Boneheaded Coporations

The buzz is Mattel/Hasbro are planning to sue Facebook for allowing Scrabulous to rip off Scrabble. As one of the half a million people who play Scrabulous pretty much daily, that is a) irritating beyond belief, and b) doubly annoying because it shows how stupidity is ingrained in corporate reactions to anything these days.

All across the world Facebookers, bloggers, Scrabulous fans and any intelligent person is saying 'What the hell are Hasbro/Mattel doing?' For a few quid they could pay off the guys who developed it and have access to half a million people. They'll have a Facebook presence any other global brand could only dream of and the income from the ads would easily pay them back what the Scrabulous set-up would cost (it's much easier to negotiate a good deal with someone you could otherwise nail for copyright infringement). Basically someone else has done all their R&D and built up a client base for them. Only an idiot would threaten that.

Plus, if they bought out Scrabulous, they'd look like a right on corporation who understand the ever-changing technological world we live in. And , more importantly, I could carry on beating Clare on a regular basis.

Instead with their copyright lawyers and legal threats they look like a bunch of grunting luddites with the commercial nous of a small walnut. It's a wonder they have any internet presence at all as they obviously hammer their thick-ridged skulls against the keyboards in the vain hope of communicating with other simian evolutionary throwbacks.

They are the boneheads who see a goose laying golden eggs and decide the best thing to do is kill it, piss off all the people who loved the goose and then try and sell them stuff. Morons!