Life for Scrabulous Addicts Is R-O-U-G-H
“Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.”
–Announcement on homepage for Scrabulous application, Facebook, August 2008
It starts slowly. The buzz begins inside your head, and then you notice the jittery jerks of your fingers missing what is no longer there, and the slowing of your Facebook email notifications to a trickle. No longer are you reminded by your friends that it’s your move, and that you should visit the game in progress to put down your bingo. And then you remember: Scrabulous is no more.
As reported in the LA Times technology blog (and in myriad other places), the popular Facebook application mimicking the board game of Scrabble has been removed in North America after Scrabble copyright-holders Hasbro sued the application’s developers, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla. Mattel owns the rights to Scrabble elsewhere and has filed suit in India, where the Agarwallas reside. In the meantime, Scrabulous addicts mourn and business-type people argue online about what Hasbro should have done instead of shutting down an immensely popular application.
“How do you spell ‘DUMB’?” commented Simon, from Oklahoma. “Hasbro missed a golden opportunity to work out a deal: simply acquire the Scrabulous code and userbase, and let the guys off the copyright-infringement hook. Now they’ve left a bunch of unhappy folks in a lurch, who may just avoid the ‘official’ Scrabble out of spite.”
That’s the business side. But what about the emotional impact on the millions of Scrabulous users? Scrabble itself was a successfully meld between vocabulary knowledge a numerical points strategy, uniting right and left brain in a perfectly fluid pas de deux. When the Scrabulous application hit Facebook, even more people were playing online.
More than a competition, playing a Scrabulous game was a social overture: a fig leaf to a rediscovered friend; a flirtation one intellectual step beyond the Facebook “poke”; or a bridge across time zones and international waters. Some users were mid-game — or worse, about to win games with their friends — when the application was yanked. Mourning has ensued. “I was winning three games!” said Judith, from New York. Jordan, from California, shared the indignation. “I was about to beat [boyfriend] Matt by 100 points! WHY did I have to go to bed last night?” “I finally started playing again after months of inactivity,” said Andrea, from Toronto, Canada. “My last word was a bingo. At least it was a high note.”
Cry me a river.
“Online Scrabble players…”
The urge to read on after this line was just too overwhelming.
The real lesson here is that US Copyright laws are insane. They grant a monopoly, essentially forever. Precious intellectual output is tied up far longer than it should be, mocking the constitutional intent for Copyright.
Patent law, which arguably covers inventions usually more important, grants only a 20 year monopoly (which is still too long in many fields).
The frustrated Scrabulous players should be spelling letters to their congress-critters.
Oh, bah. There’s a half-dozen online Scrabble communities. This only got any airtime because it’s Facebook.
(The real-life Scrabble tournament players are at http://www.isc.ro)