Online 'Scrabble' craze leaves game sellers at loss for words

The companies that own the rights to the Scrabble board game say a popular online knockoff is piracy.
The New York Times

The story "Online 'Scrabble' craze leaves game sellers at loss for words" published March 2, 2008 at 2:40 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[R. U. Sirius]

Example of How Copyright is Borked

> Everyone seems to love the online
> game--everyone, that is, except the
> companies that own the rights to Scrabble

A perfect example of how copyright law is totally broken. This game was invented in 1938, which is the same decade that Mattel and Hasbro still inhabit.

[Fireweaver]

ownership

It's hard to disagree that at some point a game should become "public domain". 50 years seems a reasonable amount of time for a company to milk its product for cash.

The secondary and most important issue, though, is that the rights to the game are legally owned by a company and someone made a blatant electronic rip off of it and they are making money from it.

If they made the age-old Warez argument of sharing without profit that'd at least have the general populous support (though they'd still be breaking the law). But they aren't even doing that- they are profitting by stealing someone else's intellectual property and selling it as their own.

They are Robin Hoods, they're just thieves.

[Neotrope]

Give me your car

Hey... since you think stealing from people is cool... I'm taking your car. Don't be surprised if it's gone tomorrow ... I need a car, can't afford one, so that means it's okay for me to take yours. Ownership is borked, right? Too bad for you, I need a car, yours will do. HAHAHAHAH!