Journal has officially backed away from the study (although the university is forming a committee to look into it). Rimm's faculty adviser, Marvin Sirbu, a professor of engineering and public policy, continues to support him, saying the research has been deliberately mischaracterized by people with a political agenda. But Sirbu himself has been attacked by Carnegie Mellon colleagues for not properly supervising his student and for helping him secretly gather data about the pornography-viewing habits of the university's students. Meanwhile, some of the researchers listed as part of Rimm's "team" now say their involvement was minimal; at least one of them had asked Rimm to remove his name. Brian Reid Ph.D who is the director of the Network System Laboratory at Digital Equipment Corporation is the author of the network measurement software tools that Rimm used to compile his statistics. He had this to say about the Rimm study: "I have read a preprint of the Rimm study of pornography and I am so distressed by its lack scientific credibility that I don't even know where to begin critiquing it." As a rule, computer-wise citizens of cyberspace tend to be strong civil libertarians and First Amendment absolutists. Some clearly believe that Time, by publicizing the Rimm study, was contributing to a mood of popular hysteria, sparked by the Christian Coalition and other radical-right groups, that might lead to a crackdown. It would be a shame, however, if the damaging flaws in Rimm's study obscured the larger and more important debate about hard-core porn on the Internet. So as a response to the hysteria wide-sweeping legislational machinery was put into motion and Senators Exon and Coats drafted up the infamous Communications Decency Act. Section 502: "Whoever ... uses any interactive computer service to display in a manner available to a person under 18 years of age, any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image, or other communication that,...
