Scrabulous Returns To Facebook, As Wordscraper 262
porcupine8 writes "Good news for those that have had a hole in their heart (and Facebook profile) since Hasbro forced Facebook to remove Scrabulous over copyright and trademark issues. The creators of Scrabulous have wasted no time in tweaking the game and have launched a new tile-based game called Wordscraper. In addition to changing the name, they have changed the board look so as not to directly copy the colors, etc of a Scrabble board, and have even made provisions for players to create their own board layout! Interested Scrabulous fans can add the application now. Only time will tell if the changes were extensive enough to keep Hasbro's lawyers at bay."
Copyright broken (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a pretty good example of broken copyright laws. How long has Scrabble been out, 60 years? And because of the crazy long copyright terms now, innovation is being stifled. This is not what copyright was intended for...
Re:Copyright broken (Score:5, Informative)
Not copyright. Trademark infringement [timesonline.co.uk]. Entirely different legal structure...
Re:Copyright broken (Score:5, Informative)
No, copyright too. You can't copyright the idea of how you play the game, but you can copyright the board artwork. Of course, you can significantly aletr the board artwork so that it's different enough to avoid copyright infringement without changing how the game is played. Most game ripoffs do just this.
Sadly, the Scrabulous guys didn't take this step, and they could still be facing a lot of trouble over that. The new game solves this problem - guess they finally bothered to care what minimal steps they needed to take to be legal.
Re:Copyright broken (Score:5, Insightful)
There is nothing broken about this. At all. This is, in fact, exactly as it should be. Otherwise, all someone would have to do to duplicate my game would be to change the title.
Game designs and rules are unprotected. Titles, presentation, artwork and appearances are protected. This is ideal. No brokenness here.
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"Game designs and rules are unprotected. Titles, presentation, artwork and appearances are protected. This is ideal. No brokenness here."
so, who owns chess, and who owns shogi?
and if all you have to do is change the design, why isn't there a boardgame out there at wal-mart for $5 made in china that has alphabetical discs, instead of tiles, with the same basic rules as scrabble?
the only game i can recall having 'dupes' are kismet 'the modern game of yacht' and yahtzee. and kismet went so far as to change the
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You're claiming a failure to trademark or copyright chess or shogi implies trademark or copyright is broken?
As for the "why no knockoff Scrabble", it's because people don't want to play a knockoff, they want to play Scrabble. If you want a proper example...
Witness the multitude of playing cards available; every single one is interchangeable, but each one is still protected by trademark.
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Exactly. They've been stealing Scrabble's design for years and have become rich from it. I hope Hasbro sues them for years of theft because what good is copyright or trademark if someone can steal it for a few years, make millions from it, then say "Oops Sorry!" and then give it back and walk away with the money?
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Hasbro has an ancient game that they has spent zero time innovating on. A market demand opens for the game on the Intertubes and Hasbro failed to identify and fulfill that niche.
These other guys built it, made money off it, and likely sent money Hasbro's way that they would not have otherwise had (new players wanting an offline version). I highly doubt people avoided buying the game because they could play it online...they wouldn't have FOUND the game if it wasn't online.
Hasbro has been r
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WHAT MONEY?
The money you mentioned three sentences later:
These other guys built it, made money off it
I can't believe the furor over this. The only way that it could have been more clear that the Scrabulous developers were profiting off of intellectual property that did not belong to them would be if the app had literally been named "Scrabble" and scanned in the artwork directly from Hasbro's product.
Whether you believe intellectual property, as a legal concept, is just or not is a different issue, but unde
Re:Copyright broken (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody, just like Shakespeare and The Odessey. A basic familiarity with the law might help you here. Nobody ever filed for or was granted protection on those items, and if they had been, they'd be several thousands of years expired by now.
Brand recognition. People periodically try to replace Scrabble. It happens every several years.
This is primarily an indication that you don't know much about the games market. Games that perenially get copied include Uno, Sorry, Yahtzee, Connect 4, Mille Bornes, Scrabble, Rubik's Cube, Battleship, and on and on the list goes.
Perhaps you don't understand market forces. Clones aren't absent because they're illegal. They're absent because nobody buys them.
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Nobody, just like Shakespeare and The Odessey. A basic familiarity with the law might help you here. Nobody ever filed for or was granted protection on those items, and if they had been, they'd be several thousands of years expired by now.
That is just insane. What about the ancestors of those great authors and game creators. Why shouldn't they have the right to protect their forefathers creations and make sure that they aren't misused, not to mention profiteered on.
I hereby suggest a slight change to the copyright law. How does an even 10000 year retroactive copyright law sound. I think that is a nice and even number that should adequatly protect the rights of the creator and his progeny, while still being constitutional. Copyright ensures t
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you've never played othello have you? round discs, no problems playing it ever.
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How do you keep all the discs upright, you don't. Disc orientation is irrelevant, whereas in Scarabble it's critical. Words with upside down and slanted letters would inhibit the fun of the game. No making italic words isn't worth extra points! ;-)
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Re:Copyright broken (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, sure you can. You just can't steal their title or artwork.
I'd be a lot more inclined to take you seriously if you were at least getting the right branch of the law. This is not and never was a copyright issue.
No, that's patents. Copyright has nothing to do with innovation, and this is neither a copyright nor a patent issue. Please settle down until you have at least a basic familiarity with the laws or case in question. This is a waste of time.
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Re:Copyright broken (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, in this case I think the claim was that Scrabulous was infringing upon the Scrabble trademark. IMHO trademarks *should* last as long as the company is in operation. There's no reason why a company should have to lose its trade name over the course of time.
Re:Copyright broken (Score:4, Informative)
... and that's how the law works: don't protect your trandemark and you lose it, as happened with "escalator" for example.
Or, you can make chemical weapons for the losing side in a war and lose your trademark to the victor, as happened to Bayer with "aspirin" and "heroin". ;)
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The part that is broken about it is the sixty years. Copyright should be a limited monopoly to give people an incentive to continue to make creative works, not an unending monopoly - enforced by the taxpayer - that enables people to stop creating and simply milk the same idea in perpetuity.
I think that after sixty years - in fact, af
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Because this is not a copyright issue, there is no sixty year timeframe involved.
As a game designer, I would like to remind you that in the eyes of the law, for a very good reason, game designs are not art.
Incidentally, Scrabble was clonable the first day it was released. You just had to use a different name and color the board differently.
Re:Copyright broken (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm just going by what the various articles have said. Like this [pcworld.com] one, which says "News wire service Reuters is reporting Hasbro and Mattel are demanding that Facebook remove the popular Facebook application Scrabulous due to copyright infringement." Or this [cnet.com] one, which says "Hasbro on Thursday filed a copyright and trademark lawsuit in New York against the creators of the ad-supported Scrabulous application, which boasts an astonishing half-million daily users." Or this [nytimes.com] one, which says "Hasbro, the Rhode Island company that owns the trademark to the 60-year-old board game, Scrabble, on which Scrabulous is closely based, has also asked Facebook to remove the game under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ..."
But, hey, some random stranger on Slasdot assures me this has nothing to do with copyright, so I guess I'll just go with that.
As an intelligent human being who has actually looked around and noticed what happens in the real world, I would like to remind you that a can of Campbell's soup can be art. Art is not a thing, it is the act of creation and appreciation. I've even taken some pretty artistic dumps in my day.
Spend more time actually reading up on the subject we are commenting on, and less dispensing unsolicited advise to people who didn't ask for it.
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read the damn DMCA, it applies to more then Copyright.
In fact, if you don't know how it applies to boat hulls, then you don't understand it at all.
"Spend more time actually reading up on the subject we are commenting on"
oh, Irony.
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Read the damn complaint [nytimes.com]. It alleges trademark and copyright infringement.
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Just in case you missed it, here [nytimes.com] is the complaint. I draw your attention to the first paragraph of the Introduction:
'This is an action for trademark and copyright infringement against Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla and their company, RJ Softwares, for creating and publicly displaying an online game that copies the essential and original elements of Hasbro's venerable and famous SCRABBLE crossword board game and for promoting and profiting from it in the commerce of the United States under the confusingly simila
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Absolutely!
This isn't broken. Let Scrabulous redesign, re-engineer, um, dare we say it, 'improve' on the game.
I hope they copyright their work. Let Hasbro compete, if they can.
Sheesh. The best part of this is the apparent poor knowledge of history amongst Facebook users. Wonder if they know where Facebook came from, or where the term 'Facebook' originated... Hypocrisy...
Re:Copyright broken (Score:4, Interesting)
Games are not subject to copyright. (The binaries of computer games are, but that's a seperate issue.) This is a trademark issue, and no amount of trademarking their title will make any difference to Hasbro.
The facebook traffic is a drop in the bucket in the Scrabble world. This is really about protecting the Scrabble copyright, so that newspapers can't use the name. If Hasbro didn't say "stop it", other people would be able to say that the trademark was out of defense and therefore invalid.
None of this has anything to do with copyright.
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"This is really about protecting the Scrabble copyright..."
"None of this has anything to do with copyright."
Which is it, exactly?
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Arg... this is both. The Trademark issue is over the name, and the Copyright issue is over the identical board. The look of the board, unlike the rules of the game, CAN be copyrighted.
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According to the complaint, the rules can and have been copyrighted since 1948 under registration No. AA 104547.
Re:Copyright broken (Score:4, Insightful)
"after the creator/inventor is dead should the copyright still be in place?"
In fairness, it probably should. Otherwise I could see it being encouragement for some people to try and make the copyright holder dead in order to better evade it.
Death is also problematic when corporations are able to hold copyrights because it's not something they are subject to. If you're waiting for my immortal corporation to die in order for the copyright to expire, you'll be waiting a very long time.
Re:Copyright broken (Score:5, Informative)
You think wrong. It's not a copyright issue at all, and there is no time frame attached at all. The issue is that Scrabulous was a brand ripoff. Game clones are okay. Brand clones aren't.
Copyright and trademark are about as related as boats and cars. Please put more effort into debate. It's really annoying for a debate about cars to have people keep saying "but the problem is the water level in the lake." Trademarks do not, and should not, expire. It doesn't matter if Microsoft has been around for 80 years; nobody else should ever be able to claim to be Microsoft. This is a trademark issue because the company needs to be able to protect the brand. Scrabble clones can be released. Scrabble, the brand, is still S+R / Hasbro's property.
If you don't understand the difference between copyright/trademark, or between a product and a brand, you really need to stay out of discussions like this.
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they didn't claim to be 'scrabble'. They claimed to be 'scrabulous'. Is this the 5 8ths rule? if you use more than the larger half (in the case of odd numbers) or one more than half (in the case of even numbers) of the letters of someone else's trademark in consecutive order then you're in breach of it? Because I see all sorts of problems for microstar and anyone who sells a generic microwave.
If scrabulous were a Hasbro product it would have been called 'Scrabble' or 'Scrabble online', it would not have bee
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How about the artwork, colors, layout, and font?
Does the fact that they changed all of the above, as well as the name, indicate something about the issues at stake?
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All those 'rules' are guidelines. That's all.
The fact that it indicates it's a scrabble like game is the problem.
Now it indicates its a tile turning word game. not related with scrabble.
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If you read the complaint [nytimes.com], it's both.
I'll quote some of section24,
Hasbro is the owner of the following valid and subsisting copyrights registered in the Copyright Office:
A. The Rules of Playing SCRABBLE were first registered for copyright protection under registration No. AA 104547, published on December 1, 1948 ...
B. The Gameboard for SCRABBLE ws first registered for copyright protection un
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Re:Copyright broken (Score:5, Insightful)
If you define 'innovation' as copying someone else's idea in almost every detail.
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So copying Scrabble is innovation?
Is that like adding "internet" to an old patent and getting a new one?
Innovation is making the game new, not copying someone else's game onto the internet.
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99% of progress is improving already existing ideas.
The remaining 1% is progress from smart people with all the prerequisite societal knowledge who by chance stumble upon a good idea. Often around the same time as someone on the other side of the globe gets the almost exact same idea because he also have the same prerequisite knowledge to make the deduction needed.
DIY boards = infinite cleverness (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DIY boards = infinite cleverness (Score:4, Funny)
Meh, now Hasbro is going to be mad. Not only you get more points for making Scrabulous when compared to making Scrabble, now you can get even more by making Wordscraper!
hexagonal scrabble? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:hexagonal scrabble? (Score:4, Interesting)
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ooh. that's an idea & a half. You get the buckyball, I'll get the tiles.
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Re:hexagonal scrabble? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, to the tune of $25,000+ a month [cnn.com]
Also the english pronunciation of Scrabulous is very similar to Scrabble. No one questioned why Lindows was sued by Microsoft for sounding like Windows, so why are we shocked when Scrabulous gets sued?
3D scrabble (Score:2)
Perhaps 3D is 15^3 with 1000 tiles (66.6% empty) with same letter frequencies, but ten'ed. Or should we make it 1500 tiles, so the same empty fraction is preserved?
It would take ten (or 15) times longer to play since the words themselves don't change. Or maybe I'd shrink the overall palying cube to 10^3 or 12^3 to keep playing time more reasonable.
The bottle neck is adequate visualisation. I'd like a convex holograph with high transparency. If you selected
sticky alphabet blocks (Score:2)
The only difficulty is implementing bonus squares (cubes) visualization this way. Thats an important, but not absolutely essential part of the 2D game. Maybe the playing board could be simulataneously physical
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As long as they don't do it like Upwards. That, my friends, was a game that sucked. Unfortunately, since it somewhat leveled the playing field for the vocabularily challenged, it was the word game of choice in my house.
confused (Score:2, Interesting)
Scrabulous is stil available for me, I'm in the UK.
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It died earlier sometime this morning (had the facebook app version of a 404), then reappeared this afternoon. I tried out the Wordscaper app, but really can't get used to the circular tiles. Surely just changing the special placements (double words and such) around would fix any issues with Scrabble - square tiles on.. well, squares surely wouldn't get them in more troubles.
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I don't know specifically what the wording of the scrabble trademarks are. If they specify square tiles with numeric score values, then I can easily see why the current wordscraper tiles are circles without score values.
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Nevertheless I wish they would do something to indicate the point values. I memorized them years ago but still find it distracting that they're not shown in Wordscraper. And it will be downright confusing to people who are not so experienced at Scrabble.
There are plenty of ways they could do this. e.g., little dots around the outside of the circle, or colors that varied from white for 1 point to intense for the 10-point letters.
It could have gone a lot better.... (Score:5, Interesting)
So far, I like it. The custom boards are going to take some getting used to. I am in one game where every tile appears to be a double word score or more, and we are seeing scores of 4000 in some places.
I much prefer the sparse tile versions, where it takes a LOT of planning to get a good score.
Right now, i don't like it as much as scrabble, but I am willing to keep playing until things start to settle.
In my personal opinion, scrabulous was always in clear violation of the law (I am not interested in discussing the ethics of that), and the takedown was inevitable.
If Hasbro had learned from scrabulous instead of acting like spazzes, I would have switched to playing their client.
They needed to release a client equal in speed, slickness and functionality. Then they should have negotiated a wrap up period of several days with the makers of scrabulous, where no new games could be created, but existing games could be wrapped up.
They did neither, and you won't see me switching to play their version as a result.
Use this original Scrabble layout then... (Score:4, Informative)
http://apps.facebook.com/wordscraper/?action=newgame&similarto=54248 [facebook.com]
I know I'd rather play a real Scrabble layout on Wordscraper than to use anything else. Enjoy.
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Nice. Saves me the effort of doing so. Thanks!
I am kinda looking forward to experimenting with a few layouts of my own as well.
Re:Use this original Scrabble layout then... (Score:5, Informative)
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Expect a cease-and-desist letter soon. Creating a Scrabble clone based on Wordscraper is just as bad as creating one from scratch. You'll have to find a more discreet way to distribute your template
In a way, this is actually a positive thing. In order to get round the Hasbro lawyers, people will be forced to be creative with with Wordscraper templates. Some of these creations are bound to be improvements on the original.
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If Hasbro had learned from scrabulous instead of acting like spazzes, I would have switched to playing their client.
I'm still wondering-- does anyone know?-- did Hasbro ever consider coming up with some kind of licensing deal with the makers of Scrabulous? Either for Hasbro to publish the game as their own, or for Scrabulous to license the rights to use the trademarked materials?
It just seems like if I owned the rights to Scrabble and someone came up with a really great version of the game that was wildly popular, I'd be looking to join forces with that guy so I could make some money from the wildly popular version.
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Acknowledgement that a thing breaks the law is not the same as saying that you agree with the law that was broken.
Re:It could have gone a lot better.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I also park illegally on occasion, and sometimes drive a few miles above the speed limit. I have been known file my taxes late, and have stolen music by downloading it. Sometimes I accidentally throw away paper without recycling it.
Scrabulous was a popular, well implemented version of a game I own no less than 4 boards for. i probably have purchased anywhere from 10 -15 boards over the past 20 years.
I enjoyed it, so I played it. Now that wordscraper is available, I will play that.
Those are all illegal, getting caught has penalties, and I know that. I may not agree with the laws, but when I get caught I pay the consequences, without whining or trying to come up with some sort of convoluted justification for my actions.
Not all laws are equal in my books. Murder is not a law I break with the same equanimity as a local parking ordinance.
If you have managed to live your life ethically pure, then I applaud you.
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How you read that from what I wrote completely escapes me. I can't respond effectively, because I have no idea what you are talking about.
Where did I restrict the behavior or rights of anyone else by describing my own actions?
Perhaps you should read it again.
I actually registered on FaceBook (Score:4, Interesting)
I am not a big fan of social anything, but I actually registered on face book and downloaded the wordscraper client. I did this in my way of protest to Hasbro and their heavy handed stupidity. With that being said, the wordscraper client is buggy (it is in beta to be fair) but it sure is fun.
How could a company like Hasbro, hiring a company like EA mess up something that should be relatively easy to convert into a program. I am not a programmer, but I would think that a game like Scrabble would be easy to make into an online game. Certainly easier then something like Age of Conan.
DK
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"downloaded the wordscraper client" - not sure what you're describing here. There's no client, and there's no download.
Would fruit of the poisonous tree play into this? (Score:2)
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You watch too much law and order. The fruit of the poisonous tree applies only to evidence gathering by law enforcement officials. Read a book.
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So, let me get this straight. You want to know if the fruit of the poisonous tree is a factor here, and you know that that only applies to law enforcement. Does that mean that you believe that the publishers of Scrabulous are a law enforcement entity?
Thankfully, your gut is not a judge. The law doesn't work that way, and civil court never applies to two corporations acting on federal licensure. P
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You forgot to add the crux of my arguement in your little rebuttal...
My post was pointing out the fact that the designers of the game used Scrabbles notoriety to attain the position that they are now in.
Did you read that part at all?
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Yeah. That's not a problem. The law isn't to prevent the infringer from gaining, but to prevent the copyright/trademark holder from losing. They still owe the copyright holder for damages done (assuming they're found to be infringing).
Right, and the current number of users they have are using their program, instead of something made by the original copyright holder, because they (may have) violated copyright. It could be argued that all past, and future, income was derived because of their copyright violation... Also, in civil court, you only need to prove the possibility that this is the case.
Yeah! (Score:5, Funny)
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Good Exposure (Score:4, Insightful)
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The flaw in your logic is that if Hasbro was intelligent enough to regret the path they've chosen, they would have done just as you suggest in the first place.
So, yeah, I doubt they regret it a bit.
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I'm sure the creators loved all the press attention they have been recieving lately... additionally, I bet Hasbro regrets not giving these guys job offers rather than legal complaints.
I had read a report just the other day (wish I could find the URL. I think it was Betanews.) that said Hasbro did offer to buy the product, and the programmers refused.
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prolly hard since they've already said they made $25,000+ a month from Scrabulous [cnn.com]. I think if I were the guys I'd be begging Hasbro to buy the game from them for a few bucks rather than lose a lawsuit and lose all the money they've made and the game itself.
Wordscraper also wins the word score! (Score:5, Funny)
Wordscraper = 19
A better choice of letters in more than one way.
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Unfortunately, you can't actually play any of the two, as they are proper nouns. However, you can play "Scrabble," and get a scrabble if you do manage to make the word.
Dropped the ball (Score:2)
If they spent all of that money they wasted on lawyers instead on developers they could have released the version that lets you define your own board layout & stole the thunder back. Instead they're going to become the assholes that don't want anyone to have fun & a company a serious lack of innovation as far as Scrabble is concerned.
Way to go Hasboro !
ABBCELRS (Score:4, Funny)
This is over. (Score:5, Interesting)
Scrabulous was taken down because the name and visual presentation were too similar. Game mechanics are explicitly not protected by any branch of law. (In fact, I warned them in email six months ago that this was coming, and that they should rename/reskin their app.)
Hasbro may try to sue again, but from here, if they do, it's barratry. Wordscraper is now safe.
Wordscrapper?? (Score:2)
No, Wordscraper (Score:5, Funny)
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I prefer the interpretation: WordsCrapper.
Screenshots? (Score:2)
I googled for wordscraper, but couldn't get any image results. And since I don't have a Facebook account, I can't see how it looks like.
Found one :) (Score:2)
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/31/wordscraper-hurts-my-eyes/ [techcrunch.com]
Unfortunately, it looks not just ugly, but HIDEOUS! :(
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It's damned ugly at the moment. The announcement on the front page of the app currently states:
From all the press they've been getting about it, I'm guessing the makers are getting a lot of feedback about the UI, and will only be a matter of time 'til they prettify it.
is it just me... (Score:5, Funny)
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Why didn't they make it WordScraper to begin with? (Score:2)
Also, for all those that say hasbro should have bought them out or hired them or whatever, how do you know they didn't make offers first? I'm sure those kinds of things they'd like to keep under wraps and not publicly disclose them.
keep Hasbro's lawyers at bay? (Score:2)
Nothing keeps a lawyer at bay, when they smell blood.
The real question is will the changes be enough to keep them on the correct side of the legal judgement that will eventually be passed.
Too bad they cant countersue afterwards.
That may not, but people can keep them at bay (Score:2)
internet events affect real world sales. dont forget that.
Re:single player (Score:4, Informative)
The Scrabulous [scrabulous.com] site has a practice version available which allows you to play by yourself or against a computer. I'm guessing Wordscaper will have the same thing once they fix themselves up.