Originally published at: The Strange Case of the Tom Ripley of Book Publishing | Boing Boing
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When I read this story the other day I got the whiff of a deranged obsessive collector. This is the type of person who just has to have the latest and greatest of whatever category of Precious he loves first and who wants the thrill of enjoying it before and hoarding it to the exclusion of everyone else.
There was probably an ego-stroking thrill for him in using his insider knowledge of the industry for his Preciouses to beat out others who love the Preciouses too.
The items in this case are digital instead of physical items but these days that’s beside the point (see NFTs). Gollum wantses what he wantses.
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As hobbies go, it’s not as bad as pulling the wings off of butterflies.
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Obviously a time traveler; he goes into the future, gets a finished manuscript, travels to the past, and delivers it to his writer clients who now have to put in no effort to complete their next work. They are no longer behind schedule and have no more writer’s block. I’m sure Filippo Bernardini, if that’s really his real name, will vanish shortly.
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Does he need to send back the Word documents over email?
The discourse around this case pushes the metaphorical use of the term “stealing” past the breaking point. It was already distorted beyond recognition when it was used for unauthorized copying. Applying it to this situation, in which the perp tricks his victims into making a copy themselves, makes it ridiculous. The court’s order to “return property” throws this into sharp relief.
Copying is not stealing. If I get my hair cut just like yours, you still have your hair. In certain situations, copying is a crime, and in some cases it’s wrong. But it’s never stealing.
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Guy with boring job in publishing takes job too seriously. Punked the process, and gets away with it. Gets kicks. Repeats.
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I was hoping we’d find out he was using publisher resources to print the early drafts, buying copies of the finished books, replacing the pages with the manuscripts, and retuning them to the shelves.
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I think it’s like those cases you hear of movie pirates that have terabytes of torrented movies. They don’t even have time to watch very many of them; it’s just having them that fascinates them.
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I mean, isn’t the obvious motivation is that he wanted to read the books before anyone else? To be first? To note the differences between his draft and the published work?
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He did it because he could. It was interesting, it was fun, and he wasn’t harming anyone so why should his conscience tell him to stop? There’s inherent fun in being a scammer. Reasonable people with working morals know that scamming people out of their money harms them, so they don’t engage in that behavior. But he was just getting a copy of a book, no worse than using Napster back in the day to download a song.
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Adds up that he too is a writer with nothing to write about. Until now.
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The whole thing is so weird. The story is weird, the response to the story is weird - I mean, “literary ideas” aren’t worth anything. A book isn’t just a “literary idea” made concrete, it’s a bunch of writing, and that’s what people are interested in/is valuable. The idea that he should “return” digital copies is weird. The whole thing would be a weird victimless crime if the writers/agents he targeted hadn’t expended effort - and then worried about what was going on, after - as a result of his actions. Though hopefully they didn’t stress too much, knowing there was very little he could do with the manuscripts.
I think that’s it. He works in the industry, he clearly cares about books. It’s the only motive that makes sense. Maybe he got a thrill from acquiring them illicitly - and these elaborate scams were the only way to do so.
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I first heard about this from fellow literary translators, and the thing that was strangest about it was that whoever was doing it was acquiring not just the next sure bestseller but also obscure books by unknown authors that didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being bestsellers.
I think the reason there was an investigation was to find out how he was getting access to publishing houses’ internal information, and to just figure what the hell the motive was. There had to be something to be gained, and we couldn’t think what in the world that would be. Was there some sort of long game going on that would eventually pay off for the culprit(s)?
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My personal theory is that he started out with a plan to do this to make money. By the time he realized that his plan wasn’t going to work, though, he found he couldn’t stop. Either he was obsessed with the collection or he enjoyed the thrill of stealing the manuscripts too much.
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I guess it’s like a lot of things in internet history, bizarre and interesting, but not clear how someone could monetize it.
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Maybe he’s just a literary peeping tom, getting a thrill out of seeing behind a curtain he’s not supposed to see behind…
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Kind of reminds me of this guy:
But in Landis’ case, he had a beef with the art world for rejecting his work. He showed them! In, really, the nicest way possible.
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I don’t really understand most of the comments here so far. If someone had spent 5 years writing a book and someone conned them out of a copy before publication I think the normal reaction would be incredible worry and stress. Maybe that was his goal? Even if he didn’t monetize it, or hadn’t done anything yet, it seems very cruel.
This has been an ongoing story for five years with hundreds of manuscripts stolen. These weren’t just books that were a month away from publication. He targeted authors, publishers and agents. Many were well aware of what happened after they were conned. There are links to the stories in the summation.
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