Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
September 19, 1995
Page 1

CMU Graduate Back on Internet
By Lillie Wilson
Tribune Review


The student who rocked cyberspace is back.

Marty Rimm, the infamous Carnegie Mellon University graduate who authored 
an even more infamous study of computer network pornography while a 
student, broke his two-month Internet silence over the weekend and 
returned to posting newsgroup messages.

And once again, he was flamed -- Internet argot for verbally flayed -- 
for his effort.

The long-lost voice was "heard" on a "media coverage" newsgroup 
Sunday and consisted of Rimm's entry of a wire story from Newcastle, 
England, where a computer scientist had pronounced Internet pornography 
to be widespread. The English professor, Harold Thimbledy, quoted numbers 
concerning cyberporn that echoed points made in Rimm's now-discredited study.

Declan McCullagh, a CMU student a vocal Rimm critic, said he received
electronic mail from a Newcastle student saying Thimbledy cited Rimm's
study in his address, a point not addressed in the Reuters story. 

"Comment, friend?" Rimm, 30, quiered newsgroup readers as he posted the
story. "I don't think I qualify as your friend nowadays," wrote back one
respondent, Seth Finkelstein of Cambridge, Mass. "This is the same sort of
sensationalistic tripe that you tried to use to build up your con." 

Rimm refused to be interviewed Monday. But Finkelstein, an MIT contract 
computer consultant and a veteran e-mail correspondent of Rimm's, said he 
thought Rimm was trying to vindicate himself by deception, in promoting 
-- without acknowledgement -- other findings based on Rimm's own faulty 
conclusions.

"He's trying to rehabilitate himself," said Finkelstein, one of more than 
a dozen indignant respondents who sprang to skewer Rimm on the public 
network.

[...]