Topic 1067 [media]: Martin Rimm and the Cyberporn Scare #433 of 1020: Avant Garde A Clue (mnemonic) Thu Sep 7 '95 (13:09) 129 lines Well, I'm surprised Philip has already forgotten what I wrote in my Hotwired piece: "I can't say I thought much more about Rimm at the time. There was something that smelled a bit goofy about his research project and the weird seriousness with which he was pitching it to me. His faculty adviser, Marvin Sirbu, actually wrote me independently to suggest that EFF sponsor the Rimm project in some way. But EFF doesn't normally sponsor this sort of project, and my instincts told me we should keep our distance. That instinctive reaction was only bolstered when a contact at CMU sent me an draft abstract of the Rimm study." To make this point more explicit: EFF has not been a grant-giving foundation since 1991. Instead, we have been an operating foundation. We don't have a grant program, but many people, including Sirbu, assumed we had money to give to external projects. (We don't.) The following is Sirbu's initial pitch to me: ------------ Date: Mon, 7 Nov 1994 22:05:16 -0500 (EST) From: Marvin Sirbu To: mnemonc@eff.org Subject: Your visit to CMU I understand you will be at CMU Wednesday. I'm sorry I will miss you -- I'll be in Washinton Tuesday and Wednesday! (Maybe our paths will cross at the airport...) As you may have gleaned from reading about the events at CMU, I have been working with Martin Rimm on a study of the availability and consumption of sexually explicit imagery on Adult BBS systems and, to a lesser extent, on Usenet. Andy Blau suggested that EFF might be interested in the work we've been doing. Among other things, we have data which could be analyzed to show the geographic distribution of consumers of adult BBS systems. Such data might be useful in countering or confirming assertions that "community standards" in places like Memphis are different from other regions of the country. I'll give you a call when we are both back in our respective cities. Marvin Sirbu P.S. I still think the best way to deal with the Usenet problem is to develop a new notion of "common carrier" for Usenet sysops. But it will have to be coupled with authentication of posters.... -------------- [I haven't yet found any subsequent archived correspondence that month between Sirbu and me, but I remember telling him that EFF doesn't give grants, so that may have occurred in a later phone conversation between us. Note that Sirbu hasn't actually offered me the text of the study, which, we've been told elsewhere by Marty, was supposedly "substantially complete" in November 1994. In a posting shortly after the Time cover story hit the streets, I received this note from Sirbu:] --------------- Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 18:17:51 -0400 (EDT) From: Marvin Sirbu To: mike@eff.org Subject: The CMU study I noticed that you were quoted as follows in NewsDay: > Mike Goodwin of the Electronic Frontier Founda > tion in Washington, D.C., , which opposes all forms of > censorship on the Internet, said yesterday that {M8L{M0 > Rimm's study used ``questionable methodology.'' > ``The study is based on a subset of private personal > computer bulletin board systems that are dedicated to > the distribution of pornography. It is difficult to draw > any conclusion about the Internet, Usenet or any on{M8H{M0 > line service from that study.'' Mike, I'm sorry that you never took us up on the proposal I made to you last November to involve EFF in this project; it might have reduced the present confusion. I'm not sure what you find questionable about the methodology. The study does not purport to draw conclusions about the 60,000+ BBS systems that provide information about thousands of different topics. Instead, it covers specifically those BBS systems which advertise themselves as carrying "adult" materials, and then attempts to classify what sort of adult materials they in fact carry. Nowhere does the study infer that adult BBS are representative of all BBS; such a charge is a red herring. The study does survey Usenet newsgroups and makes some statements about the frequency with which sexually explicit images are found embedded in Usenet messages. The study notes that newsgroups which have been found to carry sexually oriented images account for no more than 3% of total Usenet postings (and that the Usenet itself accounts for no more than 12% of all Internet backbone traffic). It does note, however, that relatively few Usenet newsgroups carry pictures regularly, and of those that do (e.g. the alt.binaries.pictures.* hierarchy), 83% of the images are pornographic by actual count. If you have any questions about the methodology, I will be pleased to discuss them with you. Marvin Sirbu Carnegie Mellon University internet: sirbu@cmu.edu fax: +1 412 268 7196 phone: +1 412 268 3436 ----------- [I had many comments about the study and its methodology, as well as about other matters, that I stated in, uh, strong language, when I replied to Sirbu. Note that Sirbu misstates what the Rimm article purports to prove, but it is quite possible that at this date Sirbu had not actually read the text of the article as it appeared in GLJ. By the following weekend, Sirbu himself was backing away from the study.] Message 3/12 To Marvin Sirbu Jun 27, 95 06:46:12 pm -0400 Subject: Re: The CMU study To: ms6b+@andrew.cmu.edu (Marvin Sirbu) Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 18:46:12 -0400 (EDT) Cc: mike@eff.org > I noticed that you were quoted as follows in NewsDay: > > > Mike Goodwin of the Electronic Frontier Founda > > tion in Washington, D.C., , which opposes all forms of > > censorship on the Internet, said yesterday that {M8L{M0 > > Rimm's study used ``questionable methodology.'' > > ``The study is based on a subset of private personal > > computer bulletin board systems that are dedicated to > > the distribution of pornography. It is difficult to draw > > any conclusion about the Internet, Usenet or any on{M8H{M0 > > line service from that study.'' Well, that's about par for Newsday. [I was alluding to Newsday's misspelling of my name and mischaracterization of my organization's position.] > I'm sorry that you never took us up on the proposal I made to you last > November to involve EFF in this project; it might have reduced the > present confusion. EFF did not have the resources in November to take on a project. I was asked individually by Martin Rimm to review the legal research -- I said I could not ethically do that without seening what the footnotes referred to, and asked for a copy of the study. I have done this at least twice. How *kind* of you to offer me the chance to do it now. > I'm not sure what you find questionable about the methodology. The > study does not purport to draw conclusions about the 60,000+ BBS systems > that provide information about thousands of different topics. Ah, the narrowness of conclusions must explain the grandiose references, in the title and elsewhere, about the "information highway." > Instead, > it covers specifically those BBS systems which advertise themselves as > carrying "adult" materials, and then attempts to classify what sort of > adult materials they in fact carry. Nowhere does the study infer that > adult BBS are representative of all BBS; such a charge is a red herring. That's funny, but I was just on the phone with Marty Rimm -- he says your study tells us a lot about the Internet. If you think my problem has to do with whether it's being used to characterize *BBSs* as a whole, you do not understand my concerns. > The study does survey Usenet newsgroups and makes some statements about > the frequency with which sexually explicit images are found embedded in > Usenet messages. The study notes that newsgroups which have been found > to carry sexually oriented images account for no more than 3% of total > Usenet postings (and that the Usenet itself accounts for no more than > 12% of all Internet backbone traffic). It does note, however, that > relatively few Usenet newsgroups carry pictures regularly, and of those > that do (e.g. the alt.binaries.pictures.* hierarchy), 83% of the images > are pornographic by actual count. Right. I've got the study now, no thanks to your team's secretiveness and lack of adherence to scholarly standards of openness and peer review. > If you have any questions about the methodology, I will be pleased to > discuss them with you. Why not tell me about your background as a marketing researcher? That's an unusual sideline for someone who's an engineer by training. And why not explain why, when I asked for copies of the goddamned study months ago, you were too afraid to disclose it to me? --Mike ------------------- Message 4/12 From Marvin Sirbu Jun 27, 95 08:43:30 pm -0400 Date: Tue, 27 Jun 1995 20:43:30 -0400 (EDT) To: Mike Godwin Subject: Re: The CMU study Cc: Excerpts from mail: 27-Jun-95 Re: The CMU study by Mike Godwin@eff.org > EFF did not have the resources in November to take on a project. I was > asked individually by Martin Rimm to review the legal research -- I said I > could not ethically do that without seening what the footnotes referred > to, and asked for a copy of the study. When Marty told me he had asked you for comments on the footnotes I presumed he had sent you the study. I agree: you shouldn't be asked to comment on footnotes of a study you haven't seen. > > I have done this at least twice. How *kind* of you to offer me the chance > to do it now. > > > I'm not sure what you find questionable about the methodology. The > > study does not purport to draw conclusions about the 60,000+ BBS systems > > that provide information about thousands of different topics. > > Ah, the narrowness of conclusions must explain the grandiose references, > in the title and elsewhere, about the "information highway." > > > Instead, > > it covers specifically those BBS systems which advertise themselves as > > carrying "adult" materials, and then attempts to classify what sort of > > adult materials they in fact carry. Nowhere does the study infer that > > adult BBS are representative of all BBS; such a charge is a red herring. > > That's funny, but I was just on the phone with Marty Rimm -- he says your > study tells us a lot about the Internet. > > If you think my problem has to do with whether it's being used to > characterize *BBSs* as a whole, you do not understand my concerns. > > > The study does survey Usenet newsgroups and makes some statements about > > the frequency with which sexually explicit images are found embedded in > > Usenet messages. The study notes that newsgroups which have been found > > to carry sexually oriented images account for no more than 3% of total > > Usenet postings (and that the Usenet itself accounts for no more than > > 12% of all Internet backbone traffic). It does note, however, that > > relatively few Usenet newsgroups carry pictures regularly, and of those > > that do (e.g. the alt.binaries.pictures.* hierarchy), 83% of the images > > are pornographic by actual count. > > Right. I've got the study now, no thanks to your team's secretiveness and > lack of adherence to scholarly standards of openness and peer review. I'm not sure what standards you are referring to. Rather than putting out the study as a tech report without peer review, we submitted it to a refereed journal. The journal requested that we not distribute the study in advance of its publication. While the request seemed a bit unusual, Marty chose to accede to their wishes rather than incur the delay of resubmitting it to a different journal. At the time, the GLJ's position appeared to have the benefit of insuring that the study would not dribble out in pieces in unrefereed form, but only after having been thoroughly reviewed and edited. Personally, I am not happy that the journal then chose at the last minute to provide advance copies to selected media. I had understood the reason for the embargo to be an attempt to avoid having opinions of the research be formed on the basis of press releases, but rather to let the published study and the critiques printed in the same volume speak for themselves. In any case, having now been published in the refereed literature, I am sure that those who take issue with the study will follow the normal scholarly tradition of seeking to publish--either in the GLJ or in other scholarly journals--their critiques. > > > If you have any questions about the methodology, I will be pleased to > > discuss them with you. > > Why not tell me about your background as a marketing researcher? That's > an unusual sideline for someone who's an engineer by training. That strikes me as an unusual question? You might well ask what Herb Simon, who received his PhD in Political Science, knows about economics -- or computer science--or psychology, all fields in which his work has been judged on its own merits. Questioning the credentials of an advisor to an author is a poor substitute for examining the work itself. Moreover, if you now have the study you may note from the acknowledgements that it benefitted from collaboration by two faculty from the Graduate School of Industrial Administration (one of whom was in marketing but is now a Dean), a professor of statistics and an adjunct professor of psychology. And since you seem to think it is relevant, you may also wish to know that I hold a joint appointment in CMU's Graduate School of Industrial Administration, that I have an article in appearing in the current issue of Management Science, and one under review by the Journal of Marketing (neither of which deal with the present study). > > And why not explain why, when I asked for copies of the goddamned study > months ago, you were too afraid to disclose it to me? > As I noted above, the GLJ requested the embargo. Marvin