I just got home from watching the movie, fired up HN and was pleased to see this review. But now I'm wondering if Lessig and I watched the same movie. I don't think it portrays the Zuckerberg character as evil or the others as victims.
The Winkelvii, as the movie hilariously calls them, seem indignant not so much that their idea was "stolen" as that the geek refused to know his place, which presumably was to code things up for them in exchange for token equity. They're not bad guys, but they're angry that their skewed view of the world, with them naturally at the top, turns out wrong. The movie does not make it seem like the Zuckerberg character owes these dudes shit or that they could ever in 65 million years have created Facebook. They thought of an exclusive friends website merely because they were steeped in exclusivity to begin with. Only the Zuckerberg character grasps its real power. That's the meaning of the lightbulb moment where a friend asks him about a girl and he suddenly sees "relationship status" as a way for Facebook to address this need.
The Saverin character (marvelously acted, by the way - who is that guy? - his emotional vibrancy is remarkable) is sympathetic but clueless, doggedly trying to turn Facebook into a small business that ekes out a bit of ad revenue. His dream for Facebook is that it be allowed to join the business club the way he personally craves admission into a prestigious student club. His happiest moment is when he gets an executive title; his main frustration that more mid-level ad execs don't throw him a few bones. The movie makes it clear that despite being "the business guy" he has no understanding of the business, whereas the Zuckerberg character grasps it instinctively, spends half the movie trying to explain it to him and finally gives up. On this point I think the movie gets startups right. I was rather astonished by that. The other point on which it gets startups -- and Facebook's significance as a startup -- right is in its emphasis on the founder as CEO. The contrast between Parker as the dot-com era founder who got deposed and Zuckerberg as a new generation of founder who retains control is pretty impressive historical precision on the part of filmmakers who presumably don't know much about startups.
(Incidentally, it also gets technical details right: the references to wget and Emacs in the opening scene made my jaw drop for a moment.)
As for Saverin, the movie consistently implies that he could never have remained part of Facebook, not because Zuckerberg is evil but because the abyss between the two of them is huge. Indeed, the tragic inevitability of their split is the core plot of the movie. (The Winkelvoss twins are mostly comic relief, and boy did those actors nail that.) It does, however, portray Saverin getting screwed out of his Facebook stock and Zuckerberg not doing anything about it; that was perhaps the one evil moment.
Even the Sean Parker character is only half-bad. He's a bad boy, but that's a dramatic device: the movie badly needs some shaking-up by the time Timberlake appears and his character comes with the trickster energy to do it. Beyond that, though, the Sean Parker character is the only one who gets what Zuckerberg is doing, the only one who gives consistently good advice, and the one who acts as a midwife to Facebook's birth as a real startup.
As for the Zuckerberg character, he's portrayed as an intense Asperger type who cares more about his vision than he does other people, but also more than money. The movie flirts with but eventually abandons the idea that he's motivated by petty revenge. His obsession is with making Facebook as big as it can get. I've never seen Zuckerberg as an Aspie type (and thought the actor overdid that aspect, going out of his way to hold the same furrowed expression the entire movie), but the obsession with making something great and refusal to let anything stand in its way are classic entrepreneurial qualities that the movie grants to Zuckerberg fully.
I think Lessig is wrong about the trite moral he thinks the movie is imposing on the story. The movie doesn't advance that interpretation, it vividly portrays some of the characters advancing it. That's totally different. The movie per se isn't concerned with individual characters. Everyone is granted his/her perspective but no one has any absolute status. What it's about is The Social Network, not the online one, the real one.
I went to this movie grudgingly and left surprised by how bad I didn't find it. Guess I shouldn't be, since David Fincher is my favorite working director (or would be if I could forget the execrable Benjamin Button); as Bob Mondello said on NPR the other night, I'd pay to watch him direct the phone book. Beyond that, the acting is unusually good all the way down to the cameos (except the Zuckerberg actor is too monotone). Where I really disagree with Lessig is about the writing, which he loved and which to me was ok-with-awful-bits: it's smart the way that "smartass" is smart and has way too many TV zingers. (Even those, though, were toned down from the script that was leaked. That horribly contrived line everyone was quoting a few months ago where a girl tells Zuckerberg that girls will always hate him because he's an asshole, I'm happy to report, never made it into the film. [<-- edit: oops! wrong!] Fincher has taste.)
I thought the film did a great job of making Saverin very sympathetic as a character, while also making the reason for him being pushed out very understandable. You really like the guy, but the movie makes it clear that he has no idea what's really happening.
- The Florida LLC.
- The Gary's Tuxedo ads
- He doesn't know how to update his own relationship status.
- He never really appears to do anything CFO-like other than write a few checks. The important stuff was all being done by the devs.
In the film, Saverin wanted to be somebody while Zuckerberg wanted to make something. That's why he had to be shown the door.
Is it really? Wow, I hate that line so much I must have selectively misheard it. Sorry!
Oh actually, now I remember: we got there a few minutes late. I didn't even realize there was an opening dinner scene. The first thing I saw was an upset-looking Z running across campus. Since the credits were still rolling I assumed the movie was beginning in medias res, and it worked fine that way. Who knows, maybe even better that way.
I don't think it was meant so much as a zinger. It was more of an outsider's clueful view of what the Zuckerberg character has been doing wrong all those years. Judging by the portrayal in the movie, the Zuckerberg character actually has been trying really hard to be an asshole -- emulating the Sean Parker character when that role model stepped into view. Of course, he was initially told he was an asshole before meeting Parker; it seems he was aiming for that kind of sense of superiority before, though in a less focused manner, perhaps by trying to achieve a level of "cool" in general that was informed by the "coolness" of the assholes around him at Harvard. The Parker character just stepped neatly into the role of The Perfect Asshole for the Zuckerberg character.
Note that I refer to the characters, and particularly to the Zuckerberg character. I do not know enough about Parker to make any guesses about whether he is anything like the character in this movie. I also think that the real Zuckerberg either is not simply trying to be an asshole, but rather is an asshole, or has tried hard and long enough that he succeeded. Zuckerberg's now-famous quote about The Facebook's early users being dumbfucks for "trusting" him suggests he was an asshole from day one.
Zuckerberg's now-famous quote about The Facebook's early users being dumbfucks for "trusting" him suggests he was an asshole from day one.
I don't agree. There are many things that comment might have been. For example, it could have been mock-cynical humour. The truth is we don't know and it's impossible to tell. What it undeniably is, though, is convenient for anyone who'd like some "evidence" to go with their pre-existing judgment.
I'm not that interested in Facebook and have never paid much attention to Zuckerberg, but after seeing the movie I was curious and read a few things. They confirmed my pre-existing judgment, which is that he's nothing like the nasty Aspergerite of the movie. Also, a lot of people I respect feel protective towards him and stand up for him. That indicates something. So why, I wonder, do so many others hate him? Even if he has done every single bad thing that's been reported (obviously an upper bound on grounds for hate) the intensity of emotion people have about this guy still seems excessive. Well, there's a simple explanation at hand: he's the youngest self-made billionaire ever. Anyone in that position would be widely hated. It's just easier for people to cope with his massive success if they can add the idea that he's an asshole -- these are two mental molecules that bond into a very stable compound -- because now the brain can say, "I may not be the youngest billionaire in the world, but at least I'm not an asshole". Frankly, when we find ourselves feeling angry in this way, it's time to look in a mirror.
Oh and one more thing about the zingers: that script seemed to me to have been optimized for how many smug one-liners could be crammed into it, with no concern for how people actually think or talk. This is good writing? It's writing designed to get people to say "what good writing". I'm surprised that so many critics and smart people fall for this; it's the intellectual equivalent of mistaking ostentatious glitz for taste. To me, Sorkin and Mezrich are the real assholes of this story.
What annoys me about Zuckerberg is his own obvious connection to Facebook's in-practice attitudes toward user privacy.
Perhaps "asshole" is the wrong term for him, really. It's possible he even means well. Meaning well is no excuse for taking advantage of people, pulling regular bait-and-switch maneuvers, and generally doing things on a regular basis that show obvious and nigh-malicious disregard for the privacy concerns of millions of credulous users.
I have no problem with people being billionaires. I hope to be one myself some day (hope springs eternal), and I'd have nothing but respect for how Zuckerberg got there if he had not used such sketchy tactics as part of his path to riches.
He also played in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarion of Doctor Parnassus (which I just first saw last week) and was also there a very sympathetic character. I recommend it, it's odd in typical Gilliam fashion. It also has the distinction of being Heath Ledger's last film.
Right, standard twin technique I guess. I was disappointed in Eisenberg for playing Zuckerberg like such a cliché. His character really doesn't do anything all movie except scowl and deliver socially inappropriate zingers, with a couple interludes of unconvincing forlornness about girl(s). Oh and build a business empire, but the movie takes that for granted.
Maybe it's the director's fault. He seems not to have found the character very interesting. But it weakens a movie to have a one-dimensional lead.
Those lines actually come directly from Zuckerberg's original blog. The voiceover as he works is exactly the text he wrote as he originally worked on hacking into the various houses' facebooks.
As someone who has often cheered Lessig's opposition to the status quo, I am greatly puzzled by this piece.
Did Zuckerberg breach his contract? Maybe, for which the damages are more like $650, not $65 million. Did he steal a trade secret? Absolutely not. Did he steal any other “property”? Absolutely not—the code for Facebook was his, and the “idea” of a social network is not a patent. It wasn’t justice that gave the twins $65 million; it was the fear of a random and inefficient system of law.
If we take Lessig's factual assertions about the originality of the code as face value, it still seems as if Zuckerberg ripped off a lot of ideas that were shared in confidence, and repeatedly deceived the originators of those ideas into thinking that he was working diligently on their behalf.
I can't understand Lessig's criticism of the system as stated. It is not as if these ideas were found by Zuckerberg on a Usenet forum or overheard on the bus, and the Winkelvoss twins then went after him with an army of copyright lawyers; some sort of proposal was followed by some sort of agreement, and Zuckerberg was given access to the fundamentals of a business plan and the existing work product of two other programmers. Perhaps Zuckerberg had already had a vision for Facebook and simply accelerated his schedule in order to get it to market first; but if so, one wonders why he was wasting time on taking meetings for programming jobs.
What does Lessig consider the twins should have done instead? Would he be on their side if they had drafted a proper contract, NDAs, and stamped everything they ever put on paper with the words 'Property of ConnectU, hands off'? Or is it that he doesn't consider their idea sufficiently distinctive to be protectable by the legal system? Because he never articulates quite what he means, I'm left with the impression that Lessig considers the commons to extend to any exchange of an incomplete or unrealized idea, without regard for the context in which that exchange takes place. By this interpretation, the notion of a 'gentleman's agreement' is obsolete, what you own is limited to what you can control, and any lapse in total secrecy is your loss to bear.
Indeed, I saw this view expressed repeatedly during the fuss over the iPhone prototype earlier this year. Many considered the finder of the device the new owner, regardless of his legal obligations and his knowledge of exactly who had lost it. The value the finder, and subsequently Gizmodo, sought to derive from their possession of it stemmed from the very confidentiality and general unavailability of such prototypes. But many considered possession to be fully equivalent to ownership (on a moral if not a legal level), conferring the right to exploit what one possessed to the fullest extent possible. Quite why legal technicalities of a search warrant issued shortly afterwards should have offended their sensibilities so greatly, I can't say - they certainly weren't bothered by any statutory considerations, so it must have been to do with some inexcusable lapse of style by the police.
If we are not bound to respect each other's property or confidence by anything less than our full contractual agreement, does Lessig then see progress as the outcome of an arms race between zero-sum competitors? Why should I not steal his car if he steps out of it and leaves his keys in the ignition, and place the blame upon 'the system' if Lessig summons a policeman to his aid? The value of his car stems from its current configuration as a vehicle, and Lessig is arguing that designs do not belong to anyone in particular. the materials which make up the car - some steel, rubber and various kinds of plastic - are mere commodities, and at most I have laid hands upon some junk which just happens to be organized into the shape of a vehicle at present. If I drive it away and wrap it around a tree, what has Lessig lost? With enough time and ingenuity, he could reassemble the wreckage into a working automobile: others have done no less, so why does he feel entitled to have his idea of a car actualized at someone else's expense, just because it existed independently in the recent past?
You don’t even have to possess Zuckerberg’s technical genius to develop your own idea for the Internet today. Websites across the developing world deliver high quality coding to complement the very best ideas from anywhere.
Unless, of course, they decide to launch against you as a competitor instead, in which case you had best resign yourself to basking in the reflections of their glory.
Given the midnight byline on the post, I cannot help wondering if this was written with the assistance of a post-premiere cocktail. I hardly feel he would ignore such gaping holes in any counter-argument.
You're missing Lessig's central point: $65 million is a ridiculous amount to pay for whatever Zuckerberg got out of Harvard twins and amounts to extortion and abuse of legal system.
If we go by the movie, Zuckerberg and twins met at most a couple of days, they described the general idea of the site (which, by that time, wasn't anything original: it was My Space or Friendster except with exclusivity) and he agreed to program the site. Except he didn't and instead created such a site, from scratch, by himself, dodging the twins the whole time (which implies they had no further contact except the initial meetings).
That might be an asshole move but I don't see where did twins contribute anything worth remotely $65 million. If anything at all.
If you're under assumption that if you talk to me, describe an idea for a website to me and I go ahead and implement a similar idea (with no help from you) then you deserve any part of revenue for it, they you're very much mistaken.
The reason we have NDAs, contracts and other sorts of legal tools is precisely because the above scenario doesn't play the way you think it does and if you want to protect your ideas, you can either use trade secrets (i.e. don't blab about them) or get the other party to sign a contract that spells out his rights wrt. to ideas you're planning to disclose.
It really is that simple and Winklevosses won legal lottery - there was no merit in their claims.
In November 2003, upon the referral of Victor Gao, the Winklevosses and Narendra approached Mark Zuckerberg about joining the HarvardConnection team.[9] On the evening of November 30th, they all met in the dining hall of Harvard's Kirkland House, where the Winklevosses and Narendra explained to an enthusiastic Zuckerberg the HarvardConnection website; a social network for Harvard students that was to expand to other schools around the country.[6] During the meeting, Zuckerberg allegedly entered into an oral contract with Narendra and the Winklevosses and become a partner in HarvardConnection.[1] Zuckerberg allegedly chose to be compensated in the form of sweat equity.[10][11]
Later that evening, Zuckerberg told Cameron Winklevoss in an email that he didn't expect completion of the project to be difficult. Zuckerberg writes: "I read over all the stuff you sent and it seems like it shouldn't take too long to implement, so we can talk about that after I get all the basic functionality up tomorrow night."[9] The next day, on December 1st, 2003, Zuckerberg sent another email to the HarvardConnection team. "I put together one of the two registration pages so I have everything working on my system now. I'll keep you posted as I patch stuff up and it starts to become completely functional."[6] On December 4th, 2003, Zuckerberg writes: "Sorry I was unreachable tonight. I just got about three of your missed calls. I was working on a problem set."[6] On December 10, 2003: "The week has been pretty busy thus far, so I haven't gotten a chance to do much work on the site or even think about it really, so I think it's probably best to postpone meeting until we have more to discuss. I'm also really busy tomorrow so I don't think I'd be able to meet then anyway."[6] On December 17th, 2003, a week later: "Sorry I have not been reachable for the past few days. I've basically been in the lab the whole time working on a cs problem set which I"m still not finished with."[6] On January 8, 2004, Zuckerberg emailed to say he was "completely swamped with work [that] week" but had "made some of the changes ... and they seem[ed] to e working great" on his computer. He said he could discuss the site starting the following Tuesday, on Jan. 13.[9] On January 11th, 2004, Zuckerberg registered the domain name thefacebook.com.[12] Three days later, on January 14th, 2004, Zuckerberg met again with Tyler Winklevoss, Cameron Winklevoss and Divya Narendra about HarvardConnection, however, he never mentioned registering the domain name thefacebook.com or a competing website, rather he reported progress on HarvardConnection, told them he would continue to work on it, and would email the group later in the week.[9] On February 4th, 2004, Zuckerberg launched thefacebook.com.
The Winklevosses and Narendra attempted to force the Harvard administration to act on what they viewed as a violation of the university’s honor code. They took the case to the Harvard Administrative Board and the university president Larry Summers, but it was ruled to be outside of university jurisdiction.[13]
Nobody suggests they made $65m worth of contributions. They got that amount because it was mutually agreed to reflect something like the value of what they had initiated considered as if it were equity at launch, and adjusted to reflect the capital gains they might have expected to enjoy from holding such a slice of equity. You think $65 million is a ton of money, but given that Facebook was valued at somewhere between $4 and $15 billion at the time, it's peanuts - something in the vicinity of 2%, at most. But nobody would care if it were expressed in percentage terms because it doesn't sound so unreasonable now, does it?
I do not agree that it is extortion and abuse. They made a case that Zuckerberg pulled, as you say, an 'asshole move'; and that he repeatedly misled them into thinking that he was devoting all his technical efforts to their mutual benefit, while they focused on other sorts of business development. I don't know precisely what that involved, but I rather doubt that just because they were not themselves programmers they must have spent the entire period sitting on the couch doing nothing.
Yes, if you want legal peace of mind and defensible security, then the best option is to have NDAs and watertight contracts all around. But if those are a prerequisite for any kind of trust to exist, then our legal system would bear a much greater resemblance to the code-based civil law systems which obtain in most of Europe and South America. As things stand, we give substantial weight to common law, with its emphasis on precedent and judicial independence.
You may dislike common law for its ambiguity and unpredictability - although I suspect you would chafe under the mechanical inflexibility of the alternative when you find yourself waiting a month or longer for the registration of your business to be completed so that you can legally start harvesting people's data for fun and profit. but either way, Zuckerberg started his empire in this country, and if he paid attention in his classes on American government he knew there might be some legal risks in what he was doing.
And when that turned out to be the case, he got over his egotistical reactions and eventually settled for a marginal sum, like a smart person.
I find it fascinating that the people on HN, of ALL places, aren't more sympathetic to that point. All of us that have built (or are building) companies have brought a Zuckerberg into our confidence some point.
Hell, most recently I was a Zuckerberg. My partner had an idea and the foundations to pull it of. He just needed a partner (me) with the technical chops to make it happen. I could have spent a few days picking his brain and stolen everything I could for my own gain.
I didn't... and things have worked out really well for us.
For me Zuckerberg is a villian. I've never met the guy, but from what I can tell he committed the most unforgivable act imaginable. He stole a vision, and actively worked to string those who trusted him along as far as he could. That's not something to celebrate, it's something to despise.
$65M seems fair to me. Hell it seems low. Fraud really does pay sometimes.
If the ConnectU team had been competently-run, the founders would have realized that their idea was their biggest asset at the time (they had zero execution), and kept it more closely-guarded. Instead, they blurted it out to Zuck before he even agreed to work with him, while completely neglecting to employ the use of NDAs, non-competes, or similar documents. I'm loathe to defend a legal system so "random and inefficient" (as Lessig puts it) that it would allow the ConnectU team to extract $65 million from Zuckerberg regardless.
Was it unethical for Zuckerberg to take advantage of their ignorance? I don't think so. He saw an idea he liked in the hands of a couple of people who weren't implementing it correctly, so he did it himself. That describes about half the startups that exist today.
Was it unethical for him to lie to the Winklevosses in order to delay their progress as a company? Definitely. But at worst, it amounts to unethical intellectual bullying of an incompetent and inferior competitor. Given that he didn't break any laws, didn't steal any code, and didn't sign any contracts (to my knowledge), I find the eventual $65million settlement hard to stomach.
What's different from this "version" than what you've heard elsewhere?
I've searched and found no mentions of NDAs/non-competes. The only contract ever mentioned is an oral contract, which means they told him the idea, and then I he agreed to work on it. In addition, Zuck's subsequent deceiving emails to ConnectU are well-documented.
My point is not to challenge the facts about what occurred and when. My point is that the concept of "oral contract" is hugely vague: clearly Zuckerberg didn't believe he had a legal obligation to complete their website. And in this case, the ramifications ($65 million) of breaking such a vague agreement were much too high.
Your interpretation is not the only possible one, and fails to consider the significance of the fraud involved. If it was a story of two business guys who stole a pile of code and built a business I suspect you'd be demanding jail time.
Lessig is no fan of intellectual property of any form. Apparently he's also not so much for effective contract or the value of someone's word as a bond.
That's ad hominem BS. He explicitly is against extremist copyright - and I find it difficult to disagree with him re the continuous extensions of copyright terms, and attacks on fair use - but that opposition to extremism also extends to copyright abolitionists:
"My real fear is that the last 10 years have unleashed a kind of revolutionary attitude among the generation that will take over in 10 years. And it will be hard for them to distinguish between sensible copyright legislation and the kind that we’ve got right now. So my real fear is we’re going to lose control of this animal... I just want to reform [copyright] to make it make sense."
So my real fear is we’re going to lose control of this animal... I just want to reform [copyright] to make it make sense.
As one of those "revolutionary", I thought any possibility of sensible copyright reform is utterly silly and impossible.
Instead, I thought the business case will determine the survivability of copyright as an institution in Western civilization.
In my opinion, the laws will cramp down on those pirateers, but in reality will not drain out the revolutionary impulse. Piracy is not a revolutionary act. It is an act that support the copyright interest, but not the interest of anti-copyright. The Pirate Party are not revolutionaries, but reformers. Nor are they're a bunch of people who want free musics as far as I know.
Instead, the revolutionary spirit seem to be embodied in anarchistic techno-libertarianism that infect some of our fellow hackers.
Lessig have nothing to fear from the current population revolting. In my experience, most young people actually have no opinion on intellectual property right. It is probable that once young people actually have money, they'll just purchase musics out of convenience. I tend to find that copyright abolitionism has won most people on the techno-libertarianism spectrum. You're more likely to see them concocting business models and engaging in counter-economic activities rather than concocting silly legislative effort.
I had always thought his basic idea was to reduce the concept of copyright back to a 'limited term' of something less than a human lifespan, and to promote alternative things like Creative Commons or one or other of the open source licenses. I haven't looked at any of his more recent books, perhaps he has to stake out ever more radical positions to up the stakes?
Anyway, this seems like publicity-surfing more than anything else. I suppose if I turn on the TV tomorrow it'll be the #1 movie in America or something.
Why should I not steal his car if he steps out of it and leaves his keys in the ignition, and place the blame upon 'the system' if Lessig summons a policeman to his aid? The value of his car stems from its current configuration as a vehicle, and Lessig is arguing that designs do not belong to anyone in particular. the materials which make up the car - some steel, rubber and various kinds of plastic - are mere commodities, and at most I have laid hands upon some junk which just happens to be organized into the shape of a vehicle at present. If I drive it away and wrap it around a tree, what has Lessig lost? With enough time and ingenuity, he could reassemble the wreckage into a working automobile: others have done no less, so why does he feel entitled to have his idea of a car actualized at someone else's expense, just because it existed independently in the recent past?
This is not a "review" so much as it is Lessig explaining why the internet is different, and why it is important, and why it matters to you. Especially to you, reader of Hacker News.
Reading this review has further improved my opinion of Lawrence Lessig.
It's not a "review" so much as it is Lessig explaining why he is different, why he is important, and why he matters to you.
The pretentious tone (ridiculous parentheticals, using and linking "grok" for no reason) doesn't help, but all he does is criticize Sorkin for, as a "Hollywood type", missing the real story, which is how awesome and revolutionary the Internet is; plus apparently making the lawyers look too good. There should totally have been another line in the movie like, "Hey, by the way, isn't the Internet awesome and revolutionary? I'm not asking anyone's permission, in case you missed it, to put this website online. Compare _that_ to old models of distribution!"
He's talking down to both the moviemakers and the audience simultaneously, saying everyone will miss the _profundity_ of what this means about the Internet, like some bigger-egoed Sagan who criticizes space films that don't drive home how _big_ and _amazing_ the universe is, a perspective that too few seem to appreciate.
Every time I see a video of him speaking, or read something he has written, my opinion of him leaps forward. He uses a lot of big words and yet is able to clearly and simply explain that which needs to be explained. Why the Internet should not be governed by the industrial revolution's concepts.
"Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture talk at the 2002 Open Source Conference. The master of the simple slides shows us how it’s done. And since, as he says, this is his 100th time for this talk, he has this bad boy down solid. Even though this talk is from 2002, his slide presentation style is still as fresh today as Axe Body Spray."[1]
Imagine a jester from King George III’s court, charged in 1790 with writing a comedy about the new American Republic....
It annoys me that in a piece attacking Sorkin for having a cartoon vision of the world, Lessig uses an analogy with a cartoon understanding of the world himself. The British monarch in 1790 did not have court jesters, they were long gone ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jester ).
I think this point is similar to that made in Nathan Heller's Slate article - http://www.slate.com/id/2269308/ - that Sorkin believes that Ivy League schools are still controlled by some kind of elite class (if not the WASP elite of old, some kind of new Internet-connected parvenu elite). Similarly, a member of King George the Third's court (jester or not) might assume that the United States was controlled by a landed aristocracy similar to that in England.
I've been to parties in the bike room of the porc and I've been to Henley, both are pretty much as described. If anything Harvard is actually a lot more waspish and cliquey than they make it out to be. It's not the majority of the students but it has an enormous effect on the culture.
This review doesn't make much sense to me. As another commenter claimed, I wonder if we even saw the same film. All the complaints that Lessig makes are clearly addressed in the movie.
For starters, it's not at issue here whether the Winkelvii deserve $65M. The film makes it abundantly clear that they do not. They are simply payed off (at a cost comparable to that of a speeding ticket per one character) for expediency, as Zuckerberg would not appear sympathetic to a jury.
The lawyers are not presented in the film as wise elders. I certainly don't recall them having any better comebacks than the younger characters. If anything, the lawyers are frequently presented as sharks; amoral, chaotic neutral characters who try to glean assets from the younger entrepreneurs at every opportunity.
Lessig goes on to conclude that the real story here is not Zukerberg's drive, that instead the film should really be about platform, the internet itself. But this is not a film about how neat the internet is, whether Lessig thinks it should be or not. It is about Zuckerberg and his dogged ambition. It's about the steps he took to develop and expand his creation into a worldwide phenomenon. Obviously the internet made that possible, but to denigrate the film because the internet itself wasn't its central thematic focus seems obtuse.
It's fair to say that Mark is the Bill Gates of our generation. A technical prodigy with limited social skills that saw a boundless opportunity and just took the leap. Now he is rich, powerful, and hated.
He is not a murderer or a saint. Just a dude who wanted to win more than anyone else.
No idea is 100% original and are usually the sum of many great ideas that already existed.
People who didn't take the leap fully just blamed him/sued him instead of trying to build something better. I bet you most of them couldn't if they tried.
> It's fair to say that Mark is the Bill Gates of our generation.
Hyperbole much? Zuck is no Gates by any stretch of the imagination. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates revolutionized the world and brought computers to the masses. Zuck built a popular website, and not even an original one, these things aren't anywhere near the same league.
I don't care if it's the most popular website on the planet, it's still just a website in an era of websites. Social networks weren't even close to new when Facebook came out; computers in every home was absurd when Gates and Jobs decided to make it a reality. It's not at all comparable to the change they brought to the world.
Mark's a billionaire, no doubt, but he's just not in that league, not even close. The world before Facebook is hardly different than the world after it; the world before computers were in every home is vastly different than the world after it. This Facebook worship is absurd, if it disappeared tomorrow the world would move on and hardly miss a beat. If every Windows PC disappeared tomorrow the world would basically collapse, business across the globe would grind to a halt.
Linux is a platform, Windows is a platform, Facebook is a toy.
When the world economy depends on a website the way it does on PC's, then someone can claim to be in that category. Frankly I don't think that'll happen. The next big earth shattering thing on the scale of the PC revolution probably won't be a website. Actually, the Internet itself was the next big revolution after PC's, and probably then the introduction of the web. What's next? Who knows!
Changing the world in some massive way like Gates/Jobs did, can you imagine the world today without personal computers? Seriously, Facebook could disappear tomorrow and the world would hardly notice; if PC's disappeared it'd collapse. I don't know what the next earth shattering thing will be, but it ain't Facebook.
I've definitely heard accounts from credible hackers that Zuck is up there. I don't know him personally, but I wouldn't be surprised.
I do like Lessig's point that "Zuck's a genius, but so are many". There's a lot of insecurity around places like HN where people go, "baw, Zuck can't be a genius, because then not only would he be wealthier and more famous than me, but he'd also be more capable!" The "who's smarter?" argument is really a waste of time. It's highly likely that Zuck is an absurdly strong engineer. But, so are many others, possibly you included. Build until you hit your natural limits; before that, no one has any idea how "smart" you are, yourself included. Find your own market to win instead of taking the respect and credit away from him.
I'm a great deal more impressed by his status as the battle-tested CEO of a global behemoth at age 24 even though it is fashionable to dislike him. I've met a lot of skilled and innovative programmers, but self-made billionaires are in short supply.
I apologize for overlooking your comment. by 'battle-tested' I meant having experiences of challenges, lawsuits, and highly public criticism - he has not seen it all, but he's not had a free ride either. And by global behemoth, I refer to the considerable market and financial power of Facebook the company, and the difficulty of effectively controlling such a large entity. The difference between managing that compared to a typical small business is like that of maneuvering a fully-loaded semi-truck vs a small motorcycle.
You can say what you want, but anyone who has been to go from 0 to a net worth of 5 billion is a "fucking" genius. Good genius, bad genius, I don't know, but genius for sure.
When I say that he's not a genius hacker, I mean he is not a great programmer but I'm sure he's pretty smart. However, being smart doesn't equate being a great programmer and that's how the movie seems to describe him writing math formulas on a window, which is ridiculous.
The movie doesn't portray him as evil at all, imo. He comes off as witty and quite good at evaluating risk.
As for his hacking abilities, I've heard stories that he's not (or is no longer) among the best; perhaps he's better at coming up with creative uses for a system than actual coding. And for what it's worth, I don't think the movie made him out to be a "genius hacker" in the coding sense -- more a genius hacker of what the Internet was intended to be.
Zuckerberg faced no such barrier. For less than $1,000, he could get his idea onto the Internet. He needed no permission from the network provider. He needed no clearance from Harvard to offer it to Harvard students. Neither with Yale, or Princeton, or Stanford. Nor with every other community he invited in. Because the platform of the Internet is open and free, or in the language of the day, because it is a “neutral network,” a billion Mark Zuckerbergs have the opportunity to invent for the platform.
This doesn't ring true to me. It is the lack of true freedom on the Internet that makes Facebook such an enormous success. If ISPs allowed users to connect to the Internet without any restrictions, it's quite possible they would be running the equivalent of web/mail/chat servers on their home computers, and a true social network might have evolved. As it is, such innovation is restricted to a much smaller group of individuals whose entrepreneurial motivations will impose even more restrictions on users (for example, web sites are springing up that require Facebook authentication, totally eliminating the choice to opt out of Facebook).
Lessig tells a good story, and makes important points about the power and value of an Internet free from stifling regulation. He mistakes the source of at least half the regulation, though, and casts a scurrilous, unethical bastard of an entitlement-culture entrepreneur as the hero of his tale.
Success is not the sole measure of heroism. Private enterprise is not the sole source of stifling regulation. Let's find a better hero of Internet-based entrepreneurial spirit and wildly successful efforts to get ahead of the curve (such as Paul Graham, oddly enough), and let's not minimize the efforts of government to screw over the openness of the Internet by chalking it all up to caving in to corporate interests.
Last I checked, corporate interests had little benefit to gain from granting the Executive branch of US government the power to "shut down" the Internet, for instance.
That is not a "review" so much as it is Lessig expressing hero-worship of Mark Zuckerberg and attempting to minimize the numerous substantive charges of unethical behavior that have been directed at Zuckerberg. The summation paragraph begins "Zuckerberg is a rightful hero of our time. I want my kids to admire him." I don't have an opinion about the movie (haven't seen it), but reading this review has greatly reduced my opinion of Lawrence Lessig.
I'm guessing you only read the first page of the article. The real meat and gist of what he was trying to convey was in the second page, where Facebook was compared to Nantucket Nectars. The movie "review" was just there to catch user attention, like authors do with the first few pages of a book.
Here's the key quotes:
"Instead, what’s important here is that Zuckerberg’s genius could be embraced by half-a-billion people within six years of its first being launched, without (and here is the critical bit) asking permission of anyone. The real story is not the invention. It is the platform that makes the invention sing. "
...
"As “network neutrality” gets bargained away—to add insult to injury, by an administration that was elected with the promise to defend it—the opportunities for the Zuckerbergs of tomorrow will shrink. And as they do, we will return more to the world where success depends upon permission. And privilege. And insiders. And where fewer turn their souls to inventing the next great idea."
In doing so, Lessig is reviewing the film he wishes was made about the internet, rather than reviewing this film based on the story it chose to tell. (Which is a compelling story.)
This violates the first rule of movie reviewers-- we don't care how great of a film director you imagine you'd be if you were in a position to make movies, rather than just review them.
I don't like slapstick comedies, but I'd never criticize one fro not being a scream sequel.
Lessig faults the film for not telling the story of Chris Hughs and Sean Parker's utilization of the internet for nonprofits and the election of Obama.
This is a platform that has made democratic innovation possible—and it was on the Facebook platform resting on that Internet platform that another Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, organized the most important digital movement for Obama, and that the film’s petty villain, Sean Parker, organized Causes, one of the most important tools to support nonprofit social missions.
The tragedy—small in the scale of things, no doubt—of this film is that practically everyone watching it will miss this point.
I think Lessing really misses the point of the movie. What I saw was a young guy able to take VC money and not lose his post as CEO.
I didn't see Parker portrayed as a 'petty villian'.
SPOILER ALERT: In the movie, Parker first learns of thefacebook after a one night stand with a Stanford undergraduate. He asks if he can check his email on her laptop and notices the site. At that point, Stanford was one of the few university .edu email addresses allowed on the site. He is so convinced, thefacebook will be the next big thing, he needs to find the creators of the site.
Basically, Parker takes Fanning under his wing, suggesting he move to California. There is probably a 20 to 30 minute VC montage, where Parker helps thefacebook get funding, using his various connections. He also has Zuckerberg dress in his pajamas, (Parker drops him off in an Escalade and waits outside) and go to a specific VC, and has Zuckerberg tell the VC, Sean Parker says "Fuck you" and then leave.
I own Startup.com (the movie, not the domain), and also E-Dreams. Watching both too many times, neither movie had a happy ending for the founders (within the context of those specific startups).
Startup.com CTO is ousted by the CEO (the two founders were best friends). Kozmo.com's CEO got ousted by the VCs.
This movie left me feeling icky at the ending. Not "Requiem for a Dream" soul fuck, but you really don't know who is a good guy and who is a bad guy. It really isn't black and white like that.
It did, however, have one of the most cinematic uses of 'wget' I have ever seen.
Also, kind of cheap headline there. I thought it would be a movie review, not an articulated rant. I expect more from that Harvard law dude.
Also, I have never heard of Parker before this movie, I was only aware of Fanning as the Napster creator.
Your premise (that Lessig's article is a movie review) is not true which makes any conclusion you make invalid.
The misleading HN headline notwithstanding, Lessig's article is a commentary on the nature of Internet and how it was missed by the movie authors.
Not to mention that nowhere in the article Lessig gives any indication that he knows how to make a better movie out of it. Quite to the contrary: whenever he talks about the movie as it is, he prises it.
I'm guessing you only read the first sentence of my comment. I directly quote the opening sentence of Lessig's summation paragraph from the second page.
You seem to have missed the half of the review where he talks about the importance of the internet and concepts like net neutrality. You might want to read that half too.
You seem to have missed the point I was trying to make. I am well aware that Lessig has been "one of the good guys" - in fact, before reading this review, he was more or less a hero to me. I am actually shocked that Lessig seems to care as little about ethics and personal privacy as his praise of Zuckerberg indicates.
I have a problem to understand how the non-dilute share works as described in the movie. Personally, I was told that the construction is very hard since the valuation changes each round.
