Online sockpuppetry: when is it criminal?

by Walter Olson on October 5, 2010

Scott Greenfield has some questions following the conviction of a New York lawyer who impersonated a scholar online “in a heated academic debate over the origins of the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

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{ 3 comments }

1 Doug 10.05.10 at 10:33 am

I have followed this trial as best I could. I think once you start using someone elses name as if were your own and then email the provost of the university where the victim teaches, and confess to plagiarizing that crosses the line . To me that show an intent to harm someone else.

2 E-Bell 10.05.10 at 4:13 pm

I dunno, Doug. Seems to me that a 30-plus-count indictment for something like this is a little over the top. Strangely enough, he was acquitted of “criminal impersonation.”

I haven’t followed the case, so I don’t know all the ins-and-outs, but I would figure a civil suit would be a more appropriate remedy than throwing him in jail. At any rate, it’s a crazy set of facts.

3 shg 10.05.10 at 5:36 pm

Even Doug’s description misses some of the necessary color. The “crime” involved an email to the NYU dean using the name of an NYU professor but with a gmail account rather than an NYU email account. Testimony at trial was that everyone involved knew it wasn’t real and knew Golb to be the sender, so there was neither a real risk of anyone being mislead, nor any misleading in fact.

And, of course, the crime of identity theft requires financial harm, not merely offensive conduct.

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