Triple Post Score

Blaise Zerega at Portfolio.com takes the question, "Why didn't Hasbro buy Scrabulous?" to its logical conclusion:

Once again, here is an embattled industry—is this case board game manufacturers, getting walloped by a digital tidal wave. And the reaction? Lawsuits. Sounds a lot like Napster and Music. In that case, Mr. Fanning and others developed a superior means of distribution, without the content.

In this case, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the brothers behind Scrabulous, not only came up with a superior means of distribution, but arguably came up with superior content as well. The proof is in the uproar by angry fans who are not exactly flocking to Hasbro's sanctioned online version of Scrabble, produced with EA….

For the life of me, I don't understand why Hasbro simply didn't buy Scrabulous and hire the brothers Agarwalla to develop online versions of its other board games.

I swear I'll leave off about Scrabulous until the case develops into something more newsworthy (Facebookers Chuck Molotov Cocktails at Hasbro Suits!); in the interim, remember that every time a court decides a copyright case in the dinosaurs' favor, a frustrated hacker plants a trojan virus in your PC.

Senior Editor Kerry Howley wrote about Scrabble here. I wrote about Scrabulous here and here.