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Online Impersonation Continues, With Varying Consequences
Online impersonation is defined in the New York Code provisions that prohibit the practice, as the act of impersonating another “under an assumed character with intent to obtain a benefit or to injure or defraud another.” See, Penal Law '190.25. The foremost case brought under this law, People v. Golb, 15 N.E.3d 805 (N.Y. 2014), in many ways epitomizes the bizarre and highly esoteric reasons why someone chooses to impersonate another in the first place. In essence, Golb is about a son creating myriad fake online personalities to defend his father against other scholars who differed with his father's interpretation of the origin of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some of the profiles were fictitious, but others were in fact impersonations of the very targets of the campaign, that is, those scholars that disagreed with the defendant's father.
This is hardly common Internet debate fodder, and it illustrates how the ease of access to anonymous, seemingly consequence-free communication provided by the Internet can create conflicts that in the past may not have materialized. If nothing else, Golb also sheds insight into how even the most particularized and arcane subjects ripe for argument can metastasize into legal proceedings that lead to a criminal conviction of the impersonator. Over a vigorous dissent arguing that criminalizing this speech constituted a First Amendment violation, the Court of Appeals concluded that most of such acts of impersonation could sustain a criminal conviction.
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