For months now, I have been fighting a personal addiction to what many of my friends call 'digital crack'. Yes, I am talking about Scrabulous, the best facebook application available to date. While in the middle of at least 5 different games with friends across that country, I along with everyone else in the US have been locked out of Scrabulous. Why you say? It turns out that the execs at Hasbro have decided that since Scrabulous is a better version of their own online version of Scrabble, they need to sue the pants off the independent programmers that both developed scrabulous and provided it to us FREE of charge. Now normally I would say that a patent holder absolutely has the right to profit from their own creation. However, in this case I think Hasbro is absolutely wrong for a number of reasons. First, Hasbro has their own facebook application aptly named Scrabble, yet even though it was released some time after Scrabulous, it blows (that is as eloquently as I can think to put it). Second, the two guys that made scrabulous have not profited directly from its development and continuously iterate and improve upon their work. Finally, Hasbro is causing a HUGE backlash against itself with these actions. The posts decorating the Hasbro facebook application page are filled with angry Scrabulous players who none too happy about losing one of their favorite past times. Come on Hasbro, I know you read my blog, quit being a jerk and let us enjoy your invention again.
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