Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 22, 1994 TAG: 9411220107
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: PITTSBURGH LENGTH: Medium
In a case that has colleges taking another look at their legal responsibilities in cyberspace, Carnegie Mellon University has blocked access to bulletin boards that students can use to call up dirty pictures.
About 300 students protested the move earlier this month as an assault on academic freedom, and a public interest group for computer users suggested Carnegie Mellon overreacted.
``It is censorship,'' said Declan McCullagh, student body president. ``We have obscene books in our library, but the university isn't burning them. The university is burning cyberbooks.''
Carnegie Mellon officials said they fear the school can be prosecuted for distributing pornography to minors if it knowingly allows access to the pictures via the Internet to anyone under 18. Most of the school's students are adults, but children as young as elementary-school age also use the university's computer networks.
The dispute started when Martin Rimm, a research associate working on a study of pornography in cyberspace, used Carnegie Mellon computers to collect 917,000 dirty pictures, ranging from simple nudity to pictures of men and women having sex with animals. He tracked how often the pictures had been downloaded, or called up by a computer user - 6.4 million times.
When Rimm took his findings to the administration, Carnegie Mellon could no longer claim ignorance about the material, said Erwin Steinberg, vice provost for education.
``It's a difficult issue, an emotional issue,'' said William Arms, Carnegie Mellon's vice president for computing services. He received calls from six other schools after the problem came to light. ``People want to know which way to go,'' he said.
The school decided to block access to both written and photographic pornography. In the face of student opposition, Carnegie Mellon decided not to enforce the block on text. But X-rated pictures remain off limits.
``I have not accessed that material, but I feel that each person has a right to choose what kind of shoes, what kind of ties, what kind of information they want,'' said Cesar Rios, a graduate student in public management.
Freshman Jessica Rhodes disagreed. ``We sort of have to abide by the laws of the state,'' she said. ``There are other ways of getting pornography. If people want pornography that bad, they should go buy it themselves.''
Mike Godwin, a lawyer for the Washington-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the chances of Carnegie Mellon being held liable for carrying the pictures are extremely slim.
Richard Goldberg, an Allegheny County deputy district attorney, said it would be very difficult to prosecute Carnegie Mellon, for the same reason it is hard to prosecute other kinds of obscenity cases: The prosecutor would have to prove the material has no redeeming social value.
``Then you have the problem of where do you prosecute them? Where is it coming from?'' he said.
Goldberg was referring to the question of what community standards should be applied to obscenity-in-cyberspace cases. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that obscenity must be judged by local community standards. But cyberspace crosses such earthly boundaries.
In July, a California couple, Robert and Carleen Thomas, were convicted in federal court in Memphis, Tenn., for sending obscene pictures via interstate telephone lines. Although the verdict might have turned out differently in California, the court in the Bible Belt held that the pictures were obscene by the standards of the local community.
Jay Silberblatt, chairman of the civil litigation section of the Pittsburgh Bar Association, said it would be difficult to prosecute Carnegie Mellon because the university doesn't distribute the words and images itself.
``They simply buy the computer hardware that allows the distribution to take place,'' he said.
Carnegie Mellon set up a committee to study the controversy and make a recommendation to university President Robert Mehrabian.
A Carnegie Mellon neighbor, the University of Pittsburgh, hasn't decided whether to block access but is leaning toward the CMU position, said Kenneth Service, a Pitt spokesman.
by CNB