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e-Scrabble gets Cease and Desist Order from Hasbro
Matthew Dull writes "Home-brewed e-Scrabble.com recently received a cease-and-desist order from Hasbro Inc., owners of the famous board game Scrabble. E-scrabble, home to over 100,000 active players, has been hosting up online versions of the game to happily addicted players for over a year now (maybe more), and only now does Hasbro come forth with a lawsuit. The creator of the site, known only as Jared, has posted the letter he received from Hasbro's lawyers. However common it may be, it always seems a tragedy when a big corporation stomps its heavy foot on a fledgling but very successful piece of web software that is close to many people's heart." (It's also the best online Scrabble game I've seen; Hasbro should pay Jared, not sue him.)
Let me say this.
My wife loves scrabble and we have played every version hasbro has released on CD. ABSOLUTELY ABYSMAL. Hasbro has managed to get an ok game but the network play is FUCKING ABSOLUTELY HORRENDUS. And thats putting it midly.
So eventually we found MS games website has scrabble for about a year. Then it went away. Then some other knock off site had it for another year. Then it went away. I think Hasbro released another crap CD. Then after about 2-3 years without online play, we found this one site which I will not mention for obvious reasons. She plays there happily, and I dont have to hear all her complaints about lag, and people disconnecting but not knowing for 15 minutes...
I guess if you can only make shit computer products, just sue anyone that manages to make a quality one.
I bet you each of these free scrabble sites Hasbro will shut down, will have created a game of 10x the quality of the Hasbro version, and will have done it for the the same cheap ass price Hasbro is probably paying, + love.
And the White House will continue to push its idea that Greed is what makes America innovative and strong...
I can understand how you can own a specific implementation of a game (that is, its code, binaries, and data files), but should you be able to own game concept and rules? I don't think so.
As someone who practices software development, I have to ask what happens if you externalize all these values.
Instead of having a set number for the value of a letter, make it a configurable parameter.
Instead of having a set score added for using all your pieces, make this configurable too.
Same goes for the board. You can use different graphic sets to draw the squares based on configurable parameters. You can use parameters to specify how large the board is, which squares are word and letter score multipliers, and how many multiples.
Then only with a particular configuration file would the game be identical to Scrabble.
You could change the name based on a parameter too for that matter.
Where would this leave the copyright situation? Would the software still be forfit? Or only the configuration file that makes it identical to scrabble? What if you let users upload their own configuration files, and left it up to the community to set up games based on their own configurations. Would Hasbro then have to sue the individuals for using this man's software to copy their game?
If you ask me copyright law is an absolute mess in the digital age. Hard as it is, we need to move away from a society where the first person who has an idea can block someone else from using it. Certainly they the people responsible for thinking of it should expect to benefit financially, but they should not be able to take all the benefit from the fruits of an implementor's labour nor block someone else from implementing the idea.
Copyright, trademark and patent law came about at a time when the ability to make copies was limited, as was education. We now copy things electronically in the blink of an eye, and hopefully overall we're more educated, meaning that several people may think of similiar ideas at the same time.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
They knew they were gonna get sued from the beginning. You cannot just take someone's idea and drop it verbatum onto the internet and expect to survive.
Actually, they can. Why? Ideas are an issue of patent law, not copyrights. Hasbro has a copyright on the "game board" and trademark of the name "Scrabble", but they don't own the idea. All the examples you provide are examples of an identical idea.
Should he stop selling/providing the game "as is"; yes, because he has not paid Hasbro to license it. Should he turn over profits; yes, though I think grabbing all revenue ignores the fact that he made a superior product irrespective to Hasbro's trademarks. Should he re-write the game to avoid Hasbro's copyright and trademark; yes, most people would still play the game and Hasbro might take the clue to produce a better product.
I wonder how much "confusion" existed over who was offering the game. Unless he was being deliberately deceptive (his site is down so I can't see it), I would presume a "normal person" would recognize this wasn't being presented by Hasbro.
And forget transfering the domain name; I think he should keep it if only to publicize the problems he's encountered here. That would be legitimate use.
Someone asked if I had patched against MSBlast; I said yes, I installed Linux.
Well... try to give kurnik.{org,pl} a slashdotting.
This site started from exactly the same thing this article is about. Marek Futrega (my roommate at the time) made an implementation of Scrabble in Java.
Soon, he received a cease-and-desist letter from Cronix (basically Hasbro Poland). What he did, was renaming the game from "Szkrable" to "Literaxx" and changing the copyrighted board to a similar version. This made him compliant with both trademark and copyright laws.
Now, his site is the biggest Central European (or perhaps even European) gaming site with a crapload of other games in 11 languages.
The cease-and-desist in Polish can be found close to the bottom of "Old news".
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Hasbro does not own worldwide Scrabble rights. Competitor Mattel is the owner in many countries, most notably England.
/. appear and complain it'll be rewritten. (Won't, but a fantatic Tangleworder can dream.)
There are many free online not-quite-Scrabble games. Just far enough off the copyright infringement to mostly avoid the lawyers. There are two problems.
There are quite a few official Scrabble dictionaries. US 2nd, US 3rd (expurgated), US 3rd tournament (no defs, unexpurgated), and goes on from there. There are words valid in UK play (Chambers and otherwise) but not US and vice versa. There are combined dictionaries. A poor dictionary **BREAKS** a word game. Most online word games have truly lousy free or licensed dictionaries. For a competent player it's infuriating playing "cete", "ai", or "qat" and having the word bounce. Some free games like the (Boggle-like) Tangleword(1) at www.playsite.com have solid dictionaries.
More subtle is the balance of the Scrabble board itself, which must be messed with to pass legal muster. Millions of human and computer hours have been spent analyzing ideal play on that board and with Scrabble's letter scores and distribution. It's akin to changing the movement of the rook or the spacing of bases on the diamond. Might get a good game as a result but it'll sure play differently.
(1) Tangleword's round timer requires Microsoft Java. The game is otherwise playable with proper Java. Maybe if a zillion
Feeling so good natured I could drool