Facebook Wants Founder's Privacy Back, THREAT LEVEL to Blame? - Via Threat Level:

There's much online ado about the independent Harvard magazine 02138 posting documents from the court case accusing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing the idea for the social networking site from some classmates, mainly because the documents include Zuckerberg's Harvard application with his full Social Security Number. (The sensitive info has since been redacted).

THREAT LEVEL read some of the transcripts from Zuckerberg's deposition where his arrogance is clear, but I mostly ignored the story until Facebook lawyers started stamping their feet, ironically complaining about privacy violations and crying that the documents should never have been released by the court. 

It turns out the court gave the documents to a freelance reporter who went to the court house in Boston (on Beacon Hill, maybe?) and asked for them. I guess the court removed that global opt-out feature or Facebook lawyers forgot to click on it. Oops.

That reporter then penned a long piece looking into the murky beginnings of the social-networking flavor of the year site and the magazine published some of the source documents..

[I]ts hard to imagine that Zuckerberg didn't know that the site he was designing for himself was very much like the site he was supposed to be creating for the Harvard Connection team. The similarities between Facebook and the concept for Harvard Connect are abundant and obvious..

That reporter is none other than THREAT LEVEL alum Luke O'Brien, who might be taking an extended break from THREAT LEVEL but didn't leave his muck rake behind in the meantime.

UPDATE: A Federal District court ruled today that the docs stay up, according to a statement from 02138's publisher:

"The judge in the Federal District Court in Boston ruled today to deny Facebook's request to take down the source documents for the article "Poking Facebook" from the 02138 Web site. This is a victory not only for 02138, but for the First Amendment as well. We felt we had an important responsibility to report the story and we hope that we were able to promote greater public understanding of the origins of a powerful and influential Web site. The judge concluded that the article was an example of "core journalism" and that the original documents on 02138mag.com increased transparency, offering readers unfiltered access to more information on which to evaluate the story."

(Read Original Article - Via Threat Level.)