The Social

Project Playlist has struck a deal with Sony BMG to bring the label's catalog to its streaming-music service. It's the first major-label deal for Project Playlist, which recently brought former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta on as CEO but has been dealing with legal problems that have seen its widgets banned from social network MySpace.

Currently, Project Playlist has been sued by Warner Music, EMI, and Universal Music Group, as well as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), because of the amount of unauthorized content that members have uploaded to the service. Industry rumors have persisted that Project Playlist was interested in a merger with Imeem, a similar service that has deals with all the major labels.

Reports had surfaced in April that unlike the other labels, Sony BMG was negotiating with Project Playlist rather than seeking legal action against it. Now, months later, that deal has come to fruition.

"Collaborating with Sony BMG is a significant milestone in our effort to improve the access and quality of content on Project Playlist, and enhance the overall user experience," founder Jeremy Riney said in a release. "We hope that we soon will be able to provide our users with ready access to even more of the music they want in the way that they want it."

There are a ton of social music sites out there, but Project Playlist is growing fast: Traffic firm ComScore pegs its user base at 40 million.

As twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss power toward Wednesday's semifinal in the rowing events of the Olympics in Beijing, their longstanding court case against Facebook is winding down.

A San Jose, Calif., judge ruled late last week that ConnectU, the start-up that the brothers founded with Harvard classmate Divya Narendra, must transfer its stock to Facebook as part of the settlement acquisition by Tuesday, despite the claims on behalf of ConnectU that Facebook failed to disclose its true valuation when negotiating the terms of the settlement. The start-up's founders alleged fraud on Facebook's part, and claimed that irreparable harm would ensue from the settlement going through in its present form.

Facebook had been valued on paper at $15 billion when Microsoft took a $240 million stake last November. But that valuation was specific to Microsoft's preferred stock and the business deal surrounding it, Facebook said. Its real valuation is between $3 billion and $4 billion--reports place it at $3.75 billion.

Judge James Ware ruled last Friday that while ConnectU's appeal can be heard, the settlement has to go through first. "The longer the court delays in enforcing the settlement between the parties, the more likely the value of the consideration subject of the settlement (i.e. the value of the stock of each company) will change," Ware wrote in his ruling. "This means that the status quo cannot be preserved with a stay."

Ware originally rejected claims of fraud in June, prompting the appeal.

ConnectU's founders are slated to receive a mixture of cash and Facebook stock as part of the settlement. They originally sued Facebook in 2004, claiming that founder Mark Zuckerberg had swiped their code and business plan after being employed as a ConnectU software developer.

The International Herald Tribune reported on Thursday that Facebook attempted to acquire a look-alike German social network before finally suing it in a federal court last month.

StudiVZ, a German site geared toward college students, is 10 times the size of Facebook's user base in Germany. It also looks just like Facebook, with a different color scheme, which is what ticked off the site's legal team. The court complaint, which called StudiVZ "a knockoff," says "a year and a half after the debut of Facebook's Web site, (it) was built by copying the look, feel, and features of Facebook.com."

The complaint continued: "Facebook is concerned that, because StudiVZ looks like Facebook, and incorporates similar features and functionality to Facebook, users will incorrectly believe that StudiVZ is associated with Facebook."

But according to sources who spoke to the IHT, Facebook first tried to acquire StudiVZ, which would have not only quelled the problem but also bought Facebook some major inroads in the German market. Parent company Georg von Holtzbrinck, however, wasn't satisfied with what Facebook was willing to pay. The German publishing company had acquired StudiVZ for the equivalent of $134 million early in 2007 and reportedly wanted significantly more than that in a hypothetical sale to Facebook.

Intellectual-property lawsuits are nothing unfamiliar at Facebook, which was sued years ago by the creators of onetime rival ConnectU, when they alleged that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had swiped their code and business plan. Facebook settled the lawsuit by effectively acquiring ConnectU for a combination of cash and stock.

But in this case, Facebook is the one crying foul. The IHT noted that because of international borders, it's unclear where this case will be tried. But it's more clear that this case has some foundation: StudiVZ's similarities to Facebook go right on down to the "poke." On the German site, that's called "gruscheln."

In the high school cafeteria of Facebook apps, Scrabulous is like that girl who gets in trouble for showing too much skin, only to throw on a hoodie and be let back into the principal's good graces. Sort of. The game has effectively returned, but with a redesigned board, a few original play options, a different points tabulation system, and a new name, Wordscraper.

Scrabulous' new look as Wordscraper

Props to Adam Ostrow of Mashable for picking up on this one early.

The Facebook application Scrabulous had been taken down by its creators earlier this week when Hasbro, the game manufacturer that owns the rights to Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada, pointed out that Scrabulous was a near copy. Few disagreed with the allegation, but many loyal Scrabulous fans wondered why Hasbro couldn't have struck a deal instead of insisting upon a shutdown, especially as the "real" Scrabble game on Facebook succumbed to technical difficulties.

The reason for Scrabulous' extreme makeover has its roots in some pretty gray legal matters: the real problem wasn't that it ripped off Scrabble, but that it ripped off Scrabble so blatantly. The colors of the board were the same, the list of rules led to a Wikipedia entry for Scrabble rules, and the two names were similar enough for Hasbro to cry foul.

On Wednesday I spoke to Pete Kinsella, a partner at the Faegre & Benson law firm who specializes in intellectual property, and he gave me his take on the gritty details. "Copyrights are not supposed to protect board games," Kinsella explained. "What copyrights protect is the expression of an idea rather than the idea itself."

Returning as Wordscraper is a way for its creators to keep the game running while avoiding legal complaints. In effect, it's just different enough.

"I think there's a very fine line to walk in this one, and the question is whether Scrabulous went over the line or not in mimicking the colors or everything else," Kinsella assessed (keep in mind that we had this conversation before the advent of Wordscraper), "or whether they could've designed a generic version of the game with the same points system and scoring system, and that would've fallen out of Hasbro's copyrights."

So will this end the legal spat? Maybe. If Kinsella's analysis proves accurate, this is probably enough to keep Hasbro's lawyers away. Many other games on Facebook bear strong-but-not-too-strong resemblances to board games like Battleship and Risk, but so far haven't encountered the same corporate scrutiny.

"The law allows people to design around things, and particularly when there isn't patent protection, the law has great incentive to design around things by making things somewhat different," Kinsella said.

Or, for a less digital example, think about all those detergent bottle logos that look suspiciously similar.

You don't mess with Craigslist, apparently.

A fan-run blog called Craigslist Blog has been served a takedown notice from the massive classifieds site, according to a post from blogger Tim White on Thursday.

Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist CEO

(Credit: Craigslist)

White posted the e-mail he'd received from Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster, which claimed that White's URL "craigslistblog.org" was "infringing" and that its name was "needlessly confusing to members of the media and the general public, and must be changed." Buckmaster did not demand that White stop blogging, but he did request that he stop using the domain, turn it over to Craigslist, and additionally stop posting excerpts from Craigslist on the unofficial blog.

In response, White agreed to stop excerpting Craigslist content, and the unofficial Craigslist Blog now prominently displays the phrase "(the unofficial one)" in its masthead. But White wouldn't back down on the domain.

"I think you have received bad legal counsel and that this is potentially a really bad PR move for (Craigslist)," his e-mail response to Buckmaster said, an allusion to the company's friendly, hippie image.

Buckmaster seemed none too pleased with White's response, and in a second e-mail that White posted to his blog, he reminded the blogger that Craigslist's law firm of choice, Perkins Cole, "also does intellectual property work for Google, and for a lot of other prominent companies."

When White launched the Craigslist Blog last month, Craigslist did not have its own blog. That's changed recently, as Buckmaster now authors an official Craigslist blog. A report earlier this week estimated that Craigslist's annual revenue is likely around $80 million and could be significantly higher, except that the company is "not about the money."

Update March 31, 5:07 AM PDT: The post now reflects additional commentary from Amin Ariana.

The creator of a Facebook application called Friendmates doesn't seem to be too thrilled with the social-networking site's new "People You May Know" feature, which launched earlier this week.

"This new feature and its functionality is suspiciously identical to the application I released for Facebook six months ago (albeit with limited resources)," developer Amin Ariana said in an e-mail to CNET News.com, "but it gives no credit to the original author."

Facebook has asserted that if developers apply to its FBFund grant program, there's no guarantee Facebook won't come up with something similar to their business plans. Ariana said that he did not apply for a FBFund grant for Friendmates. Facebook representatives could not comment on whether this also applies to existing platform applications.

"I believe the outcome of this and similar moves without appropriate repercussions in giving credit to developers who are coming up with innovative ideas will ultimately result in the discouragement of such developers and a diminish(ed) effect on innovative thinking," Ariana continued. "I know change cannot be stopped, but along the way giving credit to the little people underneath will be a key to success against competition."

Friendmates isn't exactly SuperPoke or Zombies. The application has only 238 daily active users, which amounts to 9 percent of those who have installed it.

It also doesn't look that similar to "People You May Know." Friendmates allows you to see which friends have the most friends in common with you, tag Facebook members whose faces you recognize, and hear from those who have recognized you. And it invites users to manually tag their friends with how well they know them in order to assess other members whom the users might know.

Additionally, business social-networking site LinkedIn has operated a feature similar to Facebook's for months now.

Amin Ariana maintained that he sees peculiar similarity in the two. "Essentially both apps are technically using common friends to extrapolate (or suggest) potential friends," he said. "The 'suggestion engine' behind them...is the exact same."

And here's some irony: Ariana, as well as Friendmates co-creators Steve Dill and Sean Erle Johnson, are all members of the Microsoft network on Facebook. Microsoft, as you probably know already, has a $240 million stake in Facebook.

But Ariana said in an e-mail that he's not formally a Microsoft employee. "I only contract with them as a software design engineer to make money to support my own small projects, which are not supported by Microsoft in any way," he wrote.