Drop Scrabulous, Facebook told
p2pnet news | Games:- “Play Scrabulous, the coolest word game with your family and friends, right here at Facebook,” says its inventors, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla on Facebook.
But, Don’t even think about it!, say joint Scrabble owners Mattel and Hasbro.
They’re demanding Facebook yanks the Scrabulous game from its site claiming Scrabulous infringes their copyright on their Scrabble word game.
Scrabulous was invented by Rajat, 26, who launched the software company in Calcutta, India, seven years ago, and his brother, Jayant, 21, an under-graduate who’s, “won numerous Scrabble tournaments in the city,” says the BBC.
“Though I have deliberately avoided the Scrabulous contagion in the past few months, there are members of the media desk devastated by the news that their favourite web occupation could be withdrawn,” says Jemima Kiss on Guardian Unlimited going on:
“Facebook can’t be too chuffed either: it brings in 600,500 users every day and is one of the ten most popular apps on the site.”
Some say Agarwalla’s Scrabulous, “rests in a tenuous legal area ’somewhere between loving homage and copyright infringement’,” says the Times of India, adding:
“Many other popular games, including Hasbro’s own Monopoly and Boggle, have online versions, but they carefully skirt copyright issues by renaming the games completely (Boggle, for instance, is called Scramble) and altering the mechanics. Some gaming companies have re-jigged chess, and card games such as poker and blackjack, for online use, but there are no copyright issues involved here.”
Also See:-
BBC – Facebook asked to pull Scrabulous, January 16, 2008
Guardian Unlimited – The end of Scrabulous on Facebook?, January 16, 2008
Times of India – Scrabble-maker plays spoiler for online fans, January 16, 2008
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe
to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.phpNet access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.
