IIRC, Hasbro did offer the maker of Scabulous ten million dollars for
the rights to their work, even when the estimated worth wasn't half
that.  The word is that the creators were holding out for even more
money.  Which is kind of reminiscent of the dot-com bubble of the
nineties.

To play devil's advocate, how much should it be considered acceptable
for a company to try to reach out before they can exercise their
proprietary over their products?  Yes, I know you would say that
ideally they wouldn't, but reasonably.

To note, I loved Scrabulous while I was on Facebook and am sad it's
gone and think it was a bad move on Hasbro's part.  However, there
legal action will not stop me from taking up someone on a game of
Scrabble IRL.  That's silly - if the board already exists, it does not
hurt the company at all if you are using it for something different,
nor do they get any financial value of you playing a different game
with the same board.  IMO, What's so good about the official version
of Scrabble is the the same thing that's good with all mainstream
board games.  The rules already exist so they can't be argued upon,
and many people already know how to play it.  And if they learn the
official rules, it's easy enough to play with anyone else who is
familiar with scrabble.  It's a networking advantage; cultural
capital, if you will.

As for homemade tiles: opaque glass mosaic stones and a sharpie make
for an fun variation.  The tiles don't have to be square.  Or you
could defile the national currency and take the sharpie to pennies.

Herbert.

On Jul 31, 2008, at 11:24 PM, Ringo Kamens wrote:

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> FreeCulture.org - Students for Free Culture wrote:
>> Writes Nelson Pavlosky on our blog:
>>
>> Do you feel that Hasbro's lawsuit against [Scrabulous][1] was rather
>> heavy-handed? Did you enjoy Scrabulous's revival of a 60-year-old
>> game,
>> and do you resent Hasbro's [free-riding off of the innovators who
>> made
>> Scrabulous][2]? Is it uncool that Hasbro used Scrabulous to make
>> Scrabble more popular, and then sued the Scrabulous developers once
>> Hasbro developed an official Facebook app?
>>
>> Then perhaps it is time that you began boycotting Hasbro's
>> Scrabble, in
>> all its forms. Why not:
>>
>>  * **Refuse to use official Scrabble online games -** Let's face it,
>> they're [not as good as Scrabulous was][3], anyway. You can join the
>> Facebook group [We refuse to use official Scrabble app since Hasbro
>> shut
>> down Scrabulous][4] or probably a dozen others like it.
>>
>>  * **Continue playing Scrabulous anyway - **Hasbro does not own the
>> copyrights to Scrabble outside the USA and Canada, some other company
>> does. So, if you connect to Facebook from an IP address located
>> outside
>> the US and Canada, then you can continue playing Scrabulous just like
>> the good old days. [This Facebook group][5] has easy instructions
>> on how
>> to do so, by connecting to Facebook through a proxy server. A silver
>> lining to this lawsuit might be getting more people using the
>> [Firefox
>> web browser][6] and the [FoxyProxy][7] add-on.
>>
>>  * **Avoid buying products from Hasbro - **Do you really need a new
>> Scrabble board? Aren't there a gazillion Scrabble boards floating
>> around
>> people's attics and garage sales that you could pick up for a song?
>> Same
>> thing goes for other Hasbro games! Exercise your first sale rights
>> and
>> buy used games instead.
>>
>>  * **If you have a Scrabble board, don't play Scrabble on it, play a
>> different word game -** What's so good about the exact copyrighted
>> version of Scrabble anyway? The Scrabulous developers realized this
>> and
>> [released the more flexible Wordscraper][8], a Scrabble-esque game
>> that
>> lets you change the board/rules. If you have a physical Scrabble
>> board,
>> there are innumerable word games you could play with it. You could
>> use
>> the tiles to play [Anagrams][9], a lovely fast-paced party game that
>> predates Scrabble, or perhaps even [Bananagrams][10]. Or, create your
>> own entirely new word game, and go down in history as the inventor of
>> something even better than Scrabble!
>>
>>  * **Make your own Scrabble-esque boards -** Why buy it when you can
>> make it yourself? The tiles might be a bit tricky (although a
>> [RepRap 3d
>> printer][11] would probably make short work of it once it's generally
>> available to the public) but it should be child's play to draw a grid
>> and fill in the boxes with double word scores or more interesting
>> variations.
>>
>> Honestly, Hasbro's rent-seeking with the Scrabble copyright is a
>> really
>> annoying example of how copyright can hinder creativity rather than
>> encouraging it. Scrabble was invented in 1938, and sold by the
>> creator
>> in 1948 to someone who could commercialize it (not Hasbro, Hasbro
>> bought
>> the copyright much later around 1986). How much real innovation has
>> been
>> done since then with Scrabble by people who benefit from the
>> copyright
>> royalties? Isn't it telling that the innovators here innovated
>> without
>> benefiting from copyright controls or copyright royalties? This is a
>> clear case of copyright outlasting its usefulness. Perhaps more
>> importantly, I think it's rotten that Hasbro is shutting down
>> Scrabulous
>> for bringing Scrabble to life again for a new generation… that's
>> not a
>> proper reward. I'd love to send a message to Hasbro that their
>> behavior
>> is really uncool. Just because Hasbro has the legal power to shut
>> down
>> Scrabulous doesn't mean it's the right thing to do, either for their
>> bottom line (see [the Economist's cautious endorsement of piracy]
>> [12])
>> or for creativity in the field of gaming.
>>
>>   [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrabulous
>>
>>   [2]: http://freedomforip.org/2008/07/31/hasbro-v-scrabulous-tm-in-a
>> -user-generated-world/
>>
>>   [3]:
>> http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/29/1455219&tid=202
>>
>>   [4]: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=25544341610&ref=nf
>>
>>   [5]: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22388656294&ref=nf
>>
>>   [6]: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
>>
>>   [7]: http://foxyproxy.mozdev.org/
>>
>>   [8]: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080731-scrabulous-goes-
>> for-bonus-points-relaunches-as-wordscraper.html
>>
>>   [9]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anagrams
>>
>>   [10]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bananagrams
>>
>>   [11]: http://reprap.org/
>>
>>   [12]:
>> http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11750492
>>
>> URL: http://freeculture.org/blog/2008/07/31/ideas-for-boycotting-scrabble-and-hasbro/
>> _______________________________________________
>> Discuss mailing list
>> Discuss <at> freeculture.org
>> http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> Cool ideas, I'm certainly never using the official version anymore. I
> with the developers would release the source code so we could to a
> mass
> civil disobedience : (
> CRK
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