Scrabulous..?

I have no idea how I feel about the great Scrabulous debate.

For info, Scrabulous is a game that has been added as a third party application running on Facebook. It has, seemingly, more users than the entire population of the Earth and is currently free (except of course that it generates ad revenue for its developers). The problem is that it is blatantly a rip off of the classic board game Scrabble (almost including the name).

There are a number of arguments floating around in my head. I'm someone who wants to dream big dreams, and come up with great ideas that (hopefully) might make me some commercial gain as well as change/save the world. And the way that happens is through the process of IP (intellectual property) protection - patents and the like. Now these two guys who built Scrabulous have taken someone else's IP and stolen it. I don't really like the precedent that this sets. As someone who might someday have a Big Idea, I wouldn't want the free-for-all notions that the Internet has enabled (and somehow morally justified) to be applied to my innovations. What's the incentive for me? The trouble is that this, of course, has been going on since time began and a lot of progress is actually built off the work of others. A computer operating system that uses "windows", electrically-powered vacuum cleaners, etc, etc.

Some of the defence of Scrabulous is that it hasn't taken any business from the makers/owners of Scrabble, indeed people are saying that they discovered the joys of the game through the Facebook version and have subsequently gone out and bought a real-life set (making money for the Scrabble guys too). That's a great example of a sort of virtuous symbiosis, a relationship where everybody wins.

And then I keep coming back to the central notion of "Yeah, but they stole the idea.."

I really can't decide.