A few day ago a court battle between Facebook and Sanford Wallace concluded. The infamous Wallace, no stranger to being sued by social media platforms, is to pay Facebook $711 million dollars for “willfully violating the statutes in question with blatant disregard for the rights of Facebook and the thousands of Facebook users whose accounts were compromised by his conduct,” According to the Judge. The judge also ruled that because Wallace is a total douchebag that he would be serving prison time too. The Judge was not Judge Judy, just for the record. This is great news for the social media giant who are having a banner year. Facebook reports profits of $500 million this year, it’s the first time in the company’s existence that it has passed the break-even barrier having been in the negative for years now, despite incredible growth. But this is just one in a long and storied string of legal battles that the social media giant has claimed victoriously – some of which have had handsome rewards tied to them. Let’s have a brief stroll down memory lane and revisit some of them shall we:

-Earlier this year Facebook sued Power.com a Brazilian start-up that consolidated social media sites into a single platform where you could be simultaneously innundated by the pedantic details of everyone you know on several social media platforms.

-Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital of Montreal were sued by Facebook for $873 Million last November for their phishing scam targeting Facebook users. According to Facebook, Guerbuez fooled Facebook’s users into providing him with their usernames and passwords through the use of fake Web sites. He then used computer programs to send out more than 4 million messages promoting a variety of products, including marijuana and penis enlargement products. That’s so Montreal.

-July 2008 Facebook sues StudiVZ, what as at that point the largest social media site in the German speaking world. A world, which believe it or not, is made up of over 100,000,000 people. And you thought they just spoke funny English.

But it wouldn’t be fair not to mention that Facebook itself is also being sued. Phoenix Media of Boston is suing the company for violating a patent related to setting up profile pages. So maybe the reports of Facebook making a profit or becomming cash flow positive in the near future may be premature. As long as it keeps on successfully suing slimy crooks from Montreal to Munich, there will always be hope though.

So there you go, to sum up the social media environment behind the scenes, everyone is just suing everyone in a constant circle of infringing, blaming, copying, barely breaking even and getting violently prison spammed.

Tags: Adam Guerbuez, Atlantis Blue Capital, Facebook and Sanford Wallace, Facebook making a profit, Phoenix Media, Power.com, social media platforms, StudiVZ, Sued by Facebook

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