The Social Network

On a fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working on a new idea. In a fury of blogging and programming, what begins in his dorm room soon becomes a global social network and a revolution in communication. A mere six years and 500 million friends later, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history... but for this entrepreneur, success leads to both personal and legal complications. Written by Columbia Pictures Every age has its visionaries who leave, in the wake of their genius, a changed world--but rarely without a battle over exactly what happened and who was there at the moment of creation. "The Social Network" explores the moment at which Facebook was invented--through the warring perspectives of the super-smart young men who each claimed to be there at its inception. The movie moves from the halls of Harvard to the cubicles of Palo Alto to capture the heady early days of a culture-changing phenomenon in the making--and the way it both pulled a group of young revolutionaries together and then split them apart. In the midst of the chaos are Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), the brilliant Harvard student who conceived a Web site; Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), once Zuckerberg's close friend, who provided the seed money for the fledgling company; Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), who brought Facebook to Silicon Valley's venture capitalists; and the Winklevoss twins (Armie Hammer and Josh Pence), the Harvard classmates who asserted that Zuckerberg stole their idea and then sued him for ownership of it. Each has his own narrative, his own version of the Facebook story in this multilevel portrait of 21st Century success--both the youthful fantasy of it and its finite realities as well. Written by Columbia Pictures As told through flashbacks via deposition hearings for two concurrent lawsuits, the development and early days of the social networking website Facebook is presented. Harvard students Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin - officially listed as the co-founders of the website - were once best friends. Based on an on-line blog about his ex-girlfriend and a site he developed allowing its users to rate the hotness factor of girls on campus, Zuckerberg, who exhibited a streak of arrogance, was asked by fellow Harvardites, wealthy twins Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, and their friend Divya Narendra, to enter into an agreement to develop a social networking website specifically for Harvard students, the attraction for people to visit it being its exclusivity solely to Harvard students. Zuckerberg agreed. Zuckerberg, with financing from his friend Saverin, decided instead to develop his own website without telling the "Winklevi" (as he calls the twins) and Narenda. Zuckerberg's assertion was that he never used a line of code provided by the three in his work. As "thefacebook" as it was then called began to blossom, the twins and Narenda had to figure out what to do to regain what they believed their intellectual property without having to sue, since that's not what gentlemanly Harvardites do. As the site was brought to more and more university campuses, Zuckerberg and Saverin began to have a difference of opinion: Saverin wanted to sell ad space to generate revenue (as he had been the website's sole financier and he had profit mentality based on being an economics major), while Zuckerberg, never one interested in money, didn't want to go that route as the ads would make the site lose its "cool" factor, which made it popular. The site attracted the attention of the founder of Napster, Sean Parker, whose own dot com life had its spectacular ups and spectacular

downs. As Parker ingratiated himself into Facebook's life (much to Saverin's chagrin) and as Zuckerberg began increasingly to side with Parker, Saverin slowly began to be phased out of both Zuckerberg's personal and professional life. Written by Huggo Not very good at expressing himself in person, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) first alienates himself from his girlfriend, who feels conversing with him is like working the 'stairmaster', while taking strong exception to his condescending remarks towards her. He and his buddy, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), plagiarize a proposed networking website from Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra, made exclusively for Harvadites - re-naming it 'The Facebook'. This site connects students, describes what drives life in college, who's single, and how to hook-up with girls. Both then are approached by Napster-fame Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), and upon his advise, 'The' is removed - giving birth to the now-revolutionary 'Facebook' - that can be accessed by anyone worldwide - not just a few exclusive campuses. But his competitiveness, inability to communicate, and the urge to be number one, will alienate him, and result in two lawsuits - one from the Winklevoss twins - and the second from none other than Eduardo himself.

Laws Pertaining to Social Networking Sites The two most important statutes to consider when discussing the legal liabilities and obligations of the social networking sites are Section 512(c) of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 512 Section 512(c) removes liability for copyright infringement from websites that allow users to post content, as long as the site has a mechanism in place whereby the copyright owner can request the removal of infringing content. The site must also not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity. This creates an interesting problem for most sites that allow users to post music, photos or video. For instance, several content owners have sued YouTube, the video sharing site, for copyright infringement, and YouTube has claimed a 512(c) defense. Since YouTube is a subsidiary of Google, its future business plan most likely involves serving advertisements according to the kind of video that users view or search for. If the site does this, however, it could amount to a financial benefit directly attributable to the sharing of copyrighted materials. Those cases are currently before federal district courts, and their resolution will greatly impact the services that social networks offer, as well as their business models. Section 230 Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes website from any liability resulting from the publication of information provided by another. This usually arises in the context of defamation, but several courts have expanded it to cover other sorts of claims as well. Thus, if a user posts defamatory or otherwise illegal content, Section 230 shields the social network provider from any liability arising out of the publication. Websites that, in whole or in part, create or develop contested information, on the other hand, are deemed "content providers" that do not benefit from the protections of Section 230. A recent 9th Circuit opinion has called the section's broad coverage into question, and created uncertainty for social networking sites that have relied on Section 230 to protect them from claims relating to the content that their users create. That case, Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley v. Roommates.com, LLC, began when two fair housing groups sued the website Roommates.com, alleging that Roommates.com's roommate networking service violated the Fair Housing Act. The district court found that the website qualified for Section 230 immunity and entered judgment for the website without reaching the question of whether the site did indeed violate the FHA. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded for a trial on the merits.

A divided Ninth Circuit panel found that the website created or developed information on the site in two ways: First, by creating the questions that users answered when creating their profiles. Second, by channeling or filtering the profiles according to the answers to those questions. The court's second justification is fairly controversial, and goes against the widely established precedent granting a broad, robust privilege to interactive service providers. In essence, the panel's ruling holds that, by channeling information to users and providing search capabilities, Roommates.com has added an additional layer of information, "meta-information" you could say, that it is at least partly responsible for creating or developing. The effects of this new "channeling" test could be devastating for social networking sites, many of which operate in similar ways to Roommates.com. Sites could now find themselves open to liability for information posted by third-parties, and this could result in a reduction of the number of speech-related services available online - exactly the opposite of what Congress intended when passing Section 230 in the first place. For example, MySpace.com attempts to restrict the ability to view underage profiles by preventing older users from accessing them. In effect, the web site filters the content based on answers provided during registration to ensure that only minors of certain ages can view other profiles from that age group. This would almost certainly qualify as meta-information under the Roommates.com decision, and would bump MySpace out from under the protection of Section 230. If a sexual predator give a false age on MySpace.com and then lured a victim from the site, would MySpace then be open to claims of negligence in the publication of the information? A federal district court in Texas recently answered that question in the negative, but under this new decision, which carries more jurisprudential weight, courts could swing in the opposite direction and find the web site liable. Given that the Roommates.com decision goes against the body of established precedent for Section 230 cases, however, it is likely that Roommates.com will ask for an en banc review, and it is quite possible that they will prevail during that review. Until then, however, watch for a possible deluge of plaintiffs rushing to court in the Ninth Circuit's jurisdictions in order to sue social networking sites.

The Law of Social Networking Sites: a Primer

By Eric Goldman of Technology & Marketing Law Blog

1. Legal Liability of Users Social networking sites enable users to publish content. Users may not consider themselves content publishers (especially when they write mundane/brief postings), but they are. Publishing content can create a number of legal issues, such as defamation (making harmful false statements about someone else) or copyright infringement. In this respect, social networking sites don't

create any "new" legal issues; users who publish content can be liable for their publication choices just like other content publishers, such as newspapers or magazines.
Question to Consider: Assume that most users don't know the laws applicable to publishing content. Should they be less liable for their publication choices than more knowledgeable content publishers, like newspapers or magazines?

Users often believe that they have some degree of anonymity for their statements and actions on social networking sites, and in some cases they try to hide their true identity. However, users' identities often can be easily revealed through legal processes. Sometimes, users suffer adverse consequences due to their social networking site, such as school discipline, foregone job offers or employment termination.
Questions to Consider: Should it be easy or hard for harmed parties to discover users' identities? Should site operators cooperate with plaintiffs or resist their information requests on behalf of their users? When is it appropriate to take adverse actions against a user outside of the courtroom based on the user's social networking activity?

2. Legal Liability of Social Networking Site Vendors Congress generally protects site vendors from legal liability for user-supplied content. 17 USC 512(c) says that vendors generally aren't liable for user-supplied copyright infringing content unless the copyright owner notifies the vendor and the vendor fails to promptly remove the infringing content. 47 USC 230(c)(1) says that vendors aren't liable under any circumstance for other types of legal claims based on users' content (with minor exceptions).
Questions to Consider: What legal responsibility, if any, should vendors have for user-supplied content? Should it matter if vendors (a) receive notice from a harmed party (or are otherwise aware of the problem) and don't act, or (b) regularly remove user content based on their own editorial standards? Are social networking sites different from other communications media, such as telephones, newspapers or broadcasters?

Some legislators are concerned about the presence of sexual predators on social networking sites, and they have proposed a variety of laws designed to restrict predator access to the sites.
Questions to Consider: What steps should vendors voluntarily take to protect users from sexual predators? What steps should vendors be legally required to take? What liability should vendors face if sexual predators use the site to find and communicate with victims? Plagiarism is using someone else's work without giving proper credit - a failure to cite adequately. Copyright infringement is using someone else's creative work, which can include a song, a video, a movie clip, a piece of visual art, a photograph, and other creative works, without authorization or compensation, if compensation is appropriate.

Schools enforce plagiarism. The courts enforce copyright infringement. 1

What? Did I just copy those definitions from their Web site? As a matter of fact, I did. This is not an example of plagiarism, since I gave credit to the author of the definitions. (See the References section at the bottom of this article.) It's not copyright infringement, either, since my short quote is allowed by the "fair use" exemption in copyright law.

Plagiarism
Plagiarism is using someone else's work without giving proper credit. Schools deal with plagiarism by giving the cheaters academic consequences. Most teachers will give F grades for plagiarized work, and some will do more. When I was a teaching assistant at Stanford University, some students were suspended for copying answers during a test. Plagiarism doesn't have to include copyright infringement. For example, William Shakespeare's plays are not copyrighted because they're too old. Even though it would technically be legal to copy from one of those plays for an English assignment, it would still be plagiarism if you didn't give credit to Shakespeare. Your teacher may not be able to take you to court over it, but she can certainly give you an F. You might even get suspended or expelled from school. Even though copying one sentence from a Web site is legal according to United States copyright laws, that may still count as plagiarism in your teacher's book.

Copyright Infringement
Copyright infringement is using someone else's work without getting that person's permission. The author of any original work, including books, essays, Web pages, songs, pictures, and videos, automatically gets the copyright to that work, even if she doesn't label it with the copyright symbol and her name. The work must be fixed in tangible form, which means it must be stored on something physical, such as paper, canvas, a CD, or a hard disk. This makes college students copyright owners, since they've already written many original works for school. The owner of a copyright gets to decide who can legally make copies of that work. It is illegal to copy large sections of someone else's copyrighted work without permission, even if you give the original author credit. Imagine someone making copies of the movie Finding Nemo without asking for permission. He sure won't get away with it just by giving the authors credit on the DVD cover! Fortunately, a fair use exemption allows you to legally copy small amounts of someone else's work. Just make sure to give the author credit so you won't be guilty of plagiarism! The courts assign consequences for copyright infringement. This means someone may come after you with a lawyer if you violate his copyright. Your school can report copyright infringement to people who have the legal power to take you to court. Students have been sued

for copyright infringement before.2 In some cases, the court may require you to pay the fees for both your lawyer and the copyright owner's lawyer.

Is It Okay to Change Someone Else's Words For My Essay?

Taking a copyrighted work and changing it creates something called a derivative work. Since you made changes to create the derivative work, you share the copyright for it with the copyright owner of the original work. Since you don't own the entire copyright for the derivative work, you must still ask for permission before making copies of it. Because of this, taking someone else's work and changing some of the words only creates a derivative work and does not give you full ownership of the copyright. Even if no one decides to take you to court over it, your teacher might still decide that you are guilty of plagiarism. Instead of paraphrasing someone else's paper and calling it your own, try learning from other people's work first and then writing your own paper from scratch. Read some of these tips for writing an essay in your own words.

Conclusion
Between the consequences for plagiarism and copyright infringement, it's just not worth it to copy other people's work. If you do need to use a few words from another source, take some precautions:

Put those words in quotation marks or indent them to indicate clearly that they are not your own words. Add a footnote to give credit to the original author. Keep the length of your quotation down to a few sentences so you won't be guilty of copyright infringement.

If you're jumpy and want to make extra sure you haven't copied, then plug some phrases from your essay into PlagiarismChecker.com. Hopefully, you'll never have to say that what seems like plagiarism was just an accident. Make sure that your hard work is rewarded with the grade you deserve.

Copyright and Plagiarism

What's the Difference?

Plagiarism comes from a Latin word for "kidnapper." Using the ideas or words of others without acknowledging the source is plagiarism. This is true even if the ideas of someone else are paraphrased or summarized. In scholarly research, plagiarism is considered unethical and dishonest. Copyright is concerned with more than properly crediting sources. Excessive use of another's original work, even if the source is properly acknowledged, may be a copyright infringement.

Plagiarism is abuse of ideas and words from the work of someone else. Copyright is only concerned with original expression. Ideas and words alone cannot be copyrighted without originality. Copyright is addressed in both federal statutes and case law (legal decisions delivered by the courts). Except for some very specific statutes that apply to the results of scientific research for the government, plagiarism does not appear in federal statutes. However, it very well could be grounds for legal action, or in an academic environment, disciplinary action. Copyright laws (title 17, U. S. Code) provide protection to the authors of original works of authorship, including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. For complete copyright information, see the United States Copyright Office's web page. Under copyright law, if you don't own the copyright to a work, you cannot do the following without permission from the copyright holder:

Reproduce copies of the work Create derivitave works based on the work Distribute copies of the work Perform the work publicly Display the work publicly

However, under certain circumstances, using parts of copyrighted works is considered fair use, and is allowable under the law. Courts consider these four factors in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work; amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Information on fair use from the U.S. Copyright Office. Educational uses of copyrighted works, such as class presentations, often fall into the fair use category. Find out more about what copyright means to you as a student in UCLA's tutorial on Intellectual Property. Many authors, musicians, and other creators have begun using Creative Commons licenses, which allow others to use their work in certain ways without asking permission. For more information about Creative Commons, watch this flash movie.

Copyright-Fair Use

Are you starting a new research paper, a video, or other project that involves using and citing sources? This guide presents the basics of copyright, fair use, and citing materials. Links to great library resources for digital media projects are also shared. Download the new Copyright-Fair Use brochure.
Plagiarism

When you use information in a paper or presentation for a class, you're following the fair use doctrine, and you don't need to get permission from the copyright holder. You do, however, need to properly cite the source for any text, images, or other media you use in a class project in order to avoid plagiarism. Using someone else's thoughts or ideas as your own without properly giving credit is plagiarism. It is your responsibility to understand what plagiarism is and know how to avoid it. The following resources offer some information and guidance. The first step is to define the terms plagiarism and copyright infringement. Plagiarism is taking the writings or ideas of someone else and publishing them as your own without giving credit to the originator. It is a very specific unethical act but NOT illegal in and of itself. A copyright, on the other hand, is a legal protection provided by U.S. and international law to the authors of "original works of authorship" in any tangible medium of expression. The expression may be captured in words, numbers, notes, sounds, pictures, or any other media. The coverage area of copyright law is extremely broad, including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, audiovisual, and architectural works. Copyright protection is available to both published and unpublished works. Under the Copyright Act of 1976, the copyright owner has the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform and display the work, and produce derivative works. 2 It is also important to know that there are very limited exceptions under the copyright law that allow uses that would otherwise be illegal. In general, those exceptions are first and foremost, that the owner of the copyright can give it away or sell it to someone else. Although it does happen, more often then not, it is the other exceptions that come into play. For example the "fair use" doctrine, under which a court may excuse unauthorized uses that would otherwise be infringing. Some exceptions under "fair use" are criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. The Copyright Act also contains a number of statutory limitations covering specific uses for educational, religious, and charitable purposes. 3 So now we have the definitions of plagiarism and copyright infringement, along with copyright law exceptions; what are the main practical differences between the two? * Documents in the public domain ARE NOT subject to copyright infringement laws. Just because it is on the internet or the radio though, does not make it public domain. Items in the public domain are works of art, music, literature or any other item of intellectual property that does not belong to anyone specific, but instead belongs to the public in general as historical treasures. The most common examples are government publications and creative works where the copyright has expired. On the other hand, it CAN be plagiarized by using the material

without giving credit to the original creator. * Using even a small amount of another author's work CAN be plagiarism, but it takes a somewhat substantial amount (the heart), in order to qualify as a copyright infringement. This is a pretty murky area when it comes to what is "substantial" under the law. It isn't a concept of the number of words used, it is more of a concept of whether the heart or substance of the author's work was taken.

* Ideas, concepts, and facts CAN be plagiarized but they CANNOT be copyrighted.

Section 4 Plagiarism and copyright violation Plagiarism and copyright violations are both offences liable to punishment. They are closely related, yet not completely the same. Plagiarism Copyright violation Intellectual dishonesty Legal offence Intellectual peers, e.g., Senate, The courts professional society Get the authorization from the Cite the original author copyright owner Very stringent Reasonable fair use allowed

Nature Who enforces it How to avoid it Threshold of violation*

* This is probably a source of confusion, and a reason why students sometimes commit plagiarism without realizing it.

Plagiarism. To avoid plagiarism, there are very strict rules. Sometimes using only a few words, or even adopting some concepts without using any of the exact words, could amount to plagiarism. See the last section for details. Copyright violation. There is the principle of fair use or fair dealing: it is possible to copy a reasonable amount of a published work without violating copyright.

Several (extreme and perhaps silly) examples will illustrate the difference between plagiarism and copyright violation. Example 1 Student A copies a sonnet from Shakespeare and submits it as his own work. This is plagiarism. However this is not a violation of copyright, because the law only protects copyright for a certain period of time. In the case of Shakespeare, copyright has lapsed and anybody can re-publish the original texts of Shakespeare for free.

Example 2 Professor A has published a book of 300 pages. Student B publishes another book, the content of which is Professor A has written "(copy 300 pages)". This is a wonderful book. This would not constitute plagiarism, because Student B has made it very clear, by the use of quotation marks, that the material is not his own original work. But this would be a violation of copyright, and the publisher of Professor A's book will sue Student B. Example 3 Professor A has written a book, and assigned the copyright to Publisher B (in return for royalty payments). He subsequently uses one chapter of the book in another publication. In this instance he would not be guilty of plagiarism, since it is his own work intellectually; but he would have violated copyright the copyright is legally owned by Publisher B. In terms of copyright, extracts from the Laws of Hong Kong may be useful to read. Plagiarism shares some elements with copyright infringement. Both situations can involve the unauthorized use of intellectual property. However, it is possible to plagiarize without infringing on a copyright. For example, if a student preparing a report chooses to use a quote from a source and does not properly cite the original source, he or she is essentially claiming the quote to be his or her own words. This amounts to stealing the words of another person. While the quote may be from a work in the public domain and is not subject to any claims of compensation, plagiarism has still taken place. There is also a legal difference between copyright infringement and plagiarism. Federal laws in many countries protect the interests of citizens who hold copyrights. When those copyrighted works are used without permission, the owner has legal recourse to collect damages as well as receive a share of any revenue generated from the unauthorized use. In some countries, it is possible for the punishment to include a prison sentence if copyright infringement is proven in a court of law. By contrast, plagiarism is usually more a matter of ethics than of law. The failure to provide a proper citation for a direct quote will not necessarily carry any type of legal punishment. However, engaging in plagiarism often leads to censure by academic institutions and employers. For example, a writer who presents the work of another writer as his or her own and is caught in the act of plagiarism is likely to be dismissed from the workplace. Freelance writers who plagiarize often find that word gets around and it becomes extremely difficult to secure assignments. While the chances of going to jail for plagiarism are somewhat limited, the negative impact can have repercussions that will last for years. Because of fair use practices in many countries, copyright law can sometimes blur the lines between copyright infringement and plagiarism. This means that it is possible to plagiarize and be guilty of copyright infringement at the same time. However, plagiarism that is also copyright

infringement is usually not pursued in a court of law unless some type of economic harm to the owner can be demonstrated.