Scrabulous in the New York Times

Anybody see the article in today’s New York Times about Scrabulous? I learned that Scrabulous is not only available on Facebook, but also via email and with signing into Facebook.

scrabulousThis recalls a recent discussion we had in the SCoPE educational technology community. I think the Times article is somewhat balanced, showing some of the complexities of the issue from the makers of Scrabble and how the increasing use and influence of social media is changing our perceptions of entertainment and free use. It seems like such a case of infringing on copyright, but the comparison between the use of this game and digital music was interesting.

I wish they would have talked about how sales of the physical board game were doing, before as well as after this game started to grow in popularity on Facebook. Are they selling more, less, or the same? Should that influence how the makers partner with or sue the designers of the electronic version. Is there a difference between when the originators of Scrabulous created it for fun and now, as they make roughly $25k a month in adverting? What do anybody else think?

Perhaps now would be a good time to enter careers in intellectual property and digital media rights?

 

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