Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Scrabulous: Cry Baby Moment of the Day

Link to July 30 New York Times article, " Only a Game? A Fight Over Scrabble Has Web Fans Fuming".



Excerpt:
The demise of Scrabulous was sudden but not wholly unexpected. The game, a favorite time-waster among cubicle dwellers, was created by two brothers in Calcutta. On July 24, Hasbro, which owns the North American rights to Scrabble, sued them for copyright infringement. On Tuesday, the brothers made Scrabulous unavailable to Facebook users in Canada and the United States, citing legal pressure.

The backlash was instant. Bloggers denounced Hasbro, howls of protest flooded message boards, and new Facebook groups were created with names like “Down with Hasbro.” Although some people spoke up to defend Hasbro’s rights, most people jeered at the company, calling it everything from “short-sighted” to “technologically in the dark” to “despicable.”

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