Winklevoss twins must accept Facebook deal: court | Reuters

Winklevoss twins must accept Facebook deal: court | Reuters

By Dan Levine

SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Apr 11, 2011 3:13pm EDT

(Reuters) - Mark Zuckerberg won the latest legal battle against former Harvard classmates who accuse him of stealing their idea for Facebook, a multimillion-dollar feud made famous on the silver screen.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss must accept a settlement with Facebook that had been valued at $65 million, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Monday. The twins argued that deal was unfair because Facebook hid information from them at the time.

But the Winklevosses were sophisticated negotiators aided by a team of lawyers, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in a unanimous opinion.

'The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace,' Kozinski wrote.

Attorneys for the twins did not respond to a request for comment.

The 6-foot, 5-inch (1.96-meter) brothers are Olympic rowers who participated in the 2008 games in Beijing, and their saga with Zuckerberg was dramatized in the film 'The Social Network.'

In the movie, actor Armie Hammer played both identical twins. Zuckerberg's character snidely called them on-screen the 'Winklevi.'

The twins, along with Divya Narendra, started a company called ConnectU while at Harvard. They say that Zuckerberg stole their idea. Facebook denies these claims.

The three had agreed to a settlement that had been valued at $65 million. But they argue that based on an internal valuation that Facebook did not disclose, they should have received more Facebook shares as part of the deal.

Facebook took in $1.2 billion of revenue in 2010's first nine months, according to documents that Goldman Sachs provided to clients to entice investors in a special fund set up to invest in the giant social networking firm.

The company was valued at $50 billion as part of that transaction.

A lower court had granted Facebook's request to enforce the settlement with the Winklevoss twins and Narendra. The 9th Circuit agreed on Monday.

'At some point, litigation must come to an end,' Kozinski wrote. 'That point has now been reached.'

Facebook deputy general counsel Colin Stretch said the company appreciated the court's careful consideration of the case, and was 'pleased' it ruled in their favor.

The case in the 9th Circuit is The Facebook Inc v. ConnectU Inc. 08-16745.

(Reporting by Dan Levine, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

Winklevoss twins must accept Facebook deal: court | Reuters

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Dutch boy arrested for WikiLeaks-related DDoS attacks on Mastercard and PayPal | Naked Security

Dutch boy arrested for WikiLeaks-related DDoS attacks on Mastercard and PayPal

by Graham Cluley on December 9, 2010 | Comments (45)

FILED UNDER: Featured, Law & order, Malware

According to an announcement by the Dutch Public Prosecution Service, a 16-year-old boy has been arrested in connection with the distributed denial-of-service attacks that have been launched against a number of websites this week, including MasterCard and PayPal.

The attacks, which have made the headlines in the last couple of days, have seemingly been in support of the controversial WikiLeaks whistle-blowing site and its high profile founder Julian Assange.

Details are very sketchy, but it is reported that the unnamed youth is in police custody and is being interrogated by detectives from the Dutch National High-Tech Crime Team. He is said to have confessed to the attacks, and is due to appear in court in Rotterdam on Friday.

Computers have also been seized, and it appears that the authorities are not ruling out further arrests. Last night, Dutch broadcasters reported that the police visited the offices of LeaseWeb and EvoSwitch - two firms, believed to be providing internet services to the Anonymous group who have co-ordinated the attacks.

Of course, it is highly unlikely that the attacks are coming from just one part of the world.

As I said just earlier today, denial-of-service attacks are illegal - and you would be very foolish to participate in them, as the penalties can include lengthy jail sentences.

Tags: Anonops, DDoS, denial of service, Wikileaks

Dutch boy arrested for WikiLeaks-related DDoS attacks on Mastercard and PayPal | Naked Security

What Goes Around Comes Around to Google (AAPL, GOOG, MSFT, ORCL)

What Goes Around Comes Around to Google

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2010/08/13/what-goes-around-comes-around-to-google.aspx

Anders Bylund

August 13, 2010

Way back in 2007, when Sun Microsystems was still a stand-alone business and Android a mere glimmer in Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) eye, Sun had a problem with the way Android built on the Java software platform. The problem was fragmentation: Android doesn't run bog-standard Java code, but instead translates programs written for that platform into its own format, which is then executed by the Dalvik virtual machine that is the cold, robotic heart of any Android gadget. At the time, Google waved away the objections like Obi-Wan waving his droids through a storm trooper checkpoint: Android is part of the solution to Java fragmentation, not the problem -- Sun should love Google for replacing Java with its own far-reaching standard. Sun never made any official stink about it again, even though Google's reaction smelled like the insides of a dead tauntaun. Until now, that is. Sun parent Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) is now suing Google for patent infringement, claiming that: "In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle's Java-related intellectual property." Oracle is looking for treble damages ("triple" in legalese, not the other half of "treble and bass") and wants to stop Google from shipping, selling, or promoting Android. That would certainly hurt Google. This lawsuit was a bit of a shock to me, because I assumed that Google had made the problem go away by some sort of proactive action. But the legal complaint states in no uncertain terms that Google lacks the licenses required to use Java in this way. This case echoes of a long-running action Sun carried out against Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) last decade over strikingly similar problems. Mr. Softy ended up paying $1 billion in damages for that one, and Oracle would probably love a settlement of that scale again. I'm guessing here, but it would make sense for Google to settle this affair quickly and quietly -- pay up a license fee for the right to use and modify the Java platform and then go on with business as usual. There is an alternative development framework available for Android programmers, based on the much more bare-metal C/C++ programming language. Going to that model exclusively would require hordes of Android developers to learn a new and arguably more difficult language. That would be a serious roadblock in the race to outgrow the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone store in application quantity. Java has been released under an open-source license after all -- excluding the mobile version. Oracle's stock is falling harder than Google's today. Are investors worried that Oracle alienates its own worldwide developer base here by raising thorny and nearly forgotten licensing issues? Discuss in the comments box below.

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What Goes Around Comes Around to Google (AAPL, GOOG, MSFT, ORCL)

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