LEVEL 1 - 84 OF 119 STORIES Copyright 1995 The Washington Post The Washington Post June 28, 1995, Wednesday, Final Edition SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C01 LENGTH: 1076 words HEADLINE: CYBERSENSITIVITY? Did the Media Overreact to Pornography on the Internet? BYLINE: Elizabeth Corcoran, Washington Post Staff Writer BODY: Nudists and sadists and perverts, oh my! This week's cover of Time magazine trumpets a new study conducted at Carnegie Mellon University about pornography on electronic networks. The headline is enough to make any self-respecting parent's blood run cold: "A new study shows how pervasive and wild it really is . . ." A pasty-faced, bug-eyed child stares out from the cover, mouth agape. The Washington Post, June 28, 1995 The message: Keep your kids off the Internet. But, in fact, that's not what the actual study says. Instead, the paper, which will soon be published in the Georgetown University Law Journal, mostly describes the kind of pornographic material found in adult "bulletin boards." These services, which are typically not connected to the Internet, are not casually stumbled across. They usually involve a long-distance telephone call and require that users supply a password. Some require a fax of a driver's license as proof of age. Others require a credit card number. In spite of the haunting images in Time of a hand reaching out of a screen to grab innocent users, the Carnegie Mellon study isn't about what Johnny and Jane might accidentally see when they fire up their computers. It's about how frequently people purposefully download pornographic material from bulletin boards and "newsgroups," where people post messages for one another. "It's as if they had taken a study of adult bookstores in Times Square and generalized about what was in Barnes & Noble worldwide," contends Mike Godwin, general counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The Washington Post, June 28, 1995 Time editors say they feel that their presentation was fair. "The percentage of pornographic material on the Internet isn't the issue," says Time Editor Norman Pearlstine. "It's whether any informed user can access it." Newsweek, which is owned by The Washington Post Co., also published a major report this week briefly quoting the Carnegie Mellon study, but presented its findings with a less inflamed headline: "A Parents' Guide to Sex on the Net." Still the study -- and especially the Time story -- has Internet experts fuming. Donna L. Hoffman, a business professor at Vanderbilt University who received portions of the study from Marty Rimm several months ago, says Rimm's data does not support any sweeping conclusions about how widespread pornography is on the Internet. The study "is very misleading," Hoffman contends. Based on an analysis of pornography available on adult bulletin boards, she says, Rimm makes broad inferences about consumers' tastes. But the study "doesn't tell us anything about consumer behavior," she asserts. "It draws our focus away and helps give ammunition to those who would try to censor material. What we need is an open debate . . . not scare tactics." The Washington Post, June 28, 1995 A number of authorities are angry that Rimm, 30, has little experience with such studies. He was an undergraduate when it was written. They also point out that university law review journals, such as Georgetown's, typically do not circulate their articles for peer review, as do scientific or other professional journals. Given the explosive nature of the material Rimm was covering, they suggest, he should have sought -- and incorporated -- more comments from experts. Rimm says he played by the rules: "We have, in house at Carnegie Mellon, about a dozen faculty listed in the footnotes who reviewed everything very carefully and are convinced that the study as written and presented is balanced." Pearlstine says editors at Time discussed the question of methodology and decided they were comfortable with Rimm's work. Others differ. "It's not a study," says Daniel Weitzner, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, who was asked to review the footnotes before it was published. Like Hoffman, he believes his comments were ignored in the final draft. "It's a rhetorical piece about the evils of pornography. It essentially The Washington Post, June 28, 1995 goes to the red-light district of the Internet and confirms that there's a lot of pornography there and concludes from that we have a gigantic problem." Rimm says he believes there is much to be learned by studying what people are interested in seeing via electronic networks. "Pornography newsgroups are accessed way out of proportion to their number," Rimm says, both around the world and at Carnegie Mellon. For instance, of the more than 14,000 electronic newsgroups worldwide, only 200 carry naughty messages or pictures, as far as he can tell. But students at Carnegie Mellon, for instance, tend to peek into the pornographic ones far more frequently than other newsgroups, Rimm says. "There's no question that by availability, pornography accounts for a small percentage of what's out there on the Internet," he says. "But one needs to look at it from the demand side." Rimm enters the picture just as the debate about how to protect children from nasty electronic material has itself grown nasty. Earlier this month, the Senate passed an amendment co-sponsored by Sen. James Exon (D-Neb.) that would make it a criminal offense to transmit "obscene" material via electronic networks. The House of Representatives is weighing alternative amendments to the telecommunications legislation, including a proposal for an extensive study of just what is out there and what could be done about it. Last week House The Washington Post, June 28, 1995 Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), asked what he thought of the Exon amendment, said, "I think it has no meaning and no real impact. . . . It is clearly a violation of free speech and it's a violation of the rights of adults to communicate with each other." Meanwhile, the computer industry itself is getting involved. After long ignoring concerns raised about "indecent" material available on networks, industry leaders including Microsoft, Netscape and start-ups including Progressive Networks and SurfWatch are working on "filters" -- programs that parents could use to ensure that their children will not reach certain images and discussion groups on the Internet. Today, the Information Technology Association of America, made up of more than 300 high-tech companies, plans to announce a task force to address ways the industry should help parents cope with smut on the Internet. "The industry is very ingenious, and confronted with the real public relations and marketing problem they have, they're going to get even more ingenious" in devising solutions, says association President Harris Miller. GRAPHIC: Photo, Time and Newsweek stories on Internet pornography, which computer advocates criticize as unfair generalizations. Time's take on "Cyberporn": Editor Norman Pearlstine defends the story, saying its focus is The Washington Post, June 28, 1995 on "whether any informed user can access it." LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: June 28, 1995