Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on August 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

Earlier this week there was a lot of chatter about how a portion of Facebook’s source code was leaked and then published on a newly created blog, Facebook Secrets. The leak was attributed to a bug on a “single server that was misconfigured and then fixed immediately.” It certainly wasn’t a good day for Facebook as the code quickly spread around the Internet, much like what we saw when the HD DVD crack code spread like a wild fire.

Facebook publicly stated that those who spread the code were violating the law, and asked people not distribute it further. Of course that alone wasn’t going to stop most people from spreading it around as much as possible, so they took matters into their own hands. 

The blog mentioned above, “Facebook Secrets” was created solely for the purpose of distributing the Facebook code. And because it was hosted by Blogger (owned by Google), Google received a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) take-down notice from Facebook. Google contacted the author of the blog asking that they remove the content, or they’d be forced to remove the content themselves. The author ignored the notice, and of course then the blog post was removed (although the page has been cached by search engines like Google).

While Google was just doing their job, it’s one of those situations where it doesn’t really even matter that the original post that contained the content is taken down. Just like the HD DVD crack, Facebook’s code has been spread around to so many sites that it will be nearly impossible for Facebook’s legal team to find them all, and send take-down notices. Now the author of the original Facebook Secrets blog has started another one, “Facebook Secrets Again” where he has posted the letters he received from the Blogger team.

Sounds to me like Facebook needs to spend some time making sure their servers aren’t misconfigured! I don’t know about you, but for me it’s hard to have sympathy for them right now. Afterall, they were the ones that leaked their own code!

Note: Some sites are reporting that the entire site has been taken down which is not the case. Only the article containing the code was removed, and now the blog is filled with ads.

Source: Marketing Pilgrim

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