Malicious attack takes down Scrabble on Facebook

UPDATED: Thanks to readers who raised good questions Hasbro's legal claim (see below), we decided to ask Ian Ballon, a noted intellectual property and Internet attorney, for a lesson in copyright law. You can read his take here. In addition, Scrabble is now back up, but so is a new version of Scrabulous, called Wordscraper.

After their word game was shut down this morning, many of the Scrabulous faithful on Facebook turned to the official Scrabble game for some action. But they found no relief. It didn't work.

Electronic Arts, which created online Scrabble on behalf of Hasbro, said there was a good reason for that: Hackers had taken down the game. It was rendered unplayable for most of the day and still didn't work just before 4 p.m. In a statement, the Redwood City, Calif., game company said:

EA’s Scrabble Facebook game experienced a malicious attack this morning, resulting in the disabling of Scrabble on Facebook. We’re working with our partners to resolve this issue and have Scrabble back online and ready to play as soon as possible.

There was no word on whether the attack was orchestrated by fans of Scrabulous. But it dealt another public relations blow to Hasbro, which owns the North American rights to Scrabble. On the day that its legal tactics resulted in the shutdown of a game that the toy company said infringed upon its copyrights, it missed a prime opportunity to transition Scrabulous players to its own version of the game.

Hasbro, which last week filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New York against the makers of Scrabulous, suffered a deluge of criticism on its Scrabble page on Facebook. Incensed at losing access to Scrabulous, users blamed Hasbro. One commenter, Lesley Marton, summed up the views of several players when she wrote on Scrabble's feedback board, "At least get things ironed out here before taking away Scrabulous!"

Analysts say the blow-back from Scrabulous fans, although painful now, will probably be temporary. "There are a lot of people who are just disappointed and angry at losing Scrabulous," said Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at Forrester Research. "But people are going to get over it over time. Many of them will adopt Scrabble."

-- Alex Pham

Photo: Scrabble for Facebook. Credit: Electronic Arts

Comments

[George Washington]

Another example of the abuses of modern copyright law.

In a system with sane laws, Hasbro would have no case. Unfortunately, America's laws are not decided by sanity, but by money.

First, copyright is supposed to be a TEMPORARY monopoly that provides incentive to create things, that, after expiration, become the property of the public and benefit us all. After copyright expires, we're free to create derivatives like Scrabulous, for instance. But giant corporations have paid off government officials to extend copyright expiration from the original 28 years to 42 years, then to 56 years, and then to 70+ years, and so on until today, when a corporate copyright term lasts 120 YEARS. What ever happened to the word "temporary"? By what logic should copyright protection last more than a century? How does this promote the arts and sciences? It benefits no one except big corporations, and hurts the rest of us. Scrabble was invented 70 years ago. A patent on the rules of Scrabble would have expired decades ago. The original creator of the game is dead. There is no reason why copyright protection should last this long.

Second, Hasbro's copyright was never violated. Creating a game with the same rules as another game is not copyright infringement. Copyright only applies to creative works. If they had copied the design of the board, or copied the rules word-for-word, Hasbro might have a case, but you can't copyright an idea or procedure.

[Chris Jay]

It was not hacked !! It is PR.

Scrabble did not prepare for the server load combined with bad programming and flash that took their site down. It sounds better to say that they were hacked and put the blame on facebook users. Again very backwards. Sounds more like RIAA.

[Lack of Vision]

Intellectual Property is a dated concept that is hanging around just long enough to get a few last bucks out of old school products. Not too long from now, computers will be powerful enough to compute all possible combinations of games/economies/businesses/processes and breed "best of" patents using only simulation. The leading few with the most powerful computers will use IP like a commodity and use streamlined legal processes to sue individuals for such offenses as "Using a bristled hand tool to apply cleaning agents to organic or manufactured dental appliances". We need to get rid of IP before this happens or we are screwed.

[Jerry]

A young female reporter on the CBS Morning Show today said that the new "official" Scrabble game is so much better than Scrabulous was. In fact, this reporter said, people love the new Scrabble game so much that too many of the former Scrabulous players migrated to the new game which caused the Scrabble servers to go down.

I just love honest reporting from the mainstream media.

[Brian]

For those who think Hasbro should buyout Scrabulous: why should they have to buy something that was stolen from them? If someone stole your TV, would you buy it back from the thief or call the cops?

[dog dog]

Get a life people is playing scrabble online really this crucial?

[Sharon Villa]

Hasbro Scrabble is not deliverling the same product that Scrabulous has provided on facebook. Real Hasbro Scrabble can be found at Walmart and Toys R Us, while real Scrabulous can be found on Facebook.

Scrabulous is inventing and improving while Hasbro Scrabble is trying to take credit for something it did not invent or foresee.

Games like Chess and Checkers don't have this problem - what is the difference.

Scrabulous on facebook is an entirely different game experience than playing Hasbro Scrabble.

Hasbro Scrabble is the inferior product compared to Scrabulous. Why would laws support this?

The features of Scrabblous that I enjoy are: its accessible within Facebook; playing with others from around the world and of all ilks (i doubt Hasbro would tolerate the more off color requests); having several games going at once; player driven pace of the game; and most importantly the simple, speedy, efficient, elegant layout and ease of play.

[Karl]

Brian Said:
"For those who think Hasbro should buyout Scrabulous: why should they have to buy something that was stolen from them? If someone stole your TV, would you buy it back from the thief or call the cops?"

So really, why don't Hasbro simply call the cops if they've been deprived of their scrabble game?

The law doesn't protect your bad product from losing customers and you can't steal without depriving someone of something. Since they never had a working product to begin with, how could the creators of Scrabulous stole anything?

Since the products do not share code, code wasn't stolen. Scrabulous wrote their own clone, using their own resources, and their own code.

You can steal logic or concrete mathematics, Brian, you can only copy it.

Since you can't copywrite logic, you can only give it a name and trademark that name. Anyone can come to the same logical conclusion (ie the rules of scrabble), but they can't call it SCRABBLE.

[Patrick]

Is it really copyright infringement though? I mean personally I don't care one way or the other, but I thought copyright infringement was when you used someone else's idea to make money - with the important part being "to make money." Scrabulous didn't make money...it was free to play.

[DoubleSh0t]

I for one welcome our new Scrabble overlords.

[BobbyBrown]

The guys who made Scrabulous passed on a ten million dollar offer from Hasbro & Co. They got too greedy and lost out.

[rayjay]

Hasbro owns the idea and rules of the game like they own the idea of Monopoly. They own the rights to this in all forms, electonic or board in the US.

If you don't like it move to China or Malaysia or someplace else where the goverment doesn't care about intellectual property rights - and therefore there is no incentive to create new IP. If every time you created an idea, someone could steal it and make money off it - why would you create anything?

[Brian Hogg]

Why did it take so long for someone (BobbyBrown) to point out that Hasbro supposedly did try to buy Scrabulous -- a move which would've kept the user-base happy and intact -- but the creators of Scrabulous wanted more money than the product was worth?

Hasbro didn't just rush in and pour water on everybody's cake; they did the thing that everyone's suggesting they ought to have done, and it didn't work, so they did the next logical thing.

The sense of entitlement of some of the folks online is pretty crazy: just because you like a thing doesn't mean it's good, and just because you want something to be a certain way doesn't mean it IS that way.

[David Crockett]

["But people are going to get over it over time. Many of them will adopt Scrabble."]

We will not adopt Scrabble because the game is bloated with features. Hasbro would have saved money (in legal fees and commissioning EA) and earned great PR if they bought out Scrabulous. If Scrabulous refused to sell... then sue them!

Hasbro should think of buying Scrabulous as outsourcing, not rewarding copyright infringers. Instead they paid EA to outsource Indian programmers and make a bad application.

[sloanNYC]

Hasbro has a game that is overly animated, doesn't work, and lacks features of Scrabulous. It is really kind of sad how poorly designed and implemented it is. So yes, defend your intellectual property, but when you do it, try and make yourselves look better than the competition. The Scrabble app just seems to be really bloated.

[Jonathan Doe]

Scrabble was invented in the 30s! That's 70+ years ago. Remember how copyright was supposed to be designed so that creators could profit from their creation, but after 20 years, it would go into the public domain so other people could take their great ideas and build on them and we'd all be enriched?

EXACTLY like Scrabulous.

But thanks to Disney and other powerful lobby groups, they keep getting longer and longer. Thanks to the Sonny Bono act, now it's "Lifetime of the creator +70 years." You mean, anything that is created in my lifetime will never enter the public domain so I can improve on it before I die?

Anyway, my point is that copyright is broken and messed up. This whole Scrabble/Scrabulous is just an example.

[Pete]

@SteveW

Basic rights of who? A company? Is a company a person? Apparently because it's capable of really bad decisions.

[Aaron]

People, grow up. Hasbro offered the owners of Scrabulous TEN MILLION DOLLARS (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_bigger_questions_behind_the_scrabulous_shutdown.php) for their game, and turned it down because they WANTED MORE MONEY.

These guys were greedy morons, and they got what they deserved. They made a lot of money by straight ripping off someone else's intellectual property, then people get upset at Hasbro for not trying to make the transition smooth? They DID try to make it smooth - by giving these idiots a LOT of money for something they stole. As far as I'm concerned, Hasbro handled the whole situation in a very classy manner, respecting that these two had made something people liked and trying to resolve it without just using courts as muscle. If you are gonna be angry at anyone, be angry at the owners of Scrabulous for not being reasonable.

[Aaron]

@ Johnathan Doe

You're perfectly welcome to improve on whatever you want before you die - you just can't SELL it and make money off it, because you made some little tweak to something SOMEONE ELSE CREATED.

If you wanna take your favorite board game, attach some bells and whistles, then play it all day long, I don't think anyone is gonna take you to court for that.

[anon]

scrabble sucks
scrabulous sucks

killed all current games! should have let us finish first. no resolution. like all this bickering. go back to caveman ways. biggest stick wins. no speaking softly. or buy ticket to new facy space station. see if booger floats like water in zero grav.

[Tyler]

Jeez, scrabble is scrabble. No reason to backlash over this. They had the intellectual property rights to the game. No one would have played Scrabulous if it weren't for Scrabble to begin with.

[Michael]

[Hasbro owns the idea and rules of the game like they own the idea of Monopoly. They own the rights to this in all forms, electonic or board in the US.]

Actually Monopoly is a trademark. The actual game was invented in 1902 by Quakers. Hence why there are tons of monopoly clones, they just are smart enough to not call themselves monopolous.

Likewise, Scrabble was originally called lexika or something, then became Criss-Cross Words and finally was purchased and marketed as Scrabble. Hasbro never invented the game, they just bought the rights. Since it was invented in the 40's (and arguably 30's) I fail to see how the patents would still apply.

[Old Time]

Scrabble is Scrabble. Let all the Scrabulous people play on scrabulous.com, and take a hike over there. I am a player also, and look forward to to real game being available on Facebook, and elsewhere on-line.

[Patrick Cahalan]

The question of whether or not Hasbro has legitimate legal claim to copyright infringement by the creators of Scrabulous is not nearly so cut and dried as people may think.

Your basic understanding of trademark, copyright, and patent law is probably lacking. A good place to start: http://home.teleport.com/~stevena/scrabble/legal/issues.html

[marc]

The best thing about Scrabulous was you could play a turn, and then come back later and play it..

I don't have the time to play live games..Does Hasbro's page offer the same thing? I just tried to check but it's down..again.