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."
Flickr just found a downside to adding support for seven languages to its photo-sharing site: limits on photo sharing and resulting accusations of censorship.
A Flickr protest image
(Credit: Flickr)Flickr launched sites in seven languages Wednesday, expanding beyond just English. But because of a German law, the company decided it had to restrict the photos German members could see to those that had been marked "safe" by members using Flickr's filtering ability that arrived in March. That restriction triggered a forum discussion thread, "Flickr now censoring all moderate and restricted photos from Germany," and an "Against Censorship at Flickr" group.
According to a posting by Flickr staff member Heather Powazek Champ, Flickr had hoped to find a way around a general safe-image restriction for Germans, but "the solutions did not come together."
"The decision to change the Flickr experience in Germany was never about censorship--it was made to try to ensure that Yahoo Germany was in compliance with local legal restrictions," she said. "The central problem is that Germany has much more stringent age-verification laws than its neighboring countries and specifies much harsher penalties, including jail time, for those with direct responsibility," namely Flickr's German office staff.
But Flickr members are still outraged. In the words of user "Remmy1," one comment among the thousands on the subject, "Instead of investing money to solve the issue technically--as so many other companies that are doing business in Germany have obviously done--they are limiting a whole nation (not to forget our affected friends in Austria and Switzerland)."
Flickr hopes to fix things soon, Powazek Champ said.
"We're not perfect (as much as we'd like to be), but everyone on the team is resourceful, fair-minded and determined to find the solution to this," she said.
Meanwhile, she urged Flickr members to trust the company to do the right thing. "We've made and admitted to a couple of big mistakes lately, and as many of you have commented, we should have handled this issue differently. Believe me when I say that we'd rather not make mistakes in the first place, but when we do, take hope in the fact that we always listen, always respond, and often change the system as a direct result of your input," Powazek Champ said.
Flickr founder and general manager Stewart Butterfield has publicly apologized for two mistakes. In the first, Flickr deleted a picture by Icelandic photographer Rebekka Gušleifsdóttir. She said the photo was being sold without her permission by an unaffiliated company, and discussion about the matter had grown heated, leading Flickr to delete the photo.
"The photo was deleted--again, mistakenly--because of the direction the comments had gone, which included posting the personal information of the infringing company's owner and suggestions for how best to exact revenge. It is an emotional issue and most people were there to support Rebekka in a positive way, but some of the angry mob behavior crossed the line," Butterfield said in a forum posting. "There are several policies which will be changing as a direct result of this incident and the goal is that nothing like this ever happens again."
The second incident involved restrictions on photos from sex writer Violet Blue. Butterfield apologized in that case as well, and the company removed most of the restrictions.
Setting appropriate and legal publishing restrictions is a common issue on the Internet, which connects so many vastly different people. As Flickr's Powazek Champ said, "We're all getting really uncomfortable that the words 'Flickr' and 'censorship' are being jammed together with increasing frequency because that is so far from the direction we're trying to move in."
And Flickr has been on the receiving end of censorship actions. Flickr images are being blocked in China, Butterfield has said.
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