal solicited the article, believing it would stir healthy debate. By designing his article as law review piece with legal footnotes, Rimm targeted a market without peer review. I think he knew that the editors and publishers of a law review lack the judgment or expertise to analyze the sociological and statistical methodologies employed in gathering and interpreting the data. Rimm further insured a sneak attack on the media by arranging the exclusive story with Time, and holding back to this day the raw data from the underlying study. Georgetown Professor David Post, a founder of the Cyberspace Law Institute, was asked to give his pre-publication opinion of certain material in the article. He couldn't analyze the issues. "The Journal editors said they could not show me a copy of the study itself," he said. Apparently, the only people outside the Journal who had advance copies were the Time writer and three invited commentators who Rimm apparently (based on their footnotes) guided closely in their analyses. The absence of peer review procedures may provide a more freewheeling forum for opinion and legal analysis. Nonetheless, certain kinds of material demand review, if only to prevent the embarrassment and misdirection attending this publication. Credible scientific journals institute and require peer review for precisely these reasons: responsibility and accountability. Expert testimony must likewise be based on credible and accepted methodology. The Georgetown Law Journal should feel similar responsibility to its readers when publishing a piece that purports to present factual material. If they wish to retain any credibility when publishing articles containing scientific or statistical data, law reviews must institute some analytical procedures. Law students rarely have the background, time, or skills to judge the merits of a piece such as Rimm's. Even the legal commentators in the same issue accepted Rimm's study at face value. Perhaps they relied on the Journal's sense of editorial responsibility. Contact me by e-mail at < owlsong@aol.com > or through the Law Weekly. Let me know your thoughts, tips, questions or suggestions. Where to Find More The Rimm article from the Georgetown Law Journal and the three accompanying commentaries can be found at the GULC Law Library's nascent website by pointing your browser at < http://www.ll.georgetown.edu >. Once there, click on <>, then click on <>. As the only journal article currently posted at this site, you may be surprised at the webmaster's daring. The Rimm article contains extremely explicit language, and a lot of it. As Ruemmler told me, "I didn't even know such stuff existed until I saw this article." Vanderbilt University sponsors Project 2000, which, among other things, provides extensive coverage of the controversy the Time and Journal articles have spawned. Go to < http://www2000.ogsm.vanderbilt.edu/cyberporn.debate.cgi >. This site contains links to all of the articles mentioned here in the last two weeks. Additionally, you'll find many more related pieces including two articles by lawyer Mike Godwin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This page also provides links to other major web sites dealing with these issues. An electronically published magazine, or e-zine, called Urban Desires covers this story in the current issue #6, on the web at < http://www.desires.com >. A very cool zine, UD covers breaking areas in art, thought and culture in a way that exploits the possibilities of new formats available in this new medium. The "Smut 'n Stuff" site at the University of North Carolina refers to "naive reactions by people who should have known better at the Georgetown Law Journal.." See it at < http://sunsite.unc.edu/smut.html >. Fans of the Exon amendment, known as the Communications Decency Act and currently in Conference Committee, may want to visit < http://www.panix.com/~lan/exon >. A list of academic publications that would become illegal under the Communications Decency Act is posted at < http://osf1.gmu.edu/~herwin >. This is Harry Erwin's home page. He's part of the Computational Science Institute at George Mason University. This page also includes links to pages dealing wit hominid phylogeny, computational neuroscience, and other neat stuff. Also of interest on the issues of free expression in cyberspace may be the website of the Electronic Freedom Foundation. Find it at < http://www.eff.org >. You can find the American Civil Liberties Union on America Online at keyword < ACLU >, or through the Internet by gophering to < gopher://aclu.org:6601/1 >. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has a free speech and Internet censorship page, as well as a legislative update and policy sections that you can access from < http://epic.org >. ###