Has Napster taught corporations nothing? Hasbro and Mattel, the owners of the Scrabble license are demanding that Facebook.com take down the Scrabulous application based on copyright infringement, and legal action could follow according to news.com.

Groups like “Save Scrabulous” have sprung up on the social networking site and are quickly garnering users.

Of course companies should have a right to their intellectual property, the same way the bus should always come on time, but these things don’t work in practice.

The long-suffering music industry created their own luck when they attacked p2p-sharing Web sites. Sure, Napster was destroyed, but the damage to the industry was done and people continued to download illegally.
Hasbro and Mattel may succeed in destroying Scrabulous, created by two 20-somethings in India, but the backlash will be much the same.

According to Caroline McCarty of CNet, Scrabulous has 2.3 million active users and is the ninth most popular application on the Web site. Why would you want to piss off that user base? More versions of Scrabble are going to come up and the idea of paying for an electronic version will not fly with most users.

iTunes is incredibly profitable and popular. Why? Because it offered a good service at a reasonable price, and rather than try to fight illegal downloads, it offered an attractive legal alternative.

Hasbro and Mattel should have done one of two things. Either purchase Scrabulous from the users or create a more attractive alternative. I do understand that either are rewarding people for stealing intellectual property but that is the reality of the Internet. It is the responsibility of companies and corporations to continue to grow and expand.

And let’s face it, putting the game online is not a stroke of genius, it was an obvious evolution and Electronic Arts—which owns the electronic license—should be ashamed of themselves for not coming up with it sooner.

Don’t attack the Internet and its users; we are used to getting things free, and trying to change that overnight is just not going to work. Apple has a good model; imitate it.

“For What it’s Worth” is a regular opinion column in the Business and Technology section. The opinions expressed are those of the columnist and not those of [X]press.