January 17, 2008
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Not Scrabulous Too!
As more evidence that intellectual property laws kill kittens and steals candy from babies, Hasbro has decided to try and shutdown Scrabulous! linky
Scrabulous is the scrabble variant most played on facebook. It’s one of the most popular applications around. Everybody loves it.
And that’s just it isn’t it? Has there ever been a case where this idea of “intellectual property” has been invoked that has actually been to the benefit of any of us regular people? I’m wracking my brain for an example but I just can’t think of any. It always seems to be used to help the rich and the powerful just get richer and more powerful!
I know that originally copyright and patent laws did exist to protect the interests of the little guys trying to make it big. They just don’t work that way anymore. Now they just give the big conglomerate companies a big stick they can use to beat all competition into the submission before it ever has a chance to challenge them. All the while sucking the joy out of life from all us individuals who just want to enjoy our internet experience.
The only people who benefited from the destruction of Napster work at Apple.
Youtube only persists because it is under the protection of big bad Google which is considered “one of us” by the corporate elites.
It’s all so pointless. We need a rich and vibrant commons. We need more things open sourced and public domained. We need to be able to create and explore without having to worry that every little thing we do will be shutdown by Big Brother and the IP Terror Squads.
I know I’m just ranting but man I hate this. Everybody who has a facebook account go and join the SAVE SCRABULOUS group right now!
I swear on my grandmother’s grave that if Scrabulous disappears from facebook because of this, I will never buy another Magic Card, another D&D Book, or another Hasbro or affiliate board game or action figure set again. I will not in any way knowingly spend one red penny of my money on anything remotely Hasbro related. And I will encourage everyone I know to do the same.
And to be honest I don’t even like scrabble that much…
edit: added relevant links
Comments (6)
you a D&D person? hmm. i wonder what it is about me that i keep running into gamers.. not that it’s a bad thing. just interesting. and yea, most definitely save scrabulous!
ps. thank you.
Yep I’m a big time gamer. More into video games these days. ROCKBAND and Mass Effect are two games I’ve been playing a lot recently. Occasionally I play board games – Settlers of Catan, RISK and of course Scrabulous. I play Magic:The Gathering the CCG fairly frequently and I have a huge collection of cards online and offline.
I’ve played D&D since I was in 5th grade but never very frequently and not at all in a long time. It can be hard to find a good group that you are compatible with to play with. Nowadays I read the books and browse the forums mostly as sort of recreational reading.
So yeah, Hasbro’s gonna lose a pretty big customer if they don’t shape up.
I feel your pain, man!
I always thought the Napster thing and all the punitive damages were ridiculous. If I buy a CD and lend it to friends to copy, why is it a crime if I happen to lend it to 1000 friends instead of 10?
What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
<li class=”itemtimestamp”>1/19/2008 3:42 PM
<li class=”itemsubmitter”>nephyo (chatboard)
Why are people afraid of people who aren’t afraid?
as with law, there come two arguments of which deliberation would cause one side to say scrabulous takes away interest in scrabble…however, I truly feel that it might better serve as an interest in scrabble in real time..
I remember me and my friends growing up, we all liked RISK but hated the way the map was laid out, so we based a map on Star Treks Romulan, Federation, Vulcan and Klingon empires…each having three worlds…it had a little bit of levels like D&D and took the four of us to figure out a playable game after 6 or so months fighting and arguing and scavenging stuff from existing games..even Kaiser, Koenig & Edelman..ja wol…we enjoyed the evolution of that game more than just RISK, but, we all bought RISK games after that because it was important…for authenticity or nostalgia I suppose…
I believe scrabble to be similar…ever wonder when public health will be proprietary? eh?
it is a slow death isn’t it?…