Study Inflates On-line Porn Numbers

Helping kids steer clear of inappropriate material on the Internet is a legitimate concern for educators, but this summer, vocal lawmakers in Congress and a sensational Time magazine cover story helped bring an element of hysteria to this issue.

In late June, the U.S. Senate voted to outlaw obscenity and indecency on the Internet by passing the Communications Decency Act in a frenzy of publicity about pornography in cyberspace.

Republican Dan Coats of Indiana, one of the supporters of the bill, decried the Internet's "wild frontier of degraded and degrading pornography . . . available to every child with a computer and modem."

As proof of the depth of the Internet's depravity, senators pointed to findings of a new study made public in Time's July 3 cover story. The study, conducted by an undergraduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, purported to have found scientific evidence that the "information superhighway" is awash in cyberporn.

One of the study's most publicized findings: that 83.5 percent of all images posted on the Internet's distributed conferencing system known as USENET are pornographic.

The Carnegie-Mellon study might have helped pass the Communications Decency Act, but it didn't pass muster with a large number of academics and seasoned Internet experts, who attacked the credibility of the research in broadsides published on the Internet's World Wide Web.

The critics charged that the study -- primarily an analysis of the written descriptions of images available on for-profit adult bulletin board systems -- lacked evidence to support the generalization of its findings to the Internet. The study was rife with methodological errors and misrepresentations, the critics claimed.

The author of Time's cover story, Philip Elmer-Dewitt, now concedes he erred in not reporting that questions had been raised about the survey. He also says he regrets obfuscating the distinctions between adult bulletin boards and the Internet, the Associated Press reports.

So, is the Internet chock-full of pornography or isn't it? Clearly not. Electronic School counted the USENET newsgroups devoted to sexually explicit discussions and images -- located in the alt.sex.* and alt.binaries.* hierarchies -- and found that they total less than 1.5 percent of the more than 12,000 newsgroups available on USENET.

In fact, the Carnegie-Mellon study itself points out that, by byte count, just "2.5 percent of total Internet backbone traffic ... is associated with USENET newsgroups containing pornographic imagery." And once found, it takes determined effort and quite a bit of technical expertise to decode those images into viewable form.

The Carnegie-Mellon study's findings regarding the prevalence of pornography on the World Wide Web -- a much more accessible Internet medium -- are even more underwhelming. Out of a total of 11,576 Web sites in December 1994, the study's author found just nine -- 0.08 percent -- containing pornographic material.

The plain fact is, the overwhelming majority of information on the Internet is squeaky clean. Nonetheless, many educators say they want to be able to block out inappropriate content from reaching students.

Two software products that attempt to do just that -- SurfWatch and CYBERsitter -- already are on the market. But Internet experts warn that software is no substitute for old-fashioned education and adult guidance, because Internet-savvy kids can defeat these filters easily.

"Most of those systems to limit access are not foolproof," says Denis Newman, director of the education networks group at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (BBN). "Students who are determined to do it will find ways to defeat them. It's just like a student could hop on a city bus and go downtown to an X-rated movie theater, even though the school bus doesn't go there."

In fact, many Internet-using educators say dealing with smut on the Net is no different than dealing with a student who brings an issue of Playboy to class.

"We've had schoolkids using the World Wide Web since it was first available, and we've never once had a problem with pornography," says Stephen E. Collins, a network specialist at the University of Minnesota College of Education. "That isn't to say such stuff isn't out there. It's just that we made sure our kids understood responsible behavior."

Worrying about pornography misses the point, Collins warns: "The biggest danger to children on the Internet is that fearmongers will spoil the tremendous educational potential of the Net."

(The latest information about the debate surrounding the Carnegie-Mellon study and the Time cover story can be found at the Cyberporn Debate web site.)