To quote an American Hero, I called it!
A while back I proclaimed my love of Scrabulous, and described that it was “basically an un-investigated copyright infringement on Scrabble.” Well, make that investigated. A few weeks ago Hasbro slapped a cease & desist on Scrabulous, citing, duh, copyright infringement.
If there’s anything more predictable than this turn of events, it’s the nonplussed reaction we’re hearing from the Facebook horde. Take this gem from yesterday’s Inquirer:
“I understand from a branding standpoint, Hasbro or whoever owns it, but to my mind there should be a way to work it out,” said [Annette] Jeffrey, a member of Save Scrabulous! on Facebook. “Besides, it’s Facebook. Facebook is a happy place.”
Last time I checked, happy places weren’t exempt from straightforward law. With Scrabulous, the brothers Agarwalla have stolen the board, the point values, the letter distribution, and the first four letters from Scrabble. Their only contribution is the code, which pretty much any CSE major could have come up with.
So I’m going to make a new prediction. Scrabulous will bite the dust, but from its ashes will rise Scrabble, the One and True King of Word Games, and verily, fickle Facebookers will hardly note the difference.
Tags: Scrabulous
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