A school project created by two Yale undergraduates in 2011 has unexpectedly become a target of Facebook's legal team. The social networking giant has demanded that the two developers, Bay Gross and Charlie Croom, abandon the website they created at whatsherface-book.com. The site featured a game that showed people pictures of their Facebook friends, then quizzed them on which pictures they could recognize.

"You should not sell, offer to sell, or transfer the domain name to a third party and should let the domain registration expire," states the letter, signed by "Ethel" of Facebook's legal department. "Please confirm in writing that you will agree to resolve this letter as requested."

The missive from Ethel had unusual timing, since the game stopped working earlier this year after a Facebook API update. But the two friends, who created the website as a project in their Law and Technology class at Yale, still felt they shouldn't have to remove their website. While the game stopped functioning, the site still showcased the results of the quizzes that had been taken. Plus, the site had a real point to make about Internet privacy and how it's at odds with Facebook's massive data collection.

Instead of tossing their project in the digital trash bin at Facebook's request, Gross and Croom, who have since taken jobs at Google and Twitter respectively, turned to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. EFF lawyer Daniel Nazer responded (PDF) to Facebook on Friday, telling the company that Gross and Croom are now his clients, and they have no intention of taking the site down.

In a blog post explaining the decision to help the undergraduate project, Nazer writes that it isn't clear if the Facebook letter is simply an example of "mindless over-enforcement" or an attempt to intentionally censor a critic. "Either way, this kind of demand undermines online expression," Nazer says.

A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment on the letter to Croom and Gross.

Project’s point: Don’t “friend randos”

The "whatsherface-book" site featured an interactive game that showed people pictures of their Facebook friends and then asked if the users could recognize them. More than 5,200 people played the game, and it turned out that on average they knew just 72 percent of their "friends."

Those results got Gross and Croom some press attention, like a 2011 article from Forbes entitled "As Facebook Timeline Rolls Out, Find Out How Well You Know Your Friends."

"The quiz purveyors suggest that I get 'unfriendin',' noting that people I apparently don't know have the right to share

my information with third party apps," wrote the article's author, Kashmir Hill.

"We wanted to try and make people aware in a more direct way just how little they often knew about the people who were able to give out their information," said Croom in an e-mail exchange with Ars. He continued:

For instance, that one guy you met at a party 4 years ago? He works at Goldman now and could scope out any photos or posts that might sway the hiring committee one way or the other. Even if he just installed the wrong app, that malicious app would now have your details as well.

Facebook has since banned the kind of third-party data grab that whatsherface-book used to make its friend quizzes. When apps access your friend list, they can now only access friends who also use the app. Still, Croom says the team wanted to keep the site up because even though the "app hole" was addressed, the implications of the quiz results still matter. "Friending randos still gives them access to your information (in my case, phone, email, etc.), so we feel it's still important to remind people of that."

Is this spam?

It was Gross who fielded the Facebook letter, which he initially thought was a phishing attempt and considered marking as spam. "It was phrased as oddly intense and kept reiterating how 'famous' the Facebook trademark was," he told Ars via e-mail.

The links and headers checked out, though, and the e-mail had enough specific information that he thought he shouldn't ignore it entirely. "As with any Internet emergency, I sent out a tweet," he wrote. "I immediately got some inbound from our old professor who practices law and a former classmate who works at the EFF. I think both saw the absurdity/irony of the situation and wanted to help out."

Nazer is hoping the case can make big companies at least consider fair use before they send out automated, or near-automated, letters demanding that websites fold up shop.

"We think cases like this push back against trademark owner narratives that any 'use' of a [trademark] needs permission," he said. "We also want to push them to at least consider fair use before sending cease and desist letters."