The Winklevoss Twins Say Money Not The Reason They Aim To Shut Down Facebook.

Twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss say the primary goal of their lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg, is to hold the CEO of social networking site Facebook, accountable for his actions. (We’re sure the $2 billion Facebook could command if acquired was no motivation at all…yeah right.)

The two brothers along with Divya Narendra, all former Harvard students, have filed a lawsuit accusing Zuckerberg of stealing the idea for their social networking site.

The lawsuit, which was originally filed in 2004, alleges copyright infringement, the stealing of trade secrets, breach of contract and fraud.

“The fraud that’s been perpetrated here is partly against us, but it’s also against 30 million people who believe the site was developed in an ethical way and that it was the true creation of Mark Zuckerberg, when in fact it couldn’t be further from the truth,” Cameron Winklevoss told CTV’s Canada AM.

According to the Winklevoss brothers, Zuckerberg’s tenure with their social networking site, now known as ConnectU, lasted between three and four months. But once the brothers learned of Zuckerberg’s Facebook project in a Harvard student newspaper, his employment was terminated, they said.

“We basically entrusted him with all of our source code and business plan and models and everything that we had pretty much been working on for up to a year about, prior to engaging him,” Cameron Winklevoss said.

“So, he basically did what you could call a brain drain and kind of took off with it under our noses.”

The brothers said they have evidence of email exchanges with Zuckerberg, source code evidence and the testimony of other programmers to back up their claims against Zuckerberg.

Facebook has since become one of the most popular social networking websites. It gains 150,000 new users a day and is reputedly valued at billions of dollars.

While the brothers said it would be “satisfying” to see Zuckerberg in court on Wednesday, they said their motivation with the lawsuit is not monetary. “Of course the magnitude (of Facebook) is incredible today,” Tyler Winklevoss said. “But we’ve been waging this battle, if you will, since day one.” Source [CTV.CA]