Saturday, March 07, 2009

A Son's Love

How much do you love your father? Enough to create a series of sock puppets to pop up on-line in his support? Enough to commit identity theft and harassment?

Norman Golb is a noted scholar who holds a minority opinion about the Dead Sea Scrolls. He thinks Qumran was a storage depot for documents written by many, while most scroll-watchers claim Qumran was a monastery where the scrolls were penned. Not exactly the stuff of which world wars are made, but for those in the trenches it's a big deal.

To defend his father, Raphael Golb went online and created a web of aliases that he used to discredit his father's detractors. He pretended to be Lawrence Schiffman, a scholar at New York University with a contrary view. Aware that computers leave tracks, he went to NYU and used their computers to send messages to Mr. Schiffman's colleagues, confessing to plagiarism.

As if Mr. Schiffman wouldn't notice.

There were sock puppets who were used in online discussion groups, all extolling the virtues of Mr. Kolb's hypothesis and discrediting those who were against him. All the sock puppets came from the vivid imagination of Raphael Kolb.

Now Raphael is facing some serious charges of identity theft. But he's surely proved how very much he loves his father.

No comments: