Boston ? The owners of a rival social networking Web site are trying to shut down Facebook.com, charging in a federal lawsuit that Facebook’s founder stole their ideas while they were students at Harvard.

The three founders of ConnectU say Mark Zuckerberg agreed to finish computer code for their site but repeatedly stalled and eventually created Facebook using their ideas.

The lawsuit’s allegations against Zuckerberg include fraud, copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets. It asks the court to shutter Facebook and give control of the company and its assets to ConnectU’s founders.

Facebook has responded by asking a judge to dismiss the lawsuit. A hearing is scheduled for today in Boston.

Facebook started in 2004, a few months before ConnectU went online, and now has 31 million users, compared with about 70,000 users for ConnectU, based in Greenwich, Conn.