Greenspan v. Random House, Inc. et al Document 33: Response to motion

Filed February 2, 2012

Back to Greenspan v. Random House, Inc. et al, Massachusetts District Court Case No. 1:11-cv-12000-RBC

RESPONSE to Motion re [31] MOTION to Strike Exhibits Attached to Plaintiff's Opposition filed by Aaron Greenspan. (Greenspan, Aaron) (Additional attachment(s) added on 2/3/2012: # (1) Exhibit A) (Anderson, Jennifer). (Main Document 33 replaced on 2/3/2012) (Anderson, Jennifer).

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Page 1 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
BOSTON DIVISION
AARON GREENSPAN,
Plaintiff,
Case No.: 1:11-cv-12000-RBC
v.
RANDOM HOUSE, INC.; MEZCO, INC.;
BENJAMIN MEZRICH; COLUMBIA
PICTURES INDUSTRIES, INC. a/k/a SONY
PICTURES a/k/a COLUMBIA TRISTAR
MOTION PICTURE GROUP,
Defendants.
RESPONSE TO MOTION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.,
MEZCO, INC., AND BENJAMIN MEZRICH TO STRIKE EXHIBITS
TO PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANTS’ MOTIONS TO DISMISS
Plaintiff respectfully opposes the motion to strike exhibits filed by Moving Defendants
Random House, Inc., Mezco, Inc. and Benjamin Mezrich. The Moving Defendants make a
number of misleading arguments in an attempt to wave away the clear evidence that they have
engaged in a pattern of deceptive and unlawful activity over a period of years. Exhibits A and B
directly support Plaintiff’s arguments outlined in its Complaint and in its Memorandum in
Opposition to the Motions to Dismiss of All Defendants (“Memorandum”). Exhibits C and D
describe in detail Moving Defendants’ unlawful behavior involving their repeated, willful sale of
fictional material as “non-fiction.” As much as Moving Defendants might try to ignore it, such
behavior is absolutely central to these proceedings. Exhibit E is a substantial portion of the
“extensive written documentation” specifically referred to in paragraph 26 of the Complaint.

Page 2 Generally, all five Exhibits are offered by Plaintiff in response to Defendants’ (incorrect)
general objections that somehow Plaintiff failed to allege any specific facts or offer evidence in
support of those facts in its Complaint. Plaintiff responds by once again pointing out that it is
not required to state in its Complaint every single fact involved in its claims, by highlighting the
plethora of facts that it did clearly state, and by providing evidence to support those facts. Bell
Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 127 S. Ct. 1955, 1965 (2007). Now that additional evidence is offered at
Moving Defendants’ request to support those facts, Moving Defendants would like such
evidence to go away because it reflects extremely poorly on them.
As Plaintiff wrote in its Memorandum, “The court may also consider documents outside
of the pleadings in certain circumstances in ruling on a motion to dismiss. See Watterson, 987
F.2d at 3. There is a ‘narrow exception for documents the authenticity of which are not disputed
by the parties; for official public records; for documents central to plaintiff's claim; or for
documents sufficiently referred to in the complaint.’ Id. 3-4.”
Exhibit A to the Memorandum is, as Moving Defendants state, “a print out of the entry
for the word ‘slick’ on the website www.dictionary.com.” Moving Defendants omit, however,
that the aforementioned web site is at least in part, “Based on the Random House Dictionary, ©
Random House, Inc. 2012.” Surely Defendant Random House, Inc. has a copy of its own
dictionary that it can use to verify the authenticity of the definitions cited therein. In any case,
Moving Defendants do not dispute the authenticity of this Exhibit, and the definition of the word
“slick” used by Defendant Mezrich—in stark contrast to Moving Defendants’ ridiculous
allegation that no such definition exists—is central to Plaintiff’s claims relating to defamation.
Moving Defendants only indirectly challenge the authenticity of a single exhibit, Exhibit
B, by referring to it as “purported.” Exhibit B is a written letter dated August 10, 2009 with
attached evidence of “advertorial” (conflating advertising and editorial) practices attributed to

Page 3 Moving Defendants that violate Federal Trade Commission advertising guidelines, sent by Think
Computer Corporation, Plaintiff’s publisher, to Defendant Random House, Inc. Moving
Defendants acknowledge that Exhibit B was referred to in the Complaint, and it was also referred
to in the Memorandum. Accordingly, Exhibit B falls within the exception permitting
consideration outlined by Watterson. Furthermore, although Moving Defendants are correct in
stating that, “Plaintiff’s claim is not based on the letter,” they fail to mention that Plaintiff’s
claim is based on the accompanying evidence, which is part of the very same Exhibit and
“described in the letter.”
Moving Defendants further pointlessly allege that the exhibits have not been
authenticated, but this extra step is hardly necessary. See Fed. R. Evid. 902 (“The following
items of evidence are self-authenticating; they require no extrinsic evidence of authenticity in
order to be admitted: (6) Newspapers and Periodicals. Printed material purporting to be a
newspaper or periodical… (9) Commercial Paper and Related Documents. Commercial paper, a
signature on it, and related documents, to the extent allowed by general commercial law.”) It is
up to Moving Defendants to contest the authenticity of Exhibit A given its origin, and notably,
Moving Defendants have chosen not to do so. The authenticity of Exhibit B is only superficially
contested, as Moving Defendants provide no reasonable basis for the belief that the document is
somehow a falsified copy of the true original. Exhibit B is on commercial letterhead and is
signed. Exhibits C and D are fully identified (by author, date, and headline) as publicly available
articles from the major newspaper The Boston Globe, which can be accessed in their entirety by
anyone with a computer and internet connection. Particularly worried attorneys such as Moving
Defendants’ clearly have the means to check both of these articles word for word, and they are
encouraged to do so. Exhibit E, as Exhibit B, originated with Plaintiff, and therefore only

Page 4 Plaintiff is capable of confirming the authenticity of each document. To satisfy Moving
Defendants’ apparent concerns, both exhibits are, in fact, authentic.
Furthermore, the component elements of Exhibit E have already been authenticated by
The New York Times, another major newspaper, which reported on the contents of Exhibit E in
another publicly available article dated September 1, 2007 and entitled, “Who Founded
Facebook? A New Claim Emerges,” by John Markoff. This article states, “Mr. Greenspan
retained his college e-mail messages and provided The New York Times with copies of his
communications with Mr. Zuckerberg.” It further states, “Mr. Zuckerberg declined to be
interviewed, saying through a spokeswoman that he was not sure how to respond. He did not
dispute the chronology of events or the authenticity of Mr. Greenspan’s e-mail messages.”
Moving Defendants even complain that the server logs alluded to in Exhibit E were not
attached in full. Though a more comprehensive view of these same logs is also publicly
available on the Authoritas web site, these more verbose excerpts of relevant material are 320
pages long due to the extremely detailed nature of server logging technology. The server logs in
their raw form would potentially be tens of thousands of pages long, making disclosure
impractical and furthermore, pointless. Had these raw server logs been attached to the
Memorandum, Moving Defendants would have surely argued that they were mostly irrelevant
and difficult to decipher. Plaintiff specifically did not attach them in order to spare the Court and
Defendants a pointless exercise.
Lastly, concerning Exhibit E, Moving Defendants cite rules 1001 and 1002 of the Federal
Rules of Evidence to argue that only raw log data is admissable. Section 1001(d) actually states,
“For electronically stored information, ‘original’ means any printout — or other output readable
by sight — if it accurately reflects the information” (emphasis added). There is no mention of a
requirement that such a printout be “complete,” because electronically stored information can

Page 5 always be linked to other pieces of information and is therefore never “complete.” For example,
a Portable Document Format (PDF) file (such as the one representing this filing) is not complete
without the software that interprets it; that software is not complete without an underlying
operating system; that is not complete without the instruction set of the microprocessor it is
designed for; that is not complete without a hardware schematic for said microprocessor and
preceding models, etc. Therefore, Moving Defendants’ flawed interpretation of the rule, if
applied, would routinely yield an overwhelming body of only tangentially related data that would
inevitably obscure the message of the main evidence and stymie the judicial process. Therefore,
Moving Defendants’ argument that Exhibit E is somehow “in violation of the best evidence rule”
is incorrect and rule 1002 is moot. Exhibit E does accurately reflect the information relevant to
these proceedings, and without the burden of voluminous extraneous information irrelevant to
these proceedings.
Generally, Moving Defendants will do anything to avoid having to respond to the proper
and reasonable allegations contained within Plaintiff’s Complaint. This apparently includes
wishing for a magic wand that will make all of the evidence disappear. The Court should not
grant Moving Defendants their wish, as Moving Defendants have neither set forth a substantive
challenge to the authenticity of the exhibits, nor made a convincing argument that the exhibits
are peripheral to the issues at hand.
WHEREFORE, Plaintiff respectfully requests that this Court deny the Motion to Strike
filed by Moving Defendants.

Page 6 Respectfully submitted this 2nd day of February, 2012.
Aaron Greenspan College Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94303-1303
Phone: +1 415 670 9350
Fax: +1 415 373 3959
E-Mail: greenspan@post.harvard.edu

Page 7 CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I, Aaron Greenspan, hereby certify that this document filed through the ECF system will
be sent electronically to the registered participants as identified on the Notice of Electronic Filing
(NEF) and paper copies will be sent to those indicated as non-registered participants.
By
Aaron Greenspan College Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94306-1303
greenspan@post.harvard.edu

Page 8 EXHIBIT A
September 1, 2007 New York Times Article: “Who Founded Facebook? A New Claim
Emerges”
by John Markoff

Page 9 September 1, 2007
Who Founded Facebook? A New Claim Emerges
By JOHN MARKOFF
PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 29 — Mark E. Zuckerberg is considered the founder of Facebook, the popular
social networking Web site estimated to be worth upward of $1 billion.
Three Harvard classmates, the founders of ConnectU, have long claimed that Mr. Zuckerberg stole the idea
from them, and they are suing him in Federal District Court in Boston.
Both parties seem to have forgotten Aaron J. Greenspan, yet another Harvard classmate. He says he was
actually the one who created the original college social networking system, before either side in the legal
dispute. And he has the e-mail messages to show it.
As a Harvard student in 2003 — six months before Facebook started and eight months before ConnectU
went online — Mr. Greenspan established a simple Web service that he called houseSYSTEM. It was used by
several thousand Harvard students for a variety of online college-related tasks. Mr. Zuckerberg was briefly
an early participant.
An e-mail message, circulated widely by Mr. Greenspan to Harvard students on Sept. 19, 2003, describes
the newest feature of houseSYSTEM, as “the Face Book,” an online system for quickly locating other
students. The date was four months before Mr. Zuckerberg started his own site, originally
“thefacebook.com.” (Mr. Greenspan retained his college e-mail messages and provided The New York Times
with copies of his communications with Mr. Zuckerberg.)
Later the two students exchanged e-mail about their separate projects. When Mr. Greenspan asked what
Mr. Zuckerberg was planning and suggested the two integrate their systems, Mr. Zuckerberg responded, a
month before starting his own service: “I actually did think about integrating it into houseSYSTEM before
you even suggested it, but I decided that it’s probably best to keep them separated at least for now.”
Despite Mr. Greenspan’s entrepreneurial ambitions, Mr. Zuckerberg was the first to move to Silicon Valley,
raising venture capital and eventually transforming Facebook from a social networking site for college
students into one of the fastest growing Internet sites for both social and business contacts.
Indeed, Mr. Greenspan, who is now 24 and moved to Silicon Valley last year to start a company, appears to
be a clear example of a truism in this high-technology region: establishing who is first with an idea is often a
murky endeavor at best, and frequently it is not the inventor of an idea who is the ultimate winner.
Mr. Zuckerberg declined to be interviewed, saying through a spokeswoman that he was not sure how to
respond. He did not dispute the chronology of events or the authenticity of Mr. Greenspan’s e-mail
messages. Mr. Zuckerberg is seeking to dismiss the ConnectU suit.

Page 10 Mr. Greenspan said that Mr. Zuckerberg’s lawyer contacted him this year in connection with the ConnectU
lawsuit but that he had declined a request to serve as a witness, fearing that he would become embroiled in
the legal battle.
In an interview at a cafe here this week, Mr. Greenspan said he had mostly made peace with the fact that
Mr. Zuckerberg will be the first of his classmates to become a billionaire.
If Mr. Zuckerberg did borrow some of Mr. Greenspan’s concepts, he may have simply been working in a
grand Harvard tradition. After all, it was a young Harvard dropout, Bill Gates, and his classmate, Paul G.
Allen, who almost three decades earlier copied a version of the BASIC programming language, designed by
two Dartmouth college professors, to jump-start the company that would grow into the world’s most
powerful software firm.
“I’ve had a long time to think about this, and I’m not as bitter as I was a year ago,” Mr. Greenspan said.
“Things like this aren’t surprising to me anymore.”
Still, he does not seem to be entirely at peace with the way things have turned out, and he wants to have the
last word.
He has described the original creation of houseSYSTEM, ConnectU and Facebook in “Authoritas: One
Student’s Harvard Admissions,” a 306-page unpublished autobiography about his adventures as a college
student.
“This book is partly a search for justice,” he wrote in the introduction. “You don’t write an autobiography in
your early 20s unless there’s something you need to get off your chest.”
In “Authoritas,” he described his collision with Harvard authorities when he first started his system. He also
explained his frustration in getting the student paper, The Harvard Crimson, to write about houseSYSTEM,
which was then being used by about 100 students.
Mr. Zuckerberg, by way of contrast, had no difficulty attracting the interest of the paper, Mr. Greenspan
said. It wrote about him first because he had developed MP3-playing software, called Synapse, as a high
school student. The paper then published frequent follow-up articles.
College classmates describe Mr. Greenspan as extremely bright and an unusually productive software
designer. Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Zuckerberg had much in common, said William Most, who was a
classmate. “They were both computer guys and self-starters.”
Mr. Greenspan remains extraordinarily energetic and envisions ideas for new projects. Indeed, in an effort
to find a publisher for his Harvard manuscript he developed an automated system that generated
personalized query letters to more than 800 literary agents nationwide.
Although he has yet to find a publisher, he has deployed his system as a commercial Web service for other
potential authors as part of CommonRoom, a social networking and business Web site that he established
last year.
He attained brief notoriety on several Internet news sites last year when he published an open letter to Mr.

Page 11 Zuckerberg after reports surfaced that Yahoo had offered his college classmate $900 million for Facebook
just two years after the founding of the company.
With barely hidden bitterness, he wrote: “Remember the Web site you signed up for at Harvard two days
before we met in January, 2004, called houseSYSTEM — the one I made with the Universal Face Book that
predated your site by four months?
“Well, I’ve relaunched it as CommonRoom,” he continued, “and just like its predecessor, it has all sorts of
features that might seem familiar: birthday reminders, an event calendar, RSVPs, how you know someone,
photo albums, courses posters.
“After all, when you saw all of those features in houseSYSTEM three years ago, you called them ‘too useful,’
but I stood by them as valuable. Fortunately, even though I shut down houseSYSTEM, I can still use those
same features on Facebook — and I didn’t even have to write any more code!”
Although CommonRoom has just 1,500 users, compared with Facebook’s 37 million, Mr. Greenspan has not
given up on the idea of social networking. He is starting his second company — he founded his first, Think
Computer, when he was 15 — with a new partner. He said he has been promised venture capital backing for
the new company, Qubescape.
“I’ve been doing consulting and software for business for several years now, and I’ve noticed the same
problems again and again in business,” he said. “I think there’s a fairly good chance we’ll turn business
software on its head.”
Mr. Greenspan says that he has learned some important lessons since leaving school, although he has no
love for the thought of becoming one of the serial entrepreneurs common in Silicon Valley.
“I’ve written a lot about Harvard’s motto being ‘veritas,’ ” he wrote recently in an instant message, “and how
uncomfortable I was when I discovered that Harvard actually didn’t abide by the ideals of truth at all times.
But it’s a good motto. Possibly the best there is, because if you wait long enough, the truth will come out.”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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PDF Page 2	Case 1:11-cv-12000-RBC Document 33 Filed 02/02/12 Page 1 of 11 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON DIVISION AARON GREENSPAN, Plaintiff, Case No.: 1:11-cv-12000-RBC v. RANDOM HOUSE, INC.; MEZCO, INC.; BENJAMIN MEZRICH; COLUMBIA PICTURES INDUSTRIES, INC. a/k/a SONY PICTURES a/k/a COLUMBIA TRISTAR MOTION PICTURE GROUP, Defendants. RESPONSE TO MOTION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC., MEZCO, INC., AND BENJAMIN MEZRICH TO STRIKE EXHIBITS TO PLAINTIFF’S OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANTS’ MOTIONS TO DISMISS Plaintiff respectfully opposes the motion to strike exhibits filed by Moving Defendants Random House, Inc., Mezco, Inc. and Benjamin Mezrich. The Moving Defendants make a number of misleading arguments in an attempt to wave away the clear evidence that they have engaged in a pattern of deceptive and unlawful activity over a period of years. Exhibits A and B directly support Plaintiff’s arguments outlined in its Complaint and in its Memorandum in Opposition to the Motions to Dismiss of All Defendants (“Memorandum”). Exhibits C and D describe in detail Moving Defendants’ unlawful behavior involving their repeated, willful sale of fictional material as “non-fiction.” As much as Moving Defendants might try to ignore it, such behavior is absolutely central to these proceedings. Exhibit E is a substantial portion of the “extensive written documentation” specifically referred to in paragraph 26 of the Complaint. 1

PDF Page 3	Case 1:11-cv-12000-RBC Document 33 Filed 02/02/12 Page 2 of 11 Generally, all five Exhibits are offered by Plaintiff in response to Defendants’ (incorrect) general objections that somehow Plaintiff failed to allege any specific facts or offer evidence in support of those facts in its Complaint. Plaintiff responds by once again pointing out that it is not required to state in its Complaint every single fact involved in its claims, by highlighting the plethora of facts that it did clearly state, and by providing evidence to support those facts. Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 127 S. Ct. 1955, 1965 (2007). Now that additional evidence is offered at Moving Defendants’ request to support those facts, Moving Defendants would like such evidence to go away because it reflects extremely poorly on them. As Plaintiff wrote in its Memorandum, “The court may also consider documents outside of the pleadings in certain circumstances in ruling on a motion to dismiss. See Watterson, 987 F.2d at 3. There is a ‘narrow exception for documents the authenticity of which are not disputed by the parties; for official public records; for documents central to plaintiff's claim; or for documents sufficiently referred to in the complaint.’ Id. 3-4.” Exhibit A to the Memorandum is, as Moving Defendants state, “a print out of the entry for the word ‘slick’ on the website www.dictionary.com.” Moving Defendants omit, however, that the aforementioned web site is at least in part, “Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.” Surely Defendant Random House, Inc. has a copy of its own dictionary that it can use to verify the authenticity of the definitions cited therein. In any case, Moving Defendants do not dispute the authenticity of this Exhibit, and the definition of the word “slick” used by Defendant Mezrich—in stark contrast to Moving Defendants’ ridiculous allegation that no such definition exists—is central to Plaintiff’s claims relating to defamation. Moving Defendants only indirectly challenge the authenticity of a single exhibit, Exhibit B, by referring to it as “purported.” Exhibit B is a written letter dated August 10, 2009 with attached evidence of “advertorial” (conflating advertising and editorial) practices attributed to 2

PDF Page 4	Case 1:11-cv-12000-RBC Document 33 Filed 02/02/12 Page 3 of 11 Moving Defendants that violate Federal Trade Commission advertising guidelines, sent by Think Computer Corporation, Plaintiff’s publisher, to Defendant Random House, Inc. Moving Defendants acknowledge that Exhibit B was referred to in the Complaint, and it was also referred to in the Memorandum. Accordingly, Exhibit B falls within the exception permitting consideration outlined by Watterson. Furthermore, although Moving Defendants are correct in stating that, “Plaintiff’s claim is not based on the letter,” they fail to mention that Plaintiff’s claim is based on the accompanying evidence, which is part of the very same Exhibit and “described in the letter.” Moving Defendants further pointlessly allege that the exhibits have not been authenticated, but this extra step is hardly necessary. See Fed. R. Evid. 902 (“The following items of evidence are self-authenticating; they require no extrinsic evidence of authenticity in order to be admitted: (6) Newspapers and Periodicals. Printed material purporting to be a newspaper or periodical… (9) Commercial Paper and Related Documents. Commercial paper, a signature on it, and related documents, to the extent allowed by general commercial law.”) It is up to Moving Defendants to contest the authenticity of Exhibit A given its origin, and notably, Moving Defendants have chosen not to do so. The authenticity of Exhibit B is only superficially contested, as Moving Defendants provide no reasonable basis for the belief that the document is somehow a falsified copy of the true original. Exhibit B is on commercial letterhead and is signed. Exhibits C and D are fully identified (by author, date, and headline) as publicly available articles from the major newspaper The Boston Globe, which can be accessed in their entirety by anyone with a computer and internet connection. Particularly worried attorneys such as Moving Defendants’ clearly have the means to check both of these articles word for word, and they are encouraged to do so. Exhibit E, as Exhibit B, originated with Plaintiff, and therefore only 3

PDF Page 5	Case 1:11-cv-12000-RBC Document 33 Filed 02/02/12 Page 4 of 11 Plaintiff is capable of confirming the authenticity of each document. To satisfy Moving Defendants’ apparent concerns, both exhibits are, in fact, authentic. Furthermore, the component elements of Exhibit E have already been authenticated by The New York Times, another major newspaper, which reported on the contents of Exhibit E in another publicly available article dated September 1, 2007 and entitled, “Who Founded Facebook? A New Claim Emerges,” by John Markoff. This article states, “Mr. Greenspan retained his college e-mail messages and provided The New York Times with copies of his communications with Mr. Zuckerberg.” It further states, “Mr. Zuckerberg declined to be interviewed, saying through a spokeswoman that he was not sure how to respond. He did not dispute the chronology of events or the authenticity of Mr. Greenspan’s e-mail messages.” Moving Defendants even complain that the server logs alluded to in Exhibit E were not attached in full. Though a more comprehensive view of these same logs is also publicly available on the Authoritas web site, these more verbose excerpts of relevant material are 320 pages long due to the extremely detailed nature of server logging technology. The server logs in their raw form would potentially be tens of thousands of pages long, making disclosure impractical and furthermore, pointless. Had these raw server logs been attached to the Memorandum, Moving Defendants would have surely argued that they were mostly irrelevant and difficult to decipher. Plaintiff specifically did not attach them in order to spare the Court and Defendants a pointless exercise. Lastly, concerning Exhibit E, Moving Defendants cite rules 1001 and 1002 of the Federal Rules of Evidence to argue that only raw log data is admissable. Section 1001(d) actually states, “For electronically stored information, ‘original’ means any printout — or other output readable by sight — if it accurately reflects the information” (emphasis added). There is no mention of a requirement that such a printout be “complete,” because electronically stored information can 4

PDF Page 6	Case 1:11-cv-12000-RBC Document 33 Filed 02/02/12 Page 5 of 11 always be linked to other pieces of information and is therefore never “complete.” For example, a Portable Document Format (PDF) file (such as the one representing this filing) is not complete without the software that interprets it; that software is not complete without an underlying operating system; that is not complete without the instruction set of the microprocessor it is designed for; that is not complete without a hardware schematic for said microprocessor and preceding models, etc. Therefore, Moving Defendants’ flawed interpretation of the rule, if applied, would routinely yield an overwhelming body of only tangentially related data that would inevitably obscure the message of the main evidence and stymie the judicial process. Therefore, Moving Defendants’ argument that Exhibit E is somehow “in violation of the best evidence rule” is incorrect and rule 1002 is moot. Exhibit E does accurately reflect the information relevant to these proceedings, and without the burden of voluminous extraneous information irrelevant to these proceedings. Generally, Moving Defendants will do anything to avoid having to respond to the proper and reasonable allegations contained within Plaintiff’s Complaint. This apparently includes wishing for a magic wand that will make all of the evidence disappear. The Court should not grant Moving Defendants their wish, as Moving Defendants have neither set forth a substantive challenge to the authenticity of the exhibits, nor made a convincing argument that the exhibits are peripheral to the issues at hand. WHEREFORE, Plaintiff respectfully requests that this Court deny the Motion to Strike filed by Moving Defendants. 5

PDF Page 7	Case 1:11-cv-12000-RBC Document 33 Filed 02/02/12 Page 6 of 11 Respectfully submitted this 2nd day of February, 2012. Aaron Greenspan 884 College Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94303-1303 Phone: +1 415 670 9350 Fax: +1 415 373 3959 E-Mail: greenspan@post.harvard.edu 6

PDF Page 8	Case 1:11-cv-12000-RBC Document 33 Filed 02/02/12 Page 7 of 11 CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE I, Aaron Greenspan, hereby certify that this document filed through the ECF system will be sent electronically to the registered participants as identified on the Notice of Electronic Filing (NEF) and paper copies will be sent to those indicated as non-registered participants. By Aaron Greenspan 884 College Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94306-1303 greenspan@post.harvard.edu

PDF Page 9	Case 1:11-cv-12000-RBC Document 33 Filed 02/02/12 Page 8 of 11 EXHIBIT A September 1, 2007 New York Times Article: “Who Founded Facebook? A New Claim Emerges” by John Markoff

PDF Page 10	Case 1:11-cv-12000-RBC Document 33 Filed 02/02/12 Page 9 of 11 September 1, 2007 Who Founded Facebook? A New Claim Emerges By JOHN MARKOFF PALO ALTO, Calif., Aug. 29 — Mark E. Zuckerberg is considered the founder of Facebook, the popular social networking Web site estimated to be worth upward of $1 billion. Three Harvard classmates, the founders of ConnectU, have long claimed that Mr. Zuckerberg stole the idea from them, and they are suing him in Federal District Court in Boston. Both parties seem to have forgotten Aaron J. Greenspan, yet another Harvard classmate. He says he was actually the one who created the original college social networking system, before either side in the legal dispute. And he has the e-mail messages to show it. As a Harvard student in 2003 — six months before Facebook started and eight months before ConnectU went online — Mr. Greenspan established a simple Web service that he called houseSYSTEM. It was used by several thousand Harvard students for a variety of online college-related tasks. Mr. Zuckerberg was briefly an early participant. An e-mail message, circulated widely by Mr. Greenspan to Harvard students on Sept. 19, 2003, describes the newest feature of houseSYSTEM, as “the Face Book,” an online system for quickly locating other students. The date was four months before Mr. Zuckerberg started his own site, originally “thefacebook.com.” (Mr. Greenspan retained his college e-mail messages and provided The New York Times with copies of his communications with Mr. Zuckerberg.) Later the two students exchanged e-mail about their separate projects. When Mr. Greenspan asked what Mr. Zuckerberg was planning and suggested the two integrate their systems, Mr. Zuckerberg responded, a month before starting his own service: “I actually did think about integrating it into houseSYSTEM before you even suggested it, but I decided that it’s probably best to keep them separated at least for now.” Despite Mr. Greenspan’s entrepreneurial ambitions, Mr. Zuckerberg was the first to move to Silicon Valley, raising venture capital and eventually transforming Facebook from a social networking site for college students into one of the fastest growing Internet sites for both social and business contacts. Indeed, Mr. Greenspan, who is now 24 and moved to Silicon Valley last year to start a company, appears to be a clear example of a truism in this high-technology region: establishing who is first with an idea is often a murky endeavor at best, and frequently it is not the inventor of an idea who is the ultimate winner. Mr. Zuckerberg declined to be interviewed, saying through a spokeswoman that he was not sure how to respond. He did not dispute the chronology of events or the authenticity of Mr. Greenspan’s e-mail messages. Mr. Zuckerberg is seeking to dismiss the ConnectU suit.

PDF Page 11	Case 1:11-cv-12000-RBC Document 33 Filed 02/02/12 Page 10 of 11 Mr. Greenspan said that Mr. Zuckerberg’s lawyer contacted him this year in connection with the ConnectU lawsuit but that he had declined a request to serve as a witness, fearing that he would become embroiled in the legal battle. In an interview at a cafe here this week, Mr. Greenspan said he had mostly made peace with the fact that Mr. Zuckerberg will be the first of his classmates to become a billionaire. If Mr. Zuckerberg did borrow some of Mr. Greenspan’s concepts, he may have simply been working in a grand Harvard tradition. After all, it was a young Harvard dropout, Bill Gates, and his classmate, Paul G. Allen, who almost three decades earlier copied a version of the BASIC programming language, designed by two Dartmouth college professors, to jump-start the company that would grow into the world’s most powerful software firm. “I’ve had a long time to think about this, and I’m not as bitter as I was a year ago,” Mr. Greenspan said. “Things like this aren’t surprising to me anymore.” Still, he does not seem to be entirely at peace with the way things have turned out, and he wants to have the last word. He has described the original creation of houseSYSTEM, ConnectU and Facebook in “Authoritas: One Student’s Harvard Admissions,” a 306-page unpublished autobiography about his adventures as a college student. “This book is partly a search for justice,” he wrote in the introduction. “You don’t write an autobiography in your early 20s unless there’s something you need to get off your chest.” In “Authoritas,” he described his collision with Harvard authorities when he first started his system. He also explained his frustration in getting the student paper, The Harvard Crimson, to write about houseSYSTEM, which was then being used by about 100 students. Mr. Zuckerberg, by way of contrast, had no difficulty attracting the interest of the paper, Mr. Greenspan said. It wrote about him first because he had developed MP3-playing software, called Synapse, as a high school student. The paper then published frequent follow-up articles. College classmates describe Mr. Greenspan as extremely bright and an unusually productive software designer. Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Zuckerberg had much in common, said William Most, who was a classmate. “They were both computer guys and self-starters.” Mr. Greenspan remains extraordinarily energetic and envisions ideas for new projects. Indeed, in an effort to find a publisher for his Harvard manuscript he developed an automated system that generated personalized query letters to more than 800 literary agents nationwide. Although he has yet to find a publisher, he has deployed his system as a commercial Web service for other potential authors as part of CommonRoom, a social networking and business Web site that he established last year. He attained brief notoriety on several Internet news sites last year when he published an open letter to Mr.

PDF Page 12	Case 1:11-cv-12000-RBC Document 33 Filed 02/02/12 Page 11 of 11 Zuckerberg after reports surfaced that Yahoo had offered his college classmate $900 million for Facebook just two years after the founding of the company. With barely hidden bitterness, he wrote: “Remember the Web site you signed up for at Harvard two days before we met in January, 2004, called houseSYSTEM — the one I made with the Universal Face Book that predated your site by four months? “Well, I’ve relaunched it as CommonRoom,” he continued, “and just like its predecessor, it has all sorts of features that might seem familiar: birthday reminders, an event calendar, RSVPs, how you know someone, photo albums, courses posters. “After all, when you saw all of those features in houseSYSTEM three years ago, you called them ‘too useful,’ but I stood by them as valuable. Fortunately, even though I shut down houseSYSTEM, I can still use those same features on Facebook — and I didn’t even have to write any more code!” Although CommonRoom has just 1,500 users, compared with Facebook’s 37 million, Mr. Greenspan has not given up on the idea of social networking. He is starting his second company — he founded his first, Think Computer, when he was 15 — with a new partner. He said he has been promised venture capital backing for the new company, Qubescape. “I’ve been doing consulting and software for business for several years now, and I’ve noticed the same problems again and again in business,” he said. “I think there’s a fairly good chance we’ll turn business software on its head.” Mr. Greenspan says that he has learned some important lessons since leaving school, although he has no love for the thought of becoming one of the serial entrepreneurs common in Silicon Valley. “I’ve written a lot about Harvard’s motto being ‘veritas,’ ” he wrote recently in an instant message, “and how uncomfortable I was when I discovered that Harvard actually didn’t abide by the ideals of truth at all times. But it’s a good motto. Possibly the best there is, because if you wait long enough, the truth will come out.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS First Look Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map


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