Cyberworld Monitor by Frank X. Sowa ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CMU's Cyberporn Study: "Rimm Job" Or Net-Control Conspiracy? Marvin A. Sirbu, Jr., is a well-known researcher in Washington D.C. He has been called to testify on telecommunications issues many times. He provided assistance on the Senate version of the Telecommunications Reform Act of 1995, to which the Exon Amendment was added. Sirbu, a Carnegie Mellon University faculty member, is an internationally-renowned expert on telecommunications policy, telecommunications and online network regulatory policy research. Sirbu is one of the leading analysts of the impact of AT&T's divestiture, and has been a strong advocate for shaping government regulation to favor the Regional Bells. Sirbu is the chairman of CMU's Information Networking Institute, which was set up with a single-source grant from Bellcore - the research lab of the combined Regional Bells - "to develop programs and government policy to meet some of their specific needs with respect to information networking education." David Banks is a well-known associate professor of statistics at CMU. Banks' specialty is nonparametric and Bayesian inference, but he has "an interest in almost any application of statistics for data analysis." In recent years, he and former Mellon Bank chief economist Jake Haulk have formed a "Conservative Government Policy Study Group" where Banks moonlights as an independent consultant. The group's purpose is "to review government and economic policy issues from a conservative viewpoint." Most recently, they concluded an economic study on what impact would be felt by the City of Pittsburgh if the Pirates' new owners moved the team out of town. A few months ago, no one would have questioned the scholarly methodologies of Sirbu and Banks. They were seen as eminent experts in their respective fields. But that was before they became faculty advisors to a project begun by CMU staff researcher Martin (Marty) Rimm, then a 29-year-old undergraduate at CMU. Banks, Sirbu and Rimm are now under investigation by a three-member CMU faculty committee to examine whether ethical and academic guidelines were breached. THE CYBERPORN STUDY Near the end of 1994, an obtuse study performed by Rimm under the guidance of Sirbu and Banks made local headlines. Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway was presented as scholarly research to the faculty of Carnegie Mellon. It contained enough statistical analysis (which Banks reviewed before its presentation) that university officials decided to search for ways to filter access to the objectionable "pornographic material" from CMU's Internet-backbone-linked computer system. CMU has since established a number of filtering concepts, some of which are available for purchase through the university's technology transfer center. CMU students objected. They felt that monitoring what they were looking at on the Internet and red-lining certain parts of USENET was an invasion of their privacy and a violation of their civil rights. Some called the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union to join the foray. Soon the legal issues of restricting student access to the Internet became prominent stories in a number of national publications, wire services, and network news departments. The sensational value of such a "pornography story" and the "Carnegie Mellon Cyberporn Study" (as it came to called) definitely had ratings appeal. The study stated that 83.5 percent of the images in USENET newsgroups are "explicit materials and child pornography," and that such areas were heavily frequented by computer users - many of whom were under 21. Rimm later stated that his user statistics were based on an unannounced survey of CMU's user records of nearly 3,000 students, staff, faculty, and faculty children that was conducted by Rimm, Sirbu, Banks and CMU research assistants. Rimm's personal observations of over 10,000 explicit computer images were also cited. Soon Rimm found himself in the international limelight. Even though his attempts to be published in scholarly journals that deal with the subject matter were rejected, the legal ramifications of CMU's actions attracted the Georgetown Law Journal, which published the 85-page report. Within weeks, Rimm was cited by Ted Koppel on his Nightline Show. He made all three network television prime time newscasts and was front-page material for 136 of America's largest newspapers. Ultimately Time Magazine (who knows that sex-appeal brings in readership more than anything else) opted for a cover story with sleazy man-rapes-computer pictures dreamt up by Time's editors. The "Carnegie Mellon Cyberporn Study" was big news. It even made the international market as a headliner in London, Stockholm and Paris. The media blitz surrounding the much-touted study made other scholars question its validity. SCHOLARS CRITICIZE THE STUDY Two professors at Vanderbilt University, Donna Hoffman and Thomas Novak, published their own study which was conducted with a statistical base similar to the CMU study. Hoffman and Novak found that explicit materials in USENET newsgroups amounted to less than one-half of one percent of all traffic. They said the CMU study grossly exaggerated the extent of pornography on the Internet, and in their critique questioned the "validity techniques and the motives" of the CMU study. In other words, Rimm's study, conducted under the supervision and control of well-renowned policy researchers and faculty advisors Sirbu and Banks, was an outright and poorly-designed sham. ENTER THE EXON AMENDMENT In the meantime, Jim Exon, a Senator from Nebraska who says he doesn't use the Internet himself, also caught wind of the report through Christian Coalition and Anti-Pornography groups (his financial supporters), who had been given copies of the Rimm report. These groups went ballistic with the study. According to Dorn Checkley of the Pittsburgh Coalition Against Pornography, they "began monitoring the Internet and the adult bulletin boards nationwide, to identify which services contain any of the sexual materials in question, and to report them to the proper authorities." But, as of yet, little could be done legally, because there was no specific law to deal with this crisis. It has always been a gray area of the law to establish, "What is obscene?" Senator Exon became the point-man in a move to get some laws on the books regarding online pornography. Exon made the Carnegie Mellon Cyberporn Study, with the names of well-known CMU government telecommunications policy researchers on the cover, the cornerstone of his arguments to save his beleagured Communications Decency Act Amendment. Finally, in a last-ditched effort, he had a friend download about 1,000 pictures from various BBS services and the Internet. He bound these in a blue 3-ring binder and hand carried it from desk to desk in the Senate chambers in the days before the vote, so that all the Senators could peruse for themselves what is "really out there" in cyberspace. Senate passed the Exon Amendment 84-16. After the successful vote, Exon's backers invited Rimm to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee in July at a hearing on "kids and computer porn," to "help them put a handle on the horrific problem of online pornography." But about then, scrutiny of Rimm's past by Internet users began to surface and the hoax began to unwind. Sirbu continues to support Rimm and his methodologies, citing "people with a political agenda" as the culprits. Nevertheless, the politically correct Senate Judicial Committee withdrew the offer for Rimm to appear at the hearings, and CMU has begun to take a harsher look at Sirbu, Banks and Rimm. CMU INVESTIGATING RIMM, BANKS AND SIRBU The Internet became a site to find out all kinds of interesting information about Rimm. It appears that in 1981 Rimm, then a 16-year-old in Atlantic City, purported to show that 64% of his school's students had illegally and illicitly gambled at the city's casinos. In that effort Rimm sought maximum publicity as well. The survey was used by the New Jersey legislature to support a move to raise the gambling age from 18 to 21. All the while, the casinos strongly criticized the study as superficial and grossly inaccurate. Rimm also authored two books. His novel American Playground concerned experiences in and around casinos, explicitly fantasizing some of the lustier aspects of the trade. The Pornographer's Handbook: How to Exploit Women, Dupe Men & Make Lots of Money, was a step-by-step handbook offering practical advice on how to effectively market pornographic images. CONSEQUENCES OF BAD STATISTICS The Exon Amendment is now in committee again for resolution. That's scary. The amendment will come out of committee and be voted upon, and the public will never get to see what the final version says until it is published. At CMU, the faculty review board has begun its examination of how the cyberporn study came into being. The private internal review board does not expect to publicize its findings. Rimm, in a recently published Sue Zeidler article in Pittsburgh's City Paper, calls the review a "witchhunt" to discredit him. He said, "I'm astonished that those who collected the data are being attacked rather than those who peddle it." I approached Rimm to comment for this article, but he has now hired an attorney and has been advised not to discuss the study in any way with the public. Sirbu and Banks were also unavailable for comment. Which leads me to ask some pertinent questions about the Carnegie Mellon study: Were there hidden motives in getting the report widely circulated and published? Since undergraduates rarely have the freedom to act on such research studies entirely without faculty direction, did Sirbu's ties to Bellcore, and the Regional Bells play any role in the outcome? Certainly, the Baby Bells who are trying to control the legislation of the Information Superhighway would find it beneficial if smaller online players were forced by regulation and liabilities out of the market. Did Banks' ties to a Conservative Policy Group shape the way he looked at Rimm's statistics? Did CMU's ability to design "porno" filters and sell patent rights have anything to do with the publicity its student's report received? Was Rimm a simple undergraduate researcher following faculty orders and doing what he was told? Or did Rimm seek self-aggrandizement, which he got through wide release of the study? Did he act alone, or was it, as he defends, a joint project in conjunction with his and his faculty advisors every step of the way? Who introduced Rimm's study to the Senate during the Telecommunica-tions Deregulation Act hearings, so it could become the cornerstone of the Exon Amendment? What were Rimm's motives? Did Rimm expect to increase the value of his Pornographer's Handbook with the results of the study and its name recognition? Maybe now that the summer of pornography hearings has ended, the Senate can begin reconvening hearings to get to the bottom of this sham perpetrated at a highly respected university? OTHER PERSPECTIVES OF PORN ON THE NET Professors Donna Hoffman and Thomas Novak have published their detailed critique of "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway" at http://www2000.ogsm.vander bilt.edu/rimm.cgi Their critique of Time magazine's article can be found at http://www2000.ogsm.vander bilt.edu/dewitt.cgi USENET READERSHIP STATISTICS - JUNE 1995: SEX-RELATED NEWSGROUPS Mr. Brian Reid of mailto: reid@decwrl.dec.com publishes a formidable monthly analysis of USENET traffic in the newsgroups news.lst, news.groups and news.admin.misc under the subject header USENET READERSHIP. While it is a notable effort, a few caveats are in order lest someone wave this report at Congress as "factual": Some 351 Internet sites which receive USENET participated in the survey. The total population of sites which receive USENET is counted in the millions, so this sample may well be statistically unrepresentative of the entire population. Also, the survey monitored only 1345 newsgroups out of the estimated 20,000-plus that are available worldwide. Finally, the participating sites volunteered for Reid's project, thereby skewing the sample. Reid's estimates of worldwide readership should be taken with grains of rock salt; his methodology, like Rimm's, has received its share of criticism. Cautions aside, here are selected statistics on The 40 Most Popular News Groups in Reid's sample. (p.68) Note that alt.sex.sto ries, ranked number two out of 1345 newsgroups, was patronized by 3.0% of all users who read the sampled groups. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 40 MOST POPULAR USENET NEWSGROUPS (From Brian Reid's USENET READERSHIP report for June, 1995) Popularity by Estimated total number of readers worldwide Estimated total number of people who read the group, worldwide. Actual number of readers in sampled population Propagation: how many sites receive this group at all Recent traffic (messages per month) Recent traffic (megabytes per month) Share: % of newsrders who read this group. 1 1413626 3270 90% 41 0.6 5.9 news.announce.newusers 2 710271 1643 51% 7737 47.1 3.0% alt.sex.stories 3 481584 1114 56% 4092 5.4 2.0% alt.tv.simpsons 4 473802 1096 35% 3436 20.0 2.0% alt.sex.voyeurism 5 459104 1062 83% 4357 6.6 1.9% comp.lang.c 6 450890 1043 36% 3407 13.8 1.9% alt.sex.exhibitionism 7 450026 1041 80% 33891 50.4 1.9% misc.jobs.offered 8 400311 926 37% 3282 79.5 1.7% alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.blondes 9 351461 813 42% 8182 131.7 1.5% alt.binaries.pictures.supermodels 10 340653 788 29% 2 0.0 1.4% alt.sex.breasts 11 339789 786 40% 5124 36.9 1.4% alt.sex.pictures 12 328116 759 49% 2833 2.2 1.4% alt.sex.wizards 13 324658 751 72% 32 0.1 1.4% rec.arts.startrek.info 14 320335 741 46% - - 1.3% alt.sex.wantedalt.sex.wizards 15 309095 715 81% 5475 7.3 1.3% comp.lang.c++ 16 308231 713 71% 5097 7.4 1.3% rec.arts.startrek.current 17 303908 703 88% 155 1.6 1.3% news.announce.newgroups 18 293100 678 60% 3325 2.9 1.2% alt.internet.services 19 292235 676 50% 2724 100.6 1.2% alt.binaries.pictures.misc 20 290074 671 56% 10772 11.5 1.2% alt.fan.rush-limbaugh 21 287048 664 73% 606 2.0 1.2% rec.food.recipes 22 278834 645 76% 130 0.4 1.2% comp.os.linux.announce 23 277105 641 33% 4817 61.8 1.2% alt.sex.pictures.female 24 270620 626 76% 16345 23.0 1.1% misc.jobs.contract 25 270620 626 47% 1273 1.1 1.1% alt.sex.motss 26 260245 602 43% 1186 2.8 1.1% alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.d 27 255490 591 58% 1037 1.7 1.1% alt.dcom.telecom 28 251167 581 62% 7623 9.4 1.1% alt.folklore.urban 29 247276 572 73% 6536 9.6 1.0% rec.arts.movies 30 243818 564 55% 921 2.4 1.0% alt.binaries.pictures.d 31 242521 561 71% 7953 10.6 1.0% soc.singles 32 241656 559 49% 2531 74.0 1.0% alt.binaries.pictures.utilities 33 236036 546 58% 4042 6.7 1.0% alt.romance 34 228687 529 60% 1385 2.0 1.0% alt.bbs.internet 35 228255 528 73% 5945 7.5 1.0% comp.os.linux.misc 36 217015 502 70% 613 0.3 0.9% comp.answers 37 216583 501 23% 6736 204.8 0.9% alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.amateur.female 38 214421 496 77% 6193 8.8 0.9% comp.os.ms-windows.misc 39 213124 493 42% 2002 21.3 0.9% alt.pantyhose 40 211395 489 70% 285 1.6 0.9% alt.sources ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editor: Jack Rickard - Volume IX: Issue 10 - ISSN:1054-2760 - October 1995 Copyright 1995 Jack Rickard - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED [Image]Fable Of Contents ---------------------------------18742707225520--