RECEPTIO Redux

[Images used under 'Fair Dealing' exemptions to copyright]

[This is a re-posting of an old post that was deleted by Google at the request of you-know-who]

There is a new website at https://www.restauromanoscritti.digital, also available at the http://oprom.eu, which bears striking similarities to RECEPTIO.

Although the title of the organiation is in French -- "Organisation pour la protection des manuscrits médiévaux", abbreviated as "OProM" -- the website is available in both French and Italian, and Italian appears to be the native language of the unnamed person behind the site, to judge by the use of Italian URLs and image captions.

The About Us page, for example, appears as "À PROPOS DE NOUS" on the page itself, but the URL ends "chisiamo". Unusually for About Us pages, the site tells us nothing about who is behind it or when it was set up, giving no names, nationalities, or relevant academic or other qualifications.

[Edit, 14 June 2023:] In the few days since I wrote this blogpost the "chisiamo" URL has been changed to "apropos" and a partial list of founders ("Parmi les membres fondateurs [...]") has been added. Carla Rossi's name is not included.

Among the images with Italian file-names are "Donna che gode di un libro" and "Vecchia biblioteca". Needless to say, they are stock photos:

"Donna che gode di un libro"

Other uses of the same image:

"Vecchia biblioteca"

Other uses of the same image:

The website is built using the "Wix.com Website Builder" -- the same as the RECEPTIO site -- and both have the images stored at locations whose address begins https://static.wixstatic.com/media/494184[... etc.]

The foot of the main page has a copyright note: "©2023 oprom.eu" and a WhoIs search of the domain name "oprom.eu" reveals the involvement of nablasolutions.ch, i.e. the IT company owned by Carla Rossi's husband (further details publicly available here):

The www.restauromanoscritti.digital domain seems to have been registered as recently as April, just two months ago:

The About Us page states that the organisation has its registered office in France, at 60 rue Francois 1er 75008 Paris. This is an address at which more than 2,390 other businesses are apparently registered:

[Source]

You can register a business at this address in less than 10 minutes, with prices starting at €17 per month!:

[Source]

The orgnisation claims to have a digital restoration "laboratoire" dedicated to the reconstruction of dismembered manuscripts, and it has statutes with three objectives (which are similar to the objectives stated on the RECEPTIO website in the described in its "Mission" section, and especially as described by Carla Rossi in her online article here):

• demand that UNESCO and governments protect manuscript and incunable patrimony
• create a European university consortium for courses, meetings, and scholarly events concerning the physical and digital reconstruction of dismbered codices
• collaborate with European projects to these ends

(On the main page of the site, the ridiculous claim is made that hundreds of medieval manuscripts are dismembered each year; exactly the same baseless claim formerly appeared on the RECEPTIO website. Personally, I would be very surprised if the true number were as high as 10, and it may be lower than 5).

Although the site claims that it is 'recognized as a research and training organization by the European Commission', the European Commission website currently lists no programmes, roles, projects, collaboration partners, or indeed any data at all for the organisation (which is perhaps not surprising if it has only been in existence for a couple of months):

Two-year training courses, and modular Summer/Winter courses, are offered in the digital reconstruction of dismembered manuscripts (exactly as at RECEPTIO), although there is apparently no mention of the prices for these unique training opportunities, conducted via Zoom. 

[Edit, 14 June 2023:] A reader has pointed out to me that prices are listed on another site, here: they range from €500 for very short courses, up to €7,500 for two-year courses, including these two:

 

Note that some of the names of people who have written multiple 5-star reviews for such courses have the same names as RECEPTIO's Twitter sock puppets:

 

As reported by the Nieuwscheckers.nl website, one of Carla Rossi's alter egos, "Lev Matvej Loewenthal", directed enquiries to "his publicist", "Noah Ritter", who also offers at least one 5-star review:

 

At least one 5-star review was written by someone who happens to have the same name as Carlo Rossi's own daughter:

Some of the names are not familiar to me, but it is remarkable that one course has six five-star reviews, all dated from the five-day period 13-17 April 2023, even though the organisation did not exist until a few weeks earlier.

If you do not want to pay for a training course, you can give them money by becoming a member of the organisation, at prices ranging from €25 per year for students, up to €150 for insitutions. And if you would like to have access to the ACMD (ARCHIVUM CODICUM MANUSCRIPTORUM DISIECTORUM), it will cost you €80 per day, €220 per month, or €2,000 per year -- and you also have to send them a copy of your passport or identity card!

[EDIT, 14 June 2023:] Apparently someone was embarassed that I drew attention to these outrageously expensive prices, because they have now been removed from the website:

Before ...

... and after I published this blogpost

The page listing reconstructions www.restauromanoscritti.digital/portfolio describes a philosophy identical to that of RECEPTIO.

To display the reconstructions, the site apparently uses exactly the same software as the RECEPTIO site. As with the RECPTIO reconstructions, some begin with a cut-and-pasted description from an auction catalogue (but they are now more careful to cite the source). One of the reconstructions uses the same velvet binding as one of the reconstructions of a (different) manuscript on the RECEPTIO site:

Screenshot from 
www.restauromanoscritti.digital/portfolio
10 June 2023

Screenshot from RECEPTIO website,
17 January 2023

I am not making any particular point with this blogpost, I am simply alerting the unwary that the "Organisation pour la protection des manuscrits médiévaux" / "OProM", which may seem to have admirable objectives, is hiding the fact that it is very obviously a partial clone of RECEPTIO.