Elizabeth Stark wrote: > > And Nelson, just to play devil's advocate here, isn't this just a clear case > of infringement of the Hasbro's copyright (and the Scrabble trademark for > that matter)? Should Hasbro not hold the copyright to scrabble? What is the > scenario we'd like to see? Should board games not be copyrightable matter? > Should naming a game with such a similar name not be trademark infringement?
Well, ideally copyright would be shorter so that a game created in 1938 would be public domain by now. 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. 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. Similarly, working with Scrabulous might have been more productive than suing them. As the Economist article I linked to suggests, perhaps companies should consider more seriously whether the "piracy" is actually a bad thing before sending in the lawyers. We have carrots and sticks, folks. We can boycott companies that don't play nicely with others, and we can do things like CarrotMob <http://www.carrotmob.org/> to benefit businesses that are friendly to their fans and customers instead of suing them. Let's encourage people and companies to share more and to hoard less, because generally in the information economy, it's not a zero sum game, when you share frequently everybody wins. Peace, ~Nelson~ _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
