Will Facebook always be there? The number of lawsuits suggest ... "no"

NCD News: Will Facebook always be there? The number of lawsuits suggest ... "no" - 02.10.09

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Will Facebook always be there? The number of lawsuits suggest ... "no": The legal battles which Facebook has been involved in during the last 2 or 3 years are beyond trying to count. A simple Google search comes up with so many cases involving the company, that it has to be expected that they may just fall under the weight of them at some point.

When a company becomes so large that multi million dollar lawsuits are common, then the lawsuits are going to keep coming thick and fast. Everyone who has the slightest case is going to try their luck. This may sound unfair, but to be honest, Facebook have left themselves wide open for legal action at every turn by the sounds of it.

It all started for Facebook when in 2004 the founder Mark Zuckerberg was accused of stealing the source code for the site from his previous employer ConnectU.com. The latter company was a university based social networking site for whom he had worked as a programmer. The lawsuit was first brought when Facebook was just a fledging company with only 200,000 users, so money has not always been the impetus behind this case. Zuckerberg admitted he had done some work on the coding but thought the site was a personals page, not a networking site. Three months later Facebook was launched.

This year, Facebook have turned the tables and sued a German site for allegedly stealing their source code to recreate some of the graphics and features on their site. The case was thrown out as the German site had been started at a time when Facebook had not started in Germany, so they had nothing to gain by copying it. The courts also pointed out that some of the Facebook coding is freely available online and while similarities between the sites exist, this did not establish blatant copying.

There have also been at least two cases this year launched by Facebook advertisers who are claiming "Click Fraud". Both United ECM and RootZoo have said that they have been charged for clicks from Facebook which never happened. In one case, RootZoo used its own software to establish that 300 clicks came from Facebook on one day in June, while they were charged for 804. Facebook have said that it had seen an increase in "suspicious clicks" and were working out ways to deal with it. They were supposed to identify advertisers who had been overcharged and arrange a refund.

At the more extreme end of the scale are the people who are suing Facebook for doing what a social networking site is supposed to do - that is allow people to communicate freely. Jack Thompson, who is renowned in the US for his anti-gaming crusades has sued Facebook for an amazing $40m (US) for allowing comments about him to be posted on the site. Mr Thompson has come under some criticism from the gaming community due to previous lawsuits against game designers. Thompson claims he has been caused great distress and harm by the sometimes offensive posts.

Along similar lines, a student from the University of Albany is suing Facebook and 4 of her classmates for defamation following the posting of humiliating comments on the site. Denise Finkel is suing Facebook for $3m in damages and says that the comments made were over the top and had injured her character. The US Federal Communications Decency Act has been cited in the case and it states that providers of an interactive computer service cannot be treated as though they are the author. Finkel's lawyer is claiming that because the Facebook copyright symbol is on each page of the communication, this represents ownership and authorship of whatever is written.

Certainly, writing terms and conditions to allow them to use and keep any and all data provided to them whilst still stating that they are not responsible for any and all data provided is a balancing act that even the best legal minds would fail at.

These cases are just the tip of the iceberg. There are also mentions of stolen online games and copyright issues, not to mention the whole privacy debate. In addition Facebook is often cited in the courts as the cause of marriage breakups, child abuse and even murders. It is also suggested that people are becoming the victims of burglary because their online status shows they are on holiday.

Facebook are not the only ones to be plagued with lawsuits. But whereas legal attacks on Google and Microsoft are basically business disputes, Facebook lawsuits are mainly about the invasion of people's lives and the harm that a social network does. When invading people's privacy and giving anonymity to bullies is how you make your money ... the lawsuits will never stop.

Facebook set themselves up to make large amounts of money. They didn't set themselves up to protect the users they planned on making money from. Add those together, multiply by the number of lawyers in the world and you get a pretty good view of their future. Of course, like other public services that were set up to help society, like The Accident Group, the founders will be in the Caymans with their billions months before the actual collapse. †