Andy Boyer

One of the most prolific time wasters on Facebook has been sent to Application jail.

In a move that shouldn't surprise many people, Scrabulous, the blatant rip off of the board game Scrabble, finally suffered the legal ramifications that everyone could see headed its way.  According to the report from Silicon Valley Insider:

"Last week, Hasbro, manufacturer of the board game Scrabble, filed a lawsuit against developers Rajat and Jayant Agarwall, who founded the popular Facebook app two weeks ago. SAI's Michael Learmonth says that a DMCA takedown notice likely ended the game's two-year run. This is the same tactic Viacom used against Google's YouTube last year."

Now, if a bunch of medium sized brains from Hasbro were able to sit in the same room, they would offer the developers the cash it would cost for them to redevelop the game themselves, plus some premium for every install they've already generated, and simply add Hasbro branding all over the place.  In my experience, while Scrabble is a tedious, obnoxiously long game for the dining room table, it is perfect for an online asynchronous world where you can take a few weeks to complete a match with a friend from across the country.  So here's hoping someone makes sense of this whole thing before I find another similar way to waste a few minutes a day, like Chess or Risk.