Forum Moderators: phranque
Mark Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old founder of Facebook, will today be accused of stealing the idea for his enormously popular social networking site from a rival website.Mr Zuckerberg is being for sued for stealing the source code – and design – of Facebook from ConnectU.com, a similar, university-based social network which he worked for briefly as a programmer four years ago.
At a district court in Boston, Massachusetts, ConnectU's founders, who were in the same year at Harvard as Mr Zuckerberg, will demand that Facebook be shut down and that control of the site – and its profits – be handed over to them.
Facebook Founder Accused of Stealing The Idea [technology.timesonline.co.uk]
I smell a PR stunt...
Stealing the idea though... surely then all these social networking sites are stealing from each other? Myspace, Bebo, etc all pretty much doing the same thing.
Then what about the Youtube/Google video equivalents?
Bit of a grey area that so it does smell a bit like a PR stunt to me!
There is far too much of this kind of thing going on today. Just because you made your clone a bigger success, it doesn't mean you gain some kind of legimimacy.
Obviously, I don't know the details of this case. If there is no foul-play then of course I would want the case thrown out with costs met by the plaintiff.
I'm sure there is no stolen source code in Facebook now. But if there was in the past, then it is likely that the theft of that code enabled Facebook to retain resources for building other things which made them an eventual success, even if that code eventually left the source, i.e. even if it is now deleted, using it at some time still should see very substantial compensation.
I wonder what the position is of facebook application (plugin/app) creators who have made income from those applications?
This is a good example of why I try and farm out as little work as possible on my projects. A good coder can have a copy of your idea up before you even launch.
I smell a PR stunt...
zulu_dude may be right on the mark.
Remember when the authors of dodgy pseudo-research volume Holy Blood, Holy Grail took Dan Brown to court over his alleged theft of ideas to write that awful trash The Da Vinci Code a few weeks before the movie was released?
Sales of both books rocketed. (And the additional free publicity probably didn't damage cinema ticket sales either).
I'm sure there is no stolen source code in Facebook now. But if there was in the past, then it is likely that the theft of that code enabled Facebook to retain resources for building other things which made them an eventual success, even if that code eventually left the source, i.e. even if it is now deleted, using it at some time still should see very substantial compensation.
I think this might be a slippery slope here. After all, how do you prove one, that they used to be code in there from another site unless you have actual screen shots with dates and such, which could be suspect as well. Second, assuming there used to be code in there, how would you prove that they actually benefited from it? How do you know it wasn't other factors we aren't aware of?
If the guy is doing something wrong TODAY then he should have to compensate the company for that. However hunting down people for possible past transgressions in anything and then attaching some type of monetary compensation to it is fraught with problems. I just believe there is way too many variables to the success or lack thereof in any business to be able to claim that source code that may have been in there at some point in the past allowed them to secure a competitive advantage that could never be beat is a little tough to swallow. Proving the claim is going to be very problematic and then determining what, if any, advantage he got from it. Finally, assigning a fair amount of compensation for those damages. It just seems to me that one or more of those steps could create a situation of serious injustice.
I find the multiple db errors I keep getting on connectu very exciting and though I would add those to my own site, don't tell connectu.
I find the multiple db errors I keep getting on connectu very exciting and though I would add those to my own site . . .
...I will be a regular visitor of connectu from this moment for similar reasons.
, don't tell connectu.
This is particularly effective when a firm might be acquired. It's a lot easier to put this kind f thing behind you instead of dealing with footnotes and indemnifications during the due diligence process. In short, does Facebook want a cloud hovering over a multi-billion dollar payday, or would they pay a few million to make it go away?
Then again, I might be too cynical. Perhaps Facebook DID rip off something from ConnectU. I don't think either was the first social network, though.
[edited by: rogerd at 2:49 pm (utc) on July 25, 2007]
No offence meant to ConnectU.com, but does that really look like a site that was ever going to be half as good as Facebook?
We're not privy to the terms of his contractor relationship, but it likely doesn't matter. The initial proceedings were started 3 years ago so it's not a PR stunt.
Since there's no patent, there's likely very little at stake if he simply "stole the idea". Only a patent is a legal monopoly to an idea.
If he stole code that's a completely separate issue, and one that will not be looked favorably upon, regardless if any of the code is in use now or not.
It will be interesting to see the terms of his consulting contract with ConnectU.
It's a lot easier to put this kind f thing behind you instead of dealing with footnotes and indemnifications during the due diligence process.
A valuation might take a big hit as well.
Let's be honest....Facebook works... I just hit that site, then hit the search button and got the following error message on a blank white page....not even a message contained in the site skin.
"""We are sorry, but we had a problem connecting to the database server"""
I am sorry but if you aren't even displaying error messages in the skin of your site.... then you aren't even ready to launch yet.
I doubt he took actual code from them... more likely he was inspired by the idea... saw what they were doing wrong... which seems to be a lot seeing as 2 page hits I see a bunch of stuff wrong.... then got started on doing it right on his own... I see nothing wrong with that.... I am sure if he wrote code for both sites they have some similar code...but that almost goes without saying.
This sounds like a petty attempt to gain off someone else's success.
I hope all they end up with is a big legal bill.
Facebook is an Ajax thing of beauty... I don't see that implementation at all on this other site.
I can write a song and sing it like a sick cat, but it doesn't make it any less mine and any more acceptable for some more able singer to sing it.
Dave Thomas founder of Wendy's worked in a little burger diner for years as a child and teenager before opening his first hamburger place.
Imagine if "Example's diner on example street" sued Wendy's cause Dave used to work there and must have stolen the idea about beef on a bun and getting it to customers fast and friendly.
The fact is it is a good idea... Facebook implemented it very well.... this other site didn't.
I can write a song and sing it like a sick cat, but it doesn't make it any less mine and any more acceptable for some more able singer to sing it.
Right but it doesn't mean someone who sang back-up for you can't go and write his own songs and do right what he watched you do wrong.
[edited by: Demaestro at 2:24 pm (utc) on July 25, 2007]
I can write a song and sing it like a sick cat, but it doesn't make it any less mine and any more acceptable for some more able singer to sing it.
But in this case it's not the same song, it's just a song that's about the same subject that may have the same word or two.
Imagine all the songs in the world about love that feature the words "love", "baby", "hold", "heart", etc.
I agree with vince, as a web design / programming company myself it hurts to see people stealing your code / ideas etc. From the start I didn't like this guy who "created" facebook as I could tell he wasn't on the up-and-up. All these college-themed sites run by students are rip-offs in one way or another. They haven't had real world experience... they don't know what they are doing...
Stealing ideas? do you think this guy was the first to think of a social networking site? I think we can say with absolute certainty that this ConnectU site was not the first site of this type. Even if it was are you saying we should only have one?
You can tell someone isn't on the up and up? You should go into police work.
All college sites run by students are rip offs? Wow another case solved... nice work.
Imagine if "Example's diner on example street" sued Wendy's cause Dave used to work there
Imagine if Dave had made off with a truckload of ingredients after having signed an agreement that taking anything off the premises. That would be considered theft.
Like Jake says, it's all about the contract. If he signed an NDA, he's screwed. If he got paid $10/hour as a student programmer to do a few things on a non-contract basis, he's probably in the clear.
I could easily see a student programmer taking such liberties with a project he contracted on and it doesn't matter how much better Facebook is *now*. What matters is did he steal enough code to get up and running and make enough money to actually sustain himself while he hired people to write really good code?
The simple fact is that a lot of kids that age don't mind "borrowing". When I was teaching (at one of the top state institutions in the country), I saw things like
- student papers taken verbatim out of well-known books
- papers cut and pasted from a handful of web pages
- a student who stole another student's paper out of a computer lab printer and turned it in as his own. They had different teaching assistants and didn't realize that the TAs regularly got together to grade.
TA1: "Wow, this guy seems really stupid, but he turned in a great paper on XYZ"
TA2: "Really? I have a really good student who did a paper on XYZ too."
Whoops. This is not to mention that the vast majority of university students see nothing wrong with file sharing of copyrighted music, movies, etc. This is not a generation raised to respect copyright, so frankly, based on guilt by association and the fact that the suit has been pending for three years, I'm betting ConnectU has a case.
Can you protect ideas like that.
I don't believe you can. That is why there are so many TV shows that are similar in the U.S., like Nanny 911 and Super Nanny, there are at least a couple of trading moms shows, and lots of shows similar to American Idol.
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