Mike Godwin <mnemonic () eff org> on Rimm for Hot Wired part 1 of 3

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Time Waited For No One
(Or At Least Not For Me)


Why I Picked A Fight With The Newsmagazine That Fed
The Great Internet Sex Panic




Article for Hotwired
By Mike Godwin
About 8000 words
[Count includes linkable material, set
 off with standing lines of hyphens.]


Copyright Mike Godwin, 1995




I don't know when it was that I first heard the name "Martin Rimm." I
first *remember* hearing it last fall, when I got involved in the
censorship battle at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. As
censorship battles at universities go, the CMU fight didn't seem terribly
different -- it followed the normal pattern: administrators discover that,
horrors, there is sexual content on the Internet, and, in a combination of
disapproval and fear of publicity, they leap into a crackdown, often
cloaking their censorship motives in terms of fear of legal liability.


But there were two aspects of the case that made it a bit different. The
first was CMU's prominence as a networked university -- in its ubiquity of
connections to the Internet and its plethora of computer resources freely
available to its students, CMU is second only to MIT (and many at Carnegie
Mellon would claim that it's MIT who's in second-place).


The second was that, in this case, the triggering event seemed to be an
undergraduate research project on, of all things, pornography on the Net.
Based on images he'd encountered on Usenet, and a superficial
understanding of the law of obscenity, Rimm was said by my sources at CMU
to have informed the administration that their systems were carrying
material likely to be found obscene. Furthermore, he was reported to have
told them, now that they knew about the material, they couldn't claim a
standard defense in obscenity cases: that administration lacked "scienter"
(a legal term meaning something like "guilty knowledge"). Since CMU had
been put on notice, I was told by more than one source, it had to act. And
so CMU's decided to announce it was cutting all alt.sex.* newsgroups and
most of the alt.binaries.* newsgroups as well.


The story of the CMU censorship debate has been told in many places, but
only Time magazine's report of the story focused on Rimm's alleged role in
triggering the abortive attempt at summary censorship. It was a role whose
details, at least, he continues to dispute: in email to me, he took pains
to tell me he opposed the action CMU had taken, and he urged that we meet
when I visited CMU to attend a freedom-of-speech rally. He told me we'd
corresponded in the past -- I didn't remember it, but, then, with the
volume of email I handle, it was certainly possible we'd had prior
contact.


------------------


Date: Tue,  8 Nov 1994 09:10:05 -0500 (EST) From: Martin Rimm
<mr6e+ () andrew cmu edu> To: mnemonic () eff org Subject: CMU Porn Study Cc:
Martin Rimm <mr6e+ () andrew cmu edu> Status: RO


As you may recall, I corresponded with you a number of times regarding a
study entitled, "Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway,"
of which I am the principal investigator. The study, while not distributed
or read by anyone outside of the research team, has occasionally (and
incorrectly) been invoked as a reason for the ban of the .sex hierarchy.


Given that you will be on campus tomorrow, there are two things I would
like to discuss with you. First, I would appreciate an independent check
of our legal footnotes, which to some extent are based on your postings
and articles. Second, our preliminary data indicate that there are no
significant differences among individuals in communities across the
country in what kinds of erotic materials, including pornography (visual
and verbal) and obscenity, they find of interest. In our experiment we
began by assuming that there were indeed community standards which
differed across communities - that is, that some communities of
individuals had no tolerance for or interest in say, pictures of
heterosexual anal intercouse.  We then began collecting data to allow the
evaluation of the ~null hypothesis~ - that is, that there are no
differences.  Our conclusions are very clear: there are no differences
when communities are defined by telephone area codes. This there are no
~community standards~on which communities differ.


We would like to refine our findings by continued data collection and
analysis. We have examined only one kind of erotic material - pictures
about anal intercourse - and would like to look at other interests such as
pedophilia, more kinds of paraphilias, and so on. We have examined only
areas of the country (by telephone area codes) and want to consider other
ways of structuring the data to compare major sections of the country,
states, major metropolitan areas, etc.


Please let me know if and when we can meet.


Martin


-------------------


Although I posted email to Rimm telling him where I'd be during my visit
to CMU, he made no contact with me during my visit, which centered on my
meeting privately with CMU administrators, then my giving a speech at the
student rally. (An excerpted version of my speech was later published in
Wired.)


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.


----------------


[This is a draft of the ABSTRACT of the Martin Rimm study.]


      As Americans become increasingly computer literate, they are
discovering  an unusual and exploding repertoire of sexually explicit
imagery on the  Usenet and on "adult" computer bulletin board services
(BBS). Every time  they log on, their transactions assist pornographers in
compiling  databases of information about their buying habits and sexual
tastes.  The more sophisticated computer pornographers are using these
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 among the most lucrative. They are
using  the Usenet to advertise their products, and maintaining detailed
records  of which images are downloaded most frequently.
      Modem technology also enables researchers, for the first time, to
use  computers to acquire vast amounts of information about the
distribution  and consumption of pornography on a scale hundreds of times
larger than  previously established methods. Because BBS pornographers
rely primarily  upon verbal descriptions to market their images,
researchers can develop  computer programs that classify these
descriptions according to category  (e.g. oral, anal, vaginal,
sadomasochism, etc.). The descriptions may be  sorted by frequency of
downloads (consumer demand), size, and the date  on which each image was
first posted onto the bulletin boards. What is  even more useful, the data
can be easily reanalyzed under many different  sets of definitions and
assumptions. This multidimensional  characteristic of digital pornography
enables researchers to provide  unbiased information to those involved in
the heated public policy  debate over pornography.
      The research team at Carnegie Mellon University has undertaken the
first systematic study of pornography on the Information Superhighway.
The study is also the first ever - whether  print media or electronic -
to track detailed purchasing habits of  consumers of sexually explicit
materials. All prior studies have assumed that those surveyed about  their
sexual tastes would offer honest replies, while this study focuses
entirely upon what people actually consume, not what they say they
consume. This proved particularly important when analyzing such taboo
imagery as incest, bestiality, coprophilia,  urophilia, and torture.
      All available pornographic images from five popular Usenet boards
were  downloaded over a six month period. In addition, descriptive
listings  were obtained from 68 commercial "adult" BBS located in 32
states. These  lists described 450,620 pornographic images, animations,
and text files  which had been downloaded by consumers 6,432,297 times,
from 35 "adult"  BBS; (approximately) 75,000 for which only partial
download information  was available, from six "adult" BBS; and another
391,790 for which no  consumer download information was available, from 27
"adult" BBS.  Finally, approximately 10,000 actual images were randomly
downloaded or  obtained via the Usenet or CD-ROM. These were used to
verify the  accuracy of the written descriptions provided in the listings.


      This article analyzes only the 450,620 images and descriptions for
which complete download information was available. A survey of the
remaining images and descriptions suggests no substantive differences
between the two datasets. At least 36% of the images studied were
identified as having been distributed by two or more "adult" BBS. These
"duplicates" enable researchers to compare how identical imagery is
consumed on commercial BBS in different regions of the country.
      Part II of the study outlines the methods used to obtain and analyze
the data gathered. Two important aspects of reliability and validity  were
carefully considered: 1) How well do the verbal descriptions  correspond
to the Carnegie Mellon study's categories? and 2) How well do  the verbal
descriptions marketed by pornographers correspond to the  actual images?
Part III.A addresses three issues concerning pornography  on the Usenet:
1) the origins of such imagery; 2) the percentage of all  images available
on the Usenet that are pornographic on any given day;  3) the popularity
of pornographic boards in comparison to  non-pornographic boards. Part
III.B comprises the major portion of this  study. It examines 1) the image
portfolio and marketing strategies of  the Amateur Action BBS; 2) the
concentration of market leaders among  "adult" BBS; 3) the availability
and demand for hard-core, soft-core,  paraphilic and pedophile imagery; 4)
market forces common to all "adult"  BBS. Part IV presents a more informal
discussion of the data, including  a) the appeal of digital pornography;
b) the relationship between images  and the words that describe them; c)
the wide circulation of paraphilic  imagery; d) the importance of
descriptive lists; e) the sophistication  of pornographers. Part V offers
a summary of the significant findings of  this study; Part VI offers
suggestions for further research. Appendix A  lists the categories of
imagery according to the Dietz-Sears and  Carnegie Mellon models. Appendix
B offers the reader an indication of  the power of the linguistic parsing
software developed for this study.  Appendix C presents the data in the
form of pie charts, bar graphs, and  scatterplots.
      It is assumed that the reader has a basic understanding of the
Usenet  and BBS. Only the technical aspects of BBS which relate to
pornography  will be explained in detail.




-----------


It was the kind of scientific abstract that, for me, raised a lot of
questions. These questions troubled me not because I'm a lawyer concerned
with free speech on the Net so much as because--once upon a time--I had
planned to be a research psychologist and had devoted serious time to
studying research methodology and statistics. I'd even managed to win a
graduate fellowship to pursue a doctorate in the University of Texas at
Austin's experimental-psych program; it was then I discovered that,
although I liked *knowing* science, I didn't much like *doing* it. So I
altered my plans for graduate study -- first to English literature, and
then, after a few years' as a journalist, computer consultant, and slacker
in Austin, to law.


But even with all the changes in plans, I never lost my head for math or
for method -- which turned out to be useful when I was reporting science
stories. And it was my psych-research alarm bells, not my legal ones, that
Rimm's abstract first set off.


You see, even in his draft abstract Rimm was making statements that he
could not possibly support. "Every time [users] log on, their transactions
assist pornographers in compiling databases of information about their
buying habits and sexual tastes," he'd written. It was the kind of
absolute statement that no responsible researcher dealing with human
behavior would ever make -- given the range and unpredictability of human
behavior, credible researchers of psych and social-science phenomena will
qualify both their hypotheses and their conclusions. The abstract was
chock-full of categorical generalizations like the one I quote here --
generalizations that, given the limits on the types of data Rimm purported
to be studying, were wholly inappropriate.


And, as it happens, I knew that many of his statements were also flat
wrong. In the course of my work, I'm regularly in contact with operators
of adult BBSs (they often have questions about obscenity law, and they
hope to stay on the right side of legality). The claim that they're
refining their offerings of sexual material to focus on what Rimm asserts
to be a more "lucrative market" in what he charmingly calls "paraphilias"
flew in the face of what I'd been hearing from the BBS sysops who called
me for advice, or whom I met at conventions like One BBSCon. Those sysops
wanted to minimize the risk of angering their communities -- especially
their local law-enforcement agencies -- but the strategies Rimm was
categorically attributing to them would *increase* their legal risks.


There were other potential methodological problems: the reliance on verbal
*descriptions* of the images to characterize them, the apparent conflation
of Usenet and BBS data, the conflation of "download" and "consume." Sure,
it was possible that Rimm might advance, in his discussion of his
methodology, reasonable explanations for his peculiar approach, but even
the most rigorous theoretical framework he could advance would not leave
him in the position of generalizing with the certainty to which he was
prone in the abstract. And, given what I knew about Usenet and the
difficulty of measuring user behavior there (I've long followed the
pioneering research of Brian Reid at DEC), Rimm's implication that he
might be able to determine "the percentage of all  images available on the
Usenet that are pornographic on any given day" was sheerest fantasy.


Nor were these the only problems I had with the abstract. But the biggest
howler was this one: "The research team at Carnegie Mellon University has
undertaken the first systematic study of pornography on the Information
Superhighway. " Even from the abstract, it was apparent that the bulk of
Rimm's data came from 68 "adult" BBSs -- to generalize from commercial
porn BBSs to "the Information Superhighway" would be like generalizing
from Time Square adult bookstores to "the print medium."


There were other weirdnesses that, strictly speaking, were neither factual
nor methodological. Like Rimm's evident fascination with types of porn
that are, uh, not mainstream. (I was about to say "off the beaten track,"
but I just remembered Rimm's expressed interest in material featuring
sadomasochism.) It was hard to avoid the conclusion that Rimm was, at
best, an odd duck, and that he had some sort of agenda.


But it wasn't an agenda I was particularly worried about -- given the
amateurishness of his abstract, I was certain the Rimm paper would never
come to anything. I figured that, once the CMU censorship fracas died
down, the Rimm research would sink, like most undergraduate research
projects, into oblivion. (Look, no one can be right all the time!) So I
read the occasional note I received from Rimm over the next few months
with benign tolerance. In his subsequent email Rimm renewed his request
that I review his legal footnotes -- he even sent me the text of the
footnotes for my convenience. But even if I'd had the time to check on
someone else's legal research (doing the job right would require many