Hasbro appears to have won a battle with Facebook application “Scrabulous” which has been wiped off of Facebook.   One of the most popular applications on the massive Social Network, many thought Hasbro would buy Scrabulous from the two founders.   That may still happen but Scrabulous’ negotiating position has been severely weakened over the past month as Hasbro first launched an “official” Scrabble on Facebook and now has won the copyright battle and had the competitor removed.

As I’ve noted many times before the prevailing notions of copyright among onliners differ quite a bit from those held by most judges and the legal world at large and this will continue for some time.   Napster, YouTube, and Scrabulous may seem like reasonably clean applications for the online crowd, but in a legal sense they are on very shaky ground.   Will these copyright issue clear up anytime soon?   In one two letter word …  [N][O]