A New York City lawyer has pleaded not guilty to stealing identities and using them, via the Internet, to discredit his father’s academic rivals over their interpretations of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Associated Press reported today.

The alleged crimes and cyberbullying by Raphael Golb, the son of the religion scholar Norman Golb of the University of Chicago, were detailed by The Chronicle in March. Prosecutors charged that the younger Mr. Golb had used Internet aliases to falsely accuse Lawrence Schiffman of New York University of plagiarizing his father’s work.

The defense lawyer Martin Garbus argued that the case was about free speech and that no crime had been committed. The judge hearing the case set bail at $15,000 and ordered Mr. Golb to surrender his passport. —Josh Fischman