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Facebook In Court
ScaredOfTheMan writes "'The lawsuit, filed by brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, accuses Zuckerberg, Facebook's 23-year-old C.E.O, of stealing the source code, design, and business plan for Facebook in 2003 when he briefly worked in the Harvard dorms as a programmer for their own fledgling social-networking site, now known as ConnectU.
The plaintiffs have demanded that Facebook be shut down and that full control of the site — and its profits — be turned over to them.'
I just wonder why they waited so long to sue? If he really stole their idea in 2003, why wait four years?"
Until it became massively profitable, why sue? The idea of a lawsuit is to get damages. As long as you do not pass the statute of limitations, waiting is not counted against you.
from the article For the last three years, lawyers for the two sides have waged an increasingly contentious - though largely unnoticed - court battle.
The lawsuit was filed in 2003 actually. This has been an on-going battle for years. There is merit to this case. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=connectu+face book
> If he really stole their idea in 2003, why wait four years?"
Because suing isn't about moral properness, suing is a business decision. You sue to profit. That's why you sue for money instead of, say, a sincere apology. Everyone's had business ideas and get-rich schemes stolen, you only sue if someone actually manages to succeed with your half-baked never-completed plan.
(Put me in the school of "it's not the idea or the code, it's the execution plus luck that creates success" school of thought.)
'Apology only lawsuits' are limited to kindergarten playgrounds, I guess.
Then there's the whole 'lawsuit as vengeance' school of thought, but in some ways that's even worse than suing just for money.
The more I write this, the more I increase my cynicism about the US legal system.
A.
of becoming a roaring success.
Then you come in and steal the fruits of their labors. Because the way they developed it and did it is not the way you would have done it.
and their way worked.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
A) there's no point suing someone who has no money. Did you expect them to do it when he was in massive debt? He'd just declare bankrupcy, close the company and they'd get nothing.
B) to get full damages you normally have to try to resolve things equitably without the court. It probably takes a long time to prove he wasn't cooperating.
C) when you start suing, you have to be sure of your case. That means you have to get witnesses together and proof of your right to whatever you are suing over. He says / she says is not a good thing to risk the cost of an American lawsuit over.
Now I'm not saying they are right (I don't know and you also don't know) or have a moral right to this, but the reasons are pretty obvious.
Well he must have only stole the good bits, loaded up the front page of ConnectU and must say that it looks like crap.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Funny though, in terms of business psychology - you'll often find people with exceptional programming ability and tons of great ideas. But are too scattered and unfocused to actually run and slowly build a business from the ground up. Then on the other hand, you'll get individuals who aren't nearly as creative in the same sense. But who can take and idea and foster it until it becomes a true global champion. Maybe this could count as a kind of Internet serendipity ? As for who gets the cash ? Don't ask me ...
http://news.justia.com/cases/connectu-facebook/337 138/
However, it seems like Facebook's suit is more of a leverage to get the first case dismissed. Facebook is saying ConnectU damaged them somehow, but when asked, Facebook said they couldn't identify what the damages were. This is from a company worth billions, and rejected a $1 billion buy out offer.
And the defendent list includes new people, Winston Williams, Pacific Northwest Software, Wayne Chang, David Gucwa.
Let the battle of the titans begin!
Do they have a deathwish? Socially active college students everywhere won't be able to function without facebook! How will they nkow who is dating who? Where will the post photographic proof of the latest stupid shit they did? Where else will the put their whiny I hate the opposite sex notes. Certainly not myspace.. for there is an evil there that does not sleep.
You would have an agrngy horde on your hands very quickly.
You mad
lack of diversity among parties = someone vandalized wikipedia.
OK, I realise that people aren't being paid to submit their stories but surely the editors are being paid to edit them?
Shouldn't they at least be reading the submissions (titles and story) and then any linked articles as well to make sure that they've been accurately summarised (not to mention relevant)?
It seems the Firehose is catching most dupes (we get the occasional one but not 2-4 a day as we did a couple of years back) but typos, innacurate headlines, poorly worded summaries and even innacurate stories (such as this one) still abound.
Just looking at the current frontpage, I can see several stories that either have titles or summaries that need editing:
Facebook in Court : the summary, which fails to tell us that the legal fight has been going on for years, and implies that it's only been started now because of greed.
Gadgets Have Taken Over For Our Brains : the summary, which references Trinity College, but not which Trinity College. Is it the one in London, Cambridge, Washington DC, Toronto, Carmarthen, Florida, Melbourne...? No, it's the one in Dublin? So tell us.
Linux Creator Calls GPLv3 Authors 'Hypocrites' : Ridiculous story that takes quotes out of context to sensationalise the issue.
Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6 - A Mother Of A Motherboard : At last! A motherboard with three full-length PCI Express x16 slots! Except it only has two.
CEO Questionably Used Pseudonym to Post Online : An ambiguous if not misleading headline. Read the comments for more, but one thing that's not in question is that he used a pseudonym.
One Laptop Per Child and Intel Join Forces : Another ambiguous title, which seems to imply a joint venture. As Intel has joined the OLPC project it would have been more accurate for the title to simply say "Intel joins OLPC Project".
Call me a pedant if you want to but there are editors for a reason, so they should edit. Their job isn't that hard, and now they even have people looking at the Firehose helping them out, so why are we still getting so many poor or poorly-presented stories?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I didn't hear about Facebook until last year. Not everyone is a social network whore you know.
I like muppets.
I hope this ends setting some kind of precedent, where lawyers everywhere are forced to reference the Winklevoss-Zuckerberg case with a straight face.
Yahoo put a bid in, I believe, at $1B, but Facebook demanded $2B, and they are now considering an IPO, which would be the "first big IPO of web 2.0"
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9741016-7.html
Facebook then filed a terse countersuit in California federal court, accusing ConnectU of tort violations and unfair business practices.
Facebook went a step beyond just that, they are also suing the programmers that worked for ConnectU at the time. I am now looking at having to pay a potential $25,000 if Facebook wins because I coded for ConnectU, simply because of this countersuit. Talk about unethical lawsuits...
Get yourself a lawyer obviously, if you were being paid as an employee and had no way of knowing you were doing anything illegal (or what they are accusing you of doing was illegal anyways) you should not be liable for anything. If you were a "partner" in the business, you're fucked and this is why they created the S class corporation; limited liability for smaller businesses.
The other points of the greater argument notwithstanding, there is a significant difference between copying (stealing) a business plan and successfully realizing that plan. Further, it is highly unlikely that the code of Facebook today is identical and unimproved over a source base allegedly stolen some four years ago. In short while the origin of this service is in doubt, those behind Facebook made it work.
Facebook core is simple and basic. A lot of people have had similar ideas, and the early version of facebook (no more than a year ago) was something that anyone with medium level of php+mysql+html would have thought to themselves "I could do that and better in a few days!".
But thats not the merit. The difficult thing is turning that simple idea and design into something useful and into a profitable business. When I first heard of facebook i just thought it was one more of those pages i dont want to know about, but it somehow hooked. Looking at the connectu web page makes me wonder if they really have any user base. The page is simply ugly and difficult.
The difficulty of most businesses is not just having a good idea. It is knowing how to turn a good idea into a good business. Even if Zuckerberg really was influenced by the others, it was him who turned it into a success. Putting it in another way, if facebook would have never existed, connectU would not be the success facebook is now.
__
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If I were you I'd do two things: a. retain the services of a competent attorney and b. listen to him when he tells you to stop posting about the case on a public forum. You have no idea what effect what you just wrote could have if the opposition were to bring it up in court. Shut up about it until it's over and done. At that point, every software developer on Slashdot will want to hear all about it, me included, but in the meantime don't risk compromising yourself.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.