Second, MZ has a credibility problem. He has a reputation of duping people, or at least not playing it straight. While a lot of people give him credit for being able to use some good tactics to screw over people, those same tactics can also end up biting you too.

I don't know if the emails are credible or not, but I'd take them seriously.

This is enormously suspicious across the board. It should be ignored as an annoyance and nothing else until a court finds otherwise.

I think finding the emails on the second time around is suspect but defense lawyers will have a chance to review the evidence so it makes me think that DLA Piper did their due diligence to prove the veracity of these emails (otherwise they would know that it's likely to be thrown out before even coming to court).

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-facebook-con...

Unless its proven that the mails are real, FB shouldn't be harassed over it. If they don't have the forensic to prove it real or otherwise, shouldn't FB be getting the benefit of doubt since the guy is a convicted felon, remain silent for years, suspiciously came up with new mails months after initial lawsuit, seems excited about FB(the site he is talking about) and then goes dormant for 7 years...

Just because someone is a convicted felon doesn't mean they're not entitled to the same access to the judicial system as everyone else.

I'm taking no stance until actual evidence comes forward or this goes to court and the emails in question can be examined and verified, if possible.

If you're not looking for an interesting story angle, the posted examples look less plausible than the original contract.

Really. How exactly? Blodget appears to qualify this claim (in the Business Insider article) by basically saying "well, they haven't been proven fake yet, so we are suspicious that means they are real".

Ahem.

To me (bearing in mind I'm theoretically supposed to be good at this stuff :D) they look like they are probably faked. The language similarities between the two examples are extremely telling; for example, the odd punctuation (or lack of) visible in both emails strikes me as identical.

I think "suspicious until proven real" is the right approach here.

I agree w/Biz Insider - A big tech law firm that is almost certainly working on contingency rather than billing $500/hr is a fair indication that there's some meat to this case.

Even if they lose, think about it, DLA probably already have some spin about how they are just being "professional" about due diligence and doing the best they could for their client. No loss in reputation.

Plus, the legal costs of pursuing a case like this is likely to be extremely high. If the evidence is so weak to be thrown out even before it comes to court, then I don't think they would pursue it.

It would certainly be possible to fool someone that such emails were legit depending on what sort of verification job they did.

If not, where are they from?

Have they been subjected to forensic investigation?

Has the source been substantiated?

Was the due diligence done on these emails, specifically?

I'm a cynic about such things though :)

The emails from Ceglia are laden with a bunch of grammatical and spelling errors. While the supposed emails from Zuck sound more polished, robotic and have neither grammatical nor spelling errors.

The tone of the two are very different.

BTW, I wrote this in Zuckerberg's voice as portrayed by paul ceglia via DLA Piper dispositions.

He has now had his claims vetted by at least one major law firm. I guarantee you they looked closely at his claims (they have both a legal and financial interest to do so) and found them worth pursuing.

The risk to Zuckerberg is probably a lot higher here than most people think.

You have to remember that a law firm is going to ask itself about total dollar outcome, not necessarily veracity of all claims. Even a 1% chance of partial success is enough to pay for quite a lot of litigation.

The emails don't read 'fake,' writes Henry Blodget

Felix Salmon at Reuters agrees. "The emails Facebook says are fake don't seem that way to me."

Why does this matter? How it "seems" or "reads" to online commentators is irrelevant. What are these opinions based on - gut feelings?

The reason it matters to most is transitive trust. Most people trust Reuters/Business Insider as more authoritative than themselves so if Reuters and BI signal that they are suspicious, then the public will be. If people begin to lose trust in Zuck, then they lose trust in FB then...

--------------

    Dear Ajays,
    Thanks for the beers last night, and giving me all the
    ideas for "The Facebook". I feel your contribution is
    equal to mine, and so should your ownership. I hope
    50% ownership of The Facebook is acceptable to you?

    Mark
    PS: Don't mention this on HackerNews, they may not
    believe you.

Damn you, Zuck!

1) The guy said it took so long for him to come forward because he "forgot" about the contract/emails.

2) Selling 50% of the company for $2k seems like an odd move... I don't know my facebook history perfectly, but didn't Zuck have a business partner with a lot of money already?

3) The guy has a history of fraud convictions.

In other words, like a fabrication.

That would be a HUGE amount of money. Even if the subsequent investments are still legit (despite not having the involvement of the main investor), Zuckerberg owns like 30% of Facebook, so if you assume the primary investor wouldn't have gotten diluted worse than Zuckerberg, you're looking at tens of billions. Even if he gets diluted as bad as Saverin did (down to 1/7th), that's still like $5 billion or so, right? That's shit-tons of money.

Maybe Twitter can use it instead.

I guess facebook isn't going to use that angle, though.

How? It's easy for FB to demonstrate that the emails are real, but not the opposite. Even if Zuckerberg didn't Delete the emails himself, it is in the interest of FB to show no trace of emails.

Suppose FB shows no trace of emails, what does it matter? If Ceglia can show that the emails are indeed real, then that trumps FB. Or am I missing something here?

It works because you don't need to know which emails/files are important -- storing 250 bytes of hashes is practically free and tells you nothing about the contents, it just authenticates the contents later in court.

Now it's possible he could have had the foresight to make and hash fake emails that he didn't send just in case, but you've still significantly raised the bar for fraud from just "finding" emails from 2004.

It's easy to show the receipt of an email and where it came from (especially when you have full headers). But unless the sender bothers to GPG or S/MIME sign the email, in theory, it could have been sent by another person who had access to the account. Or, it could have been spoofed, etc.

Here in Australia an opposition leader was undone by a faked email (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OzCar_affair).

"Facebook almost certainly has a forensic analysis of Mark Zuckerberg's hard drives and email boxes from this period, because these drives would have been the same ones analyzed in the Winklevoss lawsuit," writes Blodget. "Perhaps the drives show different versions of the emails in question--or no emails at all."

It would be interesting if a web email provider was used. Doubtful they have any decent retention strategies after you hit delete.

Tampering with that would be a MAJOR crime by everyone involved.

Although proving the lack of something is a lot more difficult that proving the existence of something. So it doesn't always serve much for them to say "nope, can't find them".

However, I am sure they will be eager to analyse Ceglia's computers for evidence

If Ceglia can and does prove that the emails are real and FB is left claiming they couldn't find the emails, it's going to look to most like FB knew it had something to lose all along and that will immediately give Ceglia's claim is more validity. Learn from Nixon, the coverup is usually worse than the offense. Facebook should be as open as they can.

Look at the tone of the emails back and forth between MZ and claimant...given that tone would not a reasonable person make a legal claim when FB moved to CA?

That means there is quite a bit missing in the story on both sides...so it comes down to who has the most to loose...FB or claimant..

Since FB has the most to loose if this gets into full court hearings I see FB making an attempt to settle..Why?

FB at several 100 billion dollars in valuation probably does not need the disclosure that valuation may be in error due to past behavior of the founder/CEO not to mention the obvious decrease in stakeholders values if the claim is true.

If it's true, I don't think he deserves 50% or 80%. It's up to the courts. Also, I think Facebook is what it is today solely because of Zuck and the FB team.

But I don't see a problem with waiting to file a claim.