A few days ago, Techcrunch broke the news that Hasbro - the makers of Scrabble - are suing the makers of the Scrabulous Facebook app for breach of copyright.

As I’ve mentioned on here before, I’m a huge fan of Scrabulous. In fact, I probably lose more hours to that than I do to hangovers. Which is a lot of hours to lose. And yet, I’m with Hasbro all the way on this. It’s hard to imagine a more clear case of copyright breach than ripping off the exact Scrabble board, the exact game-play and points system and even using the letters ‘Scrab’ in the name. There’s an action for passing off right there.

And yet, here’s the weird thing. Techcrunch’s contention - and that of many commentors - is that Hasbro’s action is another example of a big corporation not understanding the Internet. First it was the music companies, then films, now even boardgames ‘don’t get it’.

A few weeks earlier they went after a photographer whose work was used, uncredited, in a video for a song called ‘Here Comes Another Bubble’ by an a cappella group called The Richter Scales. The song, which used the tune to Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, went super viral and the photographer threatened to sue for breach of copyright. Techcrunch rolled its eyes. Suing? For breach of copyright? How old school - why can’t they see that they’re stifling innovation; that this is just publicity for their work? Don’t they want the exposure?

Bollocks. Bullshit.

There’s an old joke about how many people die of exposure. It’s true. International intellectual property law was created not to stifle innovation but to encourage it. The idea of copyright (which expires 70 years after the author’s death - unless you’re Peter Pan; don’t ask) was to reassure those who spend their lives trying to enrichen the cultural landscape that, if successful, they and their immediate family would benefit financially - and then after that, the works would enter the public domain for everyone to enjoy.

Intellectual Property laws also ensure that knowledge is shared for the benefit of all - patents, for example, give inventors protection for their ideas but on the condition that they register those ideas on a public register for all to access. When the patent expires, the total sum of knowledge in an industry is increased and no time has been wasted while everyone secretly invents the same thing again and again and again.

A photographer taking a picture for a magazine article, or a designer coming up with an idea for a game may not seem like big cultural advances. And they’re not, really. But it’s only by protecting the work-a-day jobbing ‘creative’ folk that truly great literature, innovation, music, art, photography and the rest is also protected. It’s only by ensuring that the author of a bestselling debut novel is able to give up working to write a second that we get full time writers. It’s only by protecting the rights of the guy who writes the West Wing or Heroes - and the rights of the studios who bankroll them - that we get brilliant television.

I don’t give a shit how enthusiastic the web developer or accountant who, in his spare time, makes web videos might be. Not in a million years of weekends and evenings is he going to make an episode of Lost. And as the Internet becomes a more and more vital distribution tool (it’s the first place many of us in the UK turn to watch US imports like The Daily Show and - yeah - Heroes, Lost and the West Wing), it becomes more and more important that it abides by the same rules as the rest of the media when it comes to copyright and rewarding ‘creatives’. That’s what the writers strike is about, and that’s why the writers are - er - right.

Of course, studios and artists and authors need to realise as well that IP is far harder to police than ever before. And sure enough, in most cases, the lawyers aren’t sent after the little guys who use the odd clip on a fan site. But IP rights are like sexual health; easily lost if not protected; if lawyers don’t act in cases of blatant breach then it’s harder for them to defend their clients’ rights in court in future. This is why magazine editors get boring letters from the makers of Hoover and Portaloo whenever they use those words generically. The lawyers aren’t being pedantic, they’re doing their job; and rightly so.

If Scrabulous hadn’t exploded in popularity or the Richter Scales’ song hadn’t gone viral then there’s every chance that the lawyers wouldn’t have even noticed the breach, or cared. But now that they have; they have to act, for the good of their clients and for the long-term good of the creative commons.

So shame on Techcrunch for their support of copyright theft.

And - much as it hurts to say this - good luck to Hasbro in closing down my favourite waste of time.

Related Reading

The CDPA: “manipulating truth, innovation, and creativity” since 1988
"Told you it would run and run. Yesterday, Tom Watson MP generously linked to my competition to find a convincing defense of copyright theft (which in turn was a follow up to my earlier post which was... etc). Within a...\\

Where have all the cowboys gone? Where, by cowboys, I mean white knights, and by gone I mean there might not have ever been any
"I haven't blogged for a while. I've been a bit busy, with one thing or another. And tonight I'm supposed to be writing a book. But I just wanted to weigh in quickly on something that will interest possible three...\\

Here’s not to YouTube, Mr. Arrington
"I'm seriously starting to suspect that Michael Arrington was abused by a copyright lawyer as a child. His latest posting on Techcrunch siding with thieves against original content producers comes in response to Google's argument that Viacom's suit against YouTube...\\