Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Althouse

Legal Commentary

: Althouse

Lawrence Lessig on that Facebook movie that we all have to see.

It's been a long time since we've had a movie in that category, don't you think? (Remember when Pauline Kael single-handedly forced everyone to sit through "Last Tango in Paris" and believe this was the movie we'd talk about for as long as human civilization endured?)

Lessig says:

[Aaron] Sorkin crafted dialogue for an as-yet-not-evolved species of humans?ordinary people, here students, who talk perpetually with the wit and brilliance of George Bernard Shaw or Bertrand Russell. (I?m a Harvard professor. Trust me: The students don?t speak this language.) With that script, and with a massive hand from the film?s director, David Fincher, he helped steer an intelligent, beautiful, and compelling film through to completion. You will see this movie, and you should. As a film, visually and rhythmically, and as a story, dramatically, the work earns its place in the history of the field.

But as a story about Facebook, it is deeply, deeply flawed....

The total and absolute absurdity of the world where the engines of a federal lawsuit get cranked up to adjudicate the hurt feelings (because ?our idea was stolen!?) of entitled Harvard undergraduates is completely missed by Sorkin. We can?t know enough from the film to know whether there was actually any substantial legal claim here. Sorkin has been upfront about the fact that there are fabrications aplenty lacing the story. But from the story as told, we certainly know enough to know that any legal system that would allow these kids to extort $65 million from the most successful business this century should be ashamed of itself. Did Zuckerberg breach his contract? Maybe, for which the damages are more like $650, not $65 million. Did he steal a trade secret. Absolutely not. Did he steal any other ?property?? Absolutely not?the code for Facebook was his, and the ?idea? of a social network is not a patent. It wasn?t justice that gave the twins $65 million; it was the fear of a random and inefficient system of law. That system is a tax on innovation and creativity. That tax is the real villain here, not the innovator it burdened.

But great movies about law really do shape what people think about law and that affects what law means. How many will read and understand Lessig's pushback?

ADDED: Here's the famous Pauline Kael review ? the most famous movie review of all time that we will think about for as long as there are movie reviews:

This is a movie people will be arguing about, I think, for as long as there are movies. They?ll argue about how it is intended, as they argue again now about The Dance of Death. It is a movie you can?t get out of your system...

Full post as published by Althouse on October 01, 2010 (boomark / email).