The Zeitgeist

This FaceBook Suit is utterly hilarious. In a nutshell, for those haven’t heard about it, or refuse to click on NYT links, Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of FaceBook is being sued by former Harvard classmates who claim that he “stole the idea” from them. A fourth classmate (Aaron Greenspan ) purports to have email that “proves” he had even implemented a system like FaceBook 4 months before Zuckerberg and the others who are now about to go to court.

Hmm… there’s a problem here kiddies… (and if these children had any smarts, or even smart laywers) they know there’s no lawsuit possible over FaceBook, because:

1. FaceBook as an “idea” isn’t copyrightable. You cannot copyright an “idea” only the concrete expression of an idea. In this case that would mean the actual source code to FaceBook. So far none of the parties is alleging that Zuckerberg stole anyone’s source code. If we could copyright an idea, then there would only ONE Murder Mystery novel; ONE SciFi book, etc. After all they are all really the same idea.. just the words to express them are different.
2. FaceBook isn’t (as far as I know) patented or patentable. There’s nothing new in an online data sharing web site. FaceBook is, outside of its application platform capability, a souped up version of Classmates.com .

Imagine what the world would be like if their juvenile world view were reality: there’d be no World Wide Web, no eBay, no Amazon, no online stores of any kind… oh and no competition since people could copyright the ideas about simply everything and sue anyone who competed with them.

Zuckerberg’s former classmates should grow up and face facts: You cannot copyright the idea of a social networking web site. Sorry kids.

If they’d been smart they would have gotten on board with Zuckerberg and ridden the gravy train like he is about to do. Instead all they have to suck on are sour grapes…  unless of course they actually beleive that they have an even better idea than Zuckerberg’s FaceBook… if so, they should belly up to the bar and make it happen.  FaceBook, like all Social Network Systems, is only  good until the next “new  Internet hotness”  comes along.   And, unlike their fantasy world where they sue people over ideas,  if they actually build a better mouse trap, er, I mean Social Network Service, the world will beat  a path to their door too…

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