My reply (quoted in full):

Harold: 

Herewith my comments on some of aspects of your response - I have not
attempted a full paragraph-by-paragraph commentary.

>I did not appreciate your chosen method of comment on my talk nor its
>juxtaposition with, for example, the comment that I once did some good
>work. I took this more as a patronising slur on me rather than as
>supporting your case, though you may not have meant it as such.

I did not. I indicated that all my previous experience of your work - though
not recent - was favourable. This was meant to put my criticism in a proper
perspective, not to be patronising. (Incidentally, I thought long and hard as
to whether to copy my original message to CPHC, and took the advice of a
senior colleague whose judgment I trust before doing so.)

>You have since anonymously copied email originally sent to you for me to
>read.

I did not feel I had the right to pass on the names of the senders.

>I would rather have had an open discussion than one with fragments of
>comments from third parties. (When I have been invited onto TV and radio,
>as I have been, I have asked the programmes to invite you.) Normally open
>discussion would enable all those concerned to search for balanced, mature
>views, leading to action as appropriate. It would be a great shame to avoid
>such discussion now when the future is still in our hands.

I am not against open discussion of the problem of Internet Pornography.
However, as you will have seen in my reply to Peter Ladkin, my preference is
to keep the discussion of your talk and its consequences within the profession
at present. (The tenor of the last few days media coverage is far from
conducive to a balanced amture discussion.)

>I have taken the
>liberty of copying this email to colleagues some of whom I know have been
>in correspondence with you; you are free to copy this email further afield
>if you wish.

I will include your message in its entirety in the summary I am preparing of
my correspondence on this matter.

>On a personal level, I am sorry you found my factual talk so upsetting and
>that you were worried that it might be unconstructively linked by your
>local newspaper to the activities of your University Computing Services. Do
>keep me informed. You also said in your posting that Newcastle's facilities
>were organised "at *very* short notice." Why that might be is nothing to do
>with me, I'm afraid.

Luckily, to the best of my knowledge, the particular linking that I was
concerned about has not happened, though the tenor of many of the newspaper
articles is as bad as I feared. (The comment about short notice was merely
factual - and not meant to indicate any link to you.)

>You said [you] felt that [my] overall talk was extremely unbalanced and
>sensational
>
>It was a talk about the topic, no more no less. If you had arrived at the
>beginning of the session you might have understood the context a little
>better.

I apologize for missing the beginning. (I did arrive in time at the lecture
room where your talk was originally advertised to be given.)

>I started by saying computer science was exciting because it was an area
>that brought together maths, science, technology and very real social
>issues, that need solving by members of the audience and people like them.
>I then described some of those issues. Had I not somewhat lost my way due
>to interruptions and a rather grotty Newcastle University OHP nor had my
>hands covered in glue from an extension lead, I might have had more time
>and energy to devote to the interesting technological ideas such as public
>key encryption. Instead, you talked a lot about Rimm's study. Some of what
>you said in the lecture was news to me (I had not been on the Internet for
>a couple of weeks), though I have not been able to substantiate all that
>you claimed even now. Maybe you got carried away?

I have since provided you with what I would have thought were adequate leads
to information about the Rimm study, or travesty, as I would term it. My hope
was that this would alert you not just to the study's inadequacies, but also
how the way it was publicised led to what most accept were extremely counter-
productive actions by some US politicians.

>The talk itself is, I hope both of us would agree, of less concern than the
>issues raised, including the media's portrayal of the issues.

The issues raised, which I accept are serious, are not in the main new ones,
and I do not think that their resolution is helped by the way you chose to
portray them - and hence the consequential media coverage.

>To move on, then, your email's two main points seemed to be as follows:
>
>(i) the false picture he conveyed of the Internet by such statements (in
>the lecture and in his text) as "The Internet has very little interesting
>material; it needs more."
>
>I have always been clear that the Internet is a powerful force for good,

This was not to my recollection at all the case in your talk.

>I have said that the Internet has very little interesting material; it
>needs more. I stand by this comment. There is certainly a lot of material
>on it; but by the single word 'interesting' (as made clear in my talk, if
>not spelt out in the abstract of it) I refer to culture and material that
>is better than one-off home pages and advanced academic discussions.

It was not clear, at least to me, at your talk, until you were challenged on
the point, that this was the domain you were restricting your comments to.

>There is a lot of glossy sub-coffee table stuff, sure, but is it really
>that interesting? There are, in some areas, very useful sites (e.g., if you
>are into a specialist subject that happens to have a computer scientist
>sponsoring it in their spare time).

My very different, admittedly subjective, impression is that it is difficult
to find a topic on which one *cannot* find interesting information.

>I'm not being cynical, I want to think
>seriously about how things are going to be sustainable in the future.
>Writing decent material involves grappling with complexity, and it is not
>easy. Not many people write good books, and I conclude that not many people
>are going to devise good Web material, of the present sort, at least. (I
>have yet to see much that has any structure more interesting than a tree or
>maze, but that's a separate point.)

You seem, in the above, to be equating the Internet with the Web - and
ignoring all the other aspects, such as the examples I gave in my comments at
your talk -  SeniorNet, the K-12 activities, online library catalogues, and
FAQ files are ones I can recall mentioning - only some of of which use the
Web, particularly in other than a very straightforward manner.

>Getting stuff from, say, Sidney is momentarily exciting, but most of it is
>the sort of stuff that, if it was on paper, would be given away free and
>thrown away as soon as possible.

As a matter of interest one excellent large online archive I have used is at
the Australian National University - admittedly this is in Canberra rather
than Sydney.

>Most people aren't up to the  huge amount of effort, skill, and resources
>needed to develop electronic information of any sort. With few exceptions
>(unfortunately including pornography) there are no resources to do any
>better.

We seem to be seeing different parts of the elephant - I see *lots* of
excellent information, at the moment much of it emanating from universities on
all sorts of subjects, including their own geographic surroundings. I also see
interesting and useful web pages (not just advertisements) associated with all
sorts of televison programs (including CNN now), newspapers and journals, from
many countries already. (For your information, and to my surprise, the most
frequently accessed Web site from our department, as measured by recently
obtained proxy server usage statistics is, I believe, an online Korean
language newspaper - which is not (as far as I can tell!) at all pornographic.
Playboy does indeed feature on the list, but a long way down.)

>In my talk, I gave a precise example of trying to find physical Web
>presences in London. I gave a scenario why this was a relevant question.
>Exclude Universities and newspapers, what is there left in London you can
>physically visit? Where is the National Gallery? OK, so UCL has a
>description of it. Who paid, and how long will they keep doing it? How's
>the data going to stay current? Where are the pictures anyway? My talk was
>a call to start supporting these activities.

Try the National Library server, or the Science Museum server. Learn, as I
have about, the plans of the Public Record Office. Admittedly these efforts
are far behind those in the States, but so is the public take up of networked
computing here.

The Government is now moving (slowly I admit) towards significantly increased
support for the use of the Internet for distributing official information -
sensational headlines in the media about pornography are unlikely to help
speed this move.

I with colleagues, have been developing a distributed Web server that provides
an information service in support of our hobby of genealogy. The difficulties
we have had in getting cooperation from some (luckily only a few) of the
information-owning organizations that we have approached have almost all been
caused by a combination of ignorance of the possibilites opened up by the
Internet and overblown concerns raised by media scare stories.

>Your second point: (ii) his uncritical citation, in his talk, of the Rimm
>CMU study of pornography on the Internet (this was the only published study
>on the topic that he identified explicitly), and of the Time Magazine cover
>story on this study - I pointed out hpw extensively Rimm's study had been
>criticised, and that Time had subsequently published a whole pag apologetic
>article describing how they had been taken in by Rimm.
>
>I do not depend on the Rimm/CMU study. I did, indeed, express concern over
>the methodology of it. In fact, the way in which the study was apparently
>used as a vehicle to promote pornography indicates how complex and
>difficult the issues are to debate rationally. (Moreover, the CMU study
>concerned itself with visual images and their descriptions, an aspect of
>pornography that I find less worrying than some text.)

It may not have been your intention, but you gave little emphasis to any
criticism of Rimm, but instead gave the impression that you were using his
study to buttress your arguments.

>By the way, did you notice someone in the audience (apparently from IC)
>first accused me of not using British search engines (though I had) and
>then accused me of drawing attention to the fact that London theatre
>schedules are described in the US and not the UK (so far as I can tell)? He
>can't consistently have it both ways. If it really is world wide, it
>doesn't much matter where search engines are; if it isn't world wide then
>it matters that London is not in London.

It seemed to me that both you and he were trying to have it both ways.

>We have to tackle these problems in a sensible way. To do so requires open
>debate, not denial.

I agree - but, to repeat myself, balanced rational open debate.

>I have had considerable, supportive feedback for the stance I have publicly
>taken.

I can make a similar claim.

>I will mention just one example: after reading one article in a
>newspaper about me, a father of a 12 year old rang me to tell me that his
>son had, without his parent's knowledge, been using hardcore porn from the
>Internet and they had now had an extremely positive discussion. He was
>grateful that both he and his son could now treat the issue in a mature and
>open way, and that it need no longer be secret.

I would like to think that you could have got equally supportive feedback from
a less sensational treatment of the subject.

>Some papers reported me inaccurately; I was disappointed with the Guardian
>in particular whose reporter seemed to have his own agenda. I would hope
>that most academics are mature enough to distinguish between the issue and
>its representation in the popular press.

If I had not heard your talk I would indeed have assumed that all the fault
lay with the reporter.

>One journalist (who claimed to be the Guardian reporter: why do you read
>this paper?!) wished to make the point that all programmers are perverts, a
>view that I strongly denied (I know of exceptions!). Nevertheless, we teach
>most of the UK's programmers and if they create or help create this
>impression then we have largely ourselves to blame for not educating them
>(or anyone else) in the human issues relating to technology. Porn (etc.)
>raises issues we should be handling. I think it is even a great opportunity
>to get more students involved in their subject, to see its vivid social and
>ethical issues, and to see how and to what extent technology can improve
>the future. They might be motivated to know that they can play a useful
>part in our future.

I of course agree it is important to try to sensitize our students to ethical
issues - but ethical issues related to a whole range of topics, not overly
emphasising pornography.

>I hope that in the eyes of many of
>my colleagues I am not confused with the unfortunate Rimm, though you seem
>to be trying hard. Why?

You were the one that brought Rimm into it - and, as I've said, in a way that
I interpreted - you might feel say misinterpeted - as indicating that he
provided support to your case.

>You have just sent me further email, this time just about Rimm, and you say:
>
>>(I am blind copying this to various people who have responded to
>>my original message about your talk.)
>
>Why?

Because I did not feel I had the right to broadcast a list of who had written
to me.

>Your whole attitude appears to be to conceal a real problem, and to try and
>character assasinate me from a position of speciously benevolent authority.
>So far as I can see the subject needs a bit of light throwing on it, and I
>am trying to do that. I don't understand in what way your broadcasting
>behaviour can be construed as constructive, nor for what ends.

It is evident that my well-meaning (but in restrospect perhaps naive) attempts
to get you to (i) see and accept that the way you are treating this admittedly
serious subject is counterproductive, and (ii) take a lead in undoing some of
the harm, have failed. I am indeed very sorry that this is the case, since I
believe we are all losers as a result. I will therefore just produce and
circulate a summary of the correspondence I have had on this subject, and
leave it to others to continue the discussion, should they so wish.

Brian