LEVEL 1 - 86 OF 119 STORIES Copyright 1995 Newsday, Inc. Newsday June 27, 1995, Tuesday, NASSAU AND SUFFOLK EDITION SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 8 LENGTH: 858 words HEADLINE: Porn a Profit Center in Cyberspace BYLINE: By Lou Dolinar. STAFF WRITER. Robert White contributed to this story. BODY: Online pornography is popular, profit-driven and ubiquitous, encompassing an unusual, wide-ranging repertoire that includes everything from pedophilia and bestiality to pursuits seemingly more appropriate for the bathroom, an exhaustive new study says. Many of those images, according to lead researcher Martin Rimm, are originally posted on the Internet by pornographers who run pay-as-you go bulletin board services - essentially using the Internet as a sophisticated Newsday, June 27, 1995 advertising and marketing vehicle to lure new customers to their systems. The report, funded by Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, is drawing interest in Washington, D.C., where Congress is wrangling over what if anything to do about cyberporn when it deregulates the telecommunications industry. Researchers yesterday suggested their study should have influence as the first systematic look at pornography on the Information Superhighway, and as the only study on pornography - electronic or published - that focuses on what people actually consume, not what they tell researchers they consume. The study is scheduled to be published next week in the Georgetown Law Review, but advance galleys were released to the press yesterday. It found that about 20 percent of all communications by volume and 83 percent of all photos downloaded from Internet's Usenet usegroups were sexual in nature. Usenet constitutes about 11 percent of Internet traffic. Additionally, the researchers identified individual consumers in more than 2,000 cities in all 50 states, and 40 countries worldwide. The 18-month study is based on an analysis of 450,620 images, animations and text files which had been downloaded from Usenet groups and "adult" bulletin board services about 6.4 million times. Rimm said the study was created to Newsday, June 27, 1995 examine the relationship between pay-for-porn bulletin board services - some of which earn their operators more than $ 1 million per year - and the popular, but free, Usenet groups that specialize in sexually explicit topics with names like alt.sex.bondage. The study found that just two commercial bulletin board services accounted for 36 percent of the sexually explicit photos found embedded in Usenet news groups over 18 months. In addition, the study said, "The more sophisticated computer pornographers are using databases to develop mathematical models to determine which images they should try to market aggressively. They are paying close attention to all forms of paraphilia, including pedophilic, bestiality, and urophilic images, believing these markets to be the most lucrative." Mike Goodwin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in Washington, D.C.,, which opposes all forms of censorship on the Internet, said yesterday that 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 online service from Newsday, June 27, 1995 that study." But Catharine MacKinnon, a professor of law at the University of Michigan, called the report an important one, because it notes the amount of pornography that is related to sadomasochism. "The greatest achievement of the Carnegie Mellon study lies in simply noticing what is there," MacKinnon said. "The shift . . . from books and videos to cyberspace has had the effect of revealing to simple empirical documentation that what is done to women in pornography is . . . an on-going social atrocity. "Computer networks are contributing significantly to abuse of women and children by facilitating access to such pornography, expanding its reach," she added. The study pointed out that more 98 percent of computer users on sexually oriented bulletin board services are male, and that many of the remaining users are women paid to be on the service. Pat Trueman, a deputy attorney general in the Bush administration and spokesman for the American Family Association, said the report would increase pressure on Congress to do something about cyberporn. Newsday, June 27, 1995 "It is important that a respectable source without an ax to grind has pointed out the prevalence of pornography there," he said. However, Carlin Meyer, a professor at New York Law School, said, "It would be a tremedous waste if the Carnegie Study were used as fodder for a futile but damaging effort at cybercensorship instead of as support for wider and more democratic access to the open, informal, and anonymous and yet public world of the Internet." Rimm, meanwhile, said the report's origins were apolitical: He wanted to study how business could use the Internet to sell its wares, hence the title, "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway." "The pornographers were the first to succeed in marketing products online," Rimm said. "The main point is that the Internet and public computer networks are being used by pornographers as an advertising medium. As soon as protocols become available and charging and billing procedures are in place, the pornography on computer networks may not just be for advertising but for commerce too." LANGUAGE: ENGLISH Newsday, June 27, 1995 LOAD-DATE: June 27, 1995