The Facebook – Lamebook Battle is Ugly

If you've never heard of Lamebook.com, you're not alone, But it is very much a tongue-in-cheek parody of Facebook, and the giant social networking site has made legal threats recently that appear very controversial, against similar sites like Placebook and Teachbook. The threats state that these sites are capitalizing unlawfully on Facebook's popularity.

Lamebook is a mischievous compendium of hilarious content like Facebook's, and they have sued Facebook, claiming that they have the right to free “speech” based on the First Amendment. They did a pre-emptive suit, so that Facebook couldn't sue them first. A TechCrunch writer notices recently that The Facebook fan page on Lamebook was blocked. Outbound links to Facebook had been severed, and their “like” buttons were disabled.

This means that Lamebook's taking advantage of Facebook's graph, or communications framework, was barred. This is what has made Facebook the most powerful social networking site. This is a powerful move, similar to, say, Google removing links of a company from their search results if the company had pending legal action.

Lamebook explained to its users that Facebook apparently doesn't like them sticking up for themselves, which is why they shut down their fan pages, and why they are preventing their own users from “liking” Lamebook. You can't even share URL's with your friends if those point to Lamebook. Lamebook does have recourse, though – its fans can follow it on Twitter.

Since that time, Facebook seems to have done a bit of backtracking, after it initially confirmed that it barred Lamebook URLs from Facebook linking. They decided that blocking the links had been a bit extreme and a mistake on their part. They were mainly trying to deal with the violation of trademark by Lamebook. They simply blocked any Facebook mention of Lamebook. Facebook's staff has reiterated that they are committed to the promotion of free expression on their site, and they are working to correct the problem that led to the blocking of URLs for Lamebook.

Looking at the broader lawsuit of Lamebook vs Facebook, representatives of Facebook have originally told CNET that they feel that they worked with Lamebook for months to resolve the situation amicably, even though they feel that Lamebook is building a brand that uses the fame and popularity of Facebook. They have now turned to litigation, and Facebook is confident that they will prevail when the case goes to court.