Ceglia Sues For 50% Facebook, Old Emails as Evidence 350
Kamiza Ikioi writes "A lawsuit by Paul Ceglia contains never-before-seen emails from Mark Zuckerberg. The emails, if they prove to be real, could be the most damning evidence to date against Zuckerberg's business dealings in the time leading up to 'The Face Book' and just after. They paint a picture of a Zuckerberg more sinister than portrayed in the movie The Social Network, actively out to sucker his investors about the site, including Ceglia. FTA: 'Zuckerberg writes Ceglia an email telling him he's thinking of shutting down the Facebook site, because he's too busy to work on it and there's little interest in it among students. (This is while Facebook is growing like crazy). Ceglia gets really pissed off, and starts accusing Zuckerberg of pulling "criminal stunts."' Among the emails is one where Mark Zuckerberg agrees to split Facebook with Ceglia 50/50. If the emails are proven legitimate, Ceglia may own 50% of Facebook."
Pretty Damning (Score:2, Informative)
These emails and the overall correspondence is rather damning. This is very typical of early stage companies, where people throw around all sorts of numbers, and since everyone is essentially arguing over something that at the time is worthless, X% of nothing is no big deal and entrepreneurs basically promise all sorts of things to get people to help them out of desperation, not fully realizing what they are promising because they are so drunk on their idea.
However, once something becomes super valuable, everything changes. People go from arguing over 5 or 10 percent, to tenths of a percent. Still, the fact remains, that if (IFF) this guy's claims are valid, then it's a rather damning portrayal and one that should hold up in court. Outside of the actual proving of the evidence, which is pretty huge, it seems as if this is fairly legitimate. I find Facebook's response, "It's all made up BS, none of it is true", to be rather immature and short-sighted, because if they can show a significant degree of evidence, it will make Facebook and Zuckerberg look TRULY awful, whereas up until now, it has been sort of a cute story worth dramatizing in a movie.
I don't see how to wiggle out of this one, assuming the evidence is decent (cashed checks, signed contracts, etc.), and in fact, I would be terribly disappointed if Ceglia didn't end up with a huge chunk of Facebook. A deal's a deal, and this guy was in the right place at the right time, and if he did indeed provide a thousand bucks or perhaps more, and especially if they had a deal around that, well the guy absolutely 100% deserves his fair share.
Uh, no, character evidence is inadmissible (Score:5, Informative)
No, character evidence is inadmissible, even in civil trials (unless defendant opens the door via testimony, i.e., "I'm a good person and would never fake e-mails.").
IAALBNYLSDNROTALA (I Am A Lawyer But Not Your Lawyer So Don't Rely On This As Legal Advice)
Re:Stupid Zuckerberg (Score:4, Informative)
Ebay? Google? Yahoo? Unix? Craigslist? All greedy bastards?
Ok maybe the people that started them aren't all 50 billionaires, but they all have more money than they know what to do with and I don't think they're all greedy bastards... or am I wrong?
Zuckerberg should be in jail. (Score:4, Informative)
How Mark Zuckerberg Hacked Into Rival ConnectU In 2004
Mar. 5, 2010
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-mark-zuckerberg-hacked-connectu-2010-3 [businessinsider.com]
In this new, fake profile, he listed Cameron's height as 7'4", his hair color as "Ayran Blond," and his eye color as "Sky Blue." He listed Cameron's "language" as "WASP-y."
Next, Mark appears to have logged into the accounts of some ConnectU users and changed their privacy settings to invisible. The idea here was apparently to make it harder for people to find friends on ConnectU, thus reducing its utility. Eventually, Mark appears to have gone a step further, deactivating about 20 ConnectU accounts entirely...