Facebook Steps Up Attack On Man Who Claims Ownership | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Steps Up Attack On Man Who Claims Ownership

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

34 pointslakshmikandh6 comments

But Facebook said it had copies of the two-page contract examined by Frank Romano, a professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology and an expert in document authentication. Professor Romano found “significant inconsistencies” in type sizes, spacing, margins and other details between pages 1 and 2. He concluded that Page 1 and Page 2 were printed at different times on different printers and that Page 1, which includes references to The Facebook Book, is an “amateurish forgery,” according to the motion.

Facebook said it also had Mr. Zuckerberg’s e-mail account at Harvard examined by a digital forensic expert and found that the e-mails Mr. Ceglia provided do not exist. The expert also found 175 other e-mails between the two men that never mentioned The Facebook, the company wrote in the motion.

Sounds pretty convincing to me. By all means, let Ceglia's team have at that if they want, but I'm pretty inclined at this point to believe that he's a scammer, coming way late to the "no really I own facebook" party with some forgeries.

Yes, it sounds pretty strong to me. If Facebook didn't strongly believe these were forgeries, they wouldn't be pressing Ceglia for proof, but would be pushing some other defense. Good for Facebook and Mark.

This is huge; saying unilaterally to the court that the documents are forged sets up a massive worst-case "you lied when you told me these are forged" scenario.

Frankly, I'm surprised. I would have guessed that they'd take a "This isn't the The Facebook Book you're looking for" angle.

I'm marking this as the moment that Zuckerberg steps fully into his CEO role; this is a quality counter-attack from someone who is no longer placating early co-founders.

(crossposted from another FB/Zuck thread)

'This looks shopped to me. I can tell from some of the pixels, and from having seen quite a few shops in my time.' ;-)

On the one hand, Ceglia has looked like a highly questionable plaintiff from the outset, and when his first suit sank without trace I wasn't terribly surprised. On the other hand, he's now represented by DLA Piper, one of the largest law firms in the US, and the senior partner who is the lead counsel on his case has a long and distinguished reputation.

It seems unlikely that the firm would risk its time or reputation on such a questionable case without doing some due diligence of their own. There's a big enough market in document authentication/forensic analysis for the legal industry to sustain several companies; they advertise regularly in legal magazines and newspapers. It's not like a new or high-tech concept that would be unfamiliar to Ceglia's lawyers. Sure, it's possible that Ceglia is hiring Kip Hall [1] and his team by the hour, but much more probable that they're working on contingency because they think he has a credible case.

1. http://www.dlapiper.com/kip_hall/

The emails from the Ceglia complaint make Mark sound like a bad parody of the character played by Jesse Eisenberg on the Social Network.

http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/cegliavszuck.pdf?tag=mantle_skin;co...

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you. Then they fight you, then you win.

Sounds like Facebook is now at the fighting stage.

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