Re: Ideas for boycotting Scrabble and Hasbro

Nelson Pavlosky wrote:

> Well, ideally copyright would be shorter so that a game created in 1938
> would be public domain by now.

You can't copyright the rules, only the expression IIRC. But the visual
design could be both copyrighted and trademarked.

> Failing that, I think we should put pressure on companies not to enforce
> their copyrights to the hilt.  Just because you have the legal power to
> do something doesn't make it the right thing to do, either for your
> business or for the public good.  

Yes.

> Working with "pirates" in a civil
> manner instead of trying to sue them out of existence might have given
> us a healthy online music business back when Napster was created instead
> of like a decade later with iTunes, Amazon etc.   A legitimized Napster
> I think would have been a seriously good thing.  

Cory Doctorow wrote about this recently:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/29/internet.digitalmusic

> Similarly, working with
> Scrabulous might have been more productive than suing them.

It would reduce development costs and time to market over setting up a
rival in-house effort. 

- Rob.