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VentureBeat has a really interesting scoop. Ticketmaster the owner of social event planning site Evite has threatened to sue rival Socializr alleging that Socializr has ripped off some of their invitation templates and are using them on their site. Evite cited three templates “Holiday,” the “Hawaii Luau” and “Winter Celebration” to be infringing its copyright. Socializr took immediate action and removed Holiday and Hawaii Luau from their template section but have continued to host Winter Celebration. Check out the two templates for yourself.

I think that the reason Socializr has not removed Winter Celebration is because they have really not ripped this one, and Evite listed it in the rip off list for the sake of pumping it up a bit.

This is not so unusual, Viacom did something similar when they slapped Youtube with a massive DMCA take down notice, including some movies in the copyright infringement list that were fair use. EFF took immediate notice of this and counter sued Viacom for acting against fair use. The battle eventually ended in Viacom accepting its mistake and vowing to protect fair use.

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Socializer is yet another Social event planner to launch into the crowded space populated by industry leader Evite, others like Renkoo, MingleNow, Skobee, Mypunchbowl, SuggestLocal, ILCU, Planypus and a bunch of social networks built around this concept like eventful and heyletsgo.

The good thing about socializer is that its owned by the founder of pioneering social networking site, Friendster. Friendster fumbled badly and lost its lead to MySpace, Facebook and other young kids. Lets see if Jonathan Abrams could make a come back this time.

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