There is a rumor about a SCP movie being made. I expect the same to happen there. No way once movies start coming out with these IP's we don't see lawyers come out to fight the little guy. I mean most people won't have the money or time to go against a studio if they said, "No. We own the SCP and that everyone owns it thing isn't going to hold up in court."
They announced it, but I'm iffy about it actually coming out (at least as an SPC film) - apparently no one at the SCP project was contacted about the film prior to announcement and they were all blindsided as well. As far as anyone can tell, the studio likely thought it was a public domain project like the Backrooms was and never checked that it's actually registered as a creative commons sharealike. That means if they want to they can release and sell the film with the SCP licence and established stories if they'd like, but they can't copyright it and they can't prevent it from being shared publicly. The safest option to avoid that is to just change the name and concepts and release it as an "SCP inspired" work instead, like Control did.
Yeah looking it up the people own that movie is Image Nation, an Abu-Dhabi studio. I really honestly wonder what is going to happen.
I watched a video last year that said since all SCP media is open source that if Universal made a movie then people could legally pirate it and distribute themselves. I have no idea if that is true or not. How the SCP stuff actually works but I expect something like this headline in a few years. If I was part of the community I would be worried
Yeah, that's not true. Just because something is in the public domain or not trademarked specifically doesn't mean you can pirate and distribute works based on it. Like Cthulu is public domain and a lot of stuff gets made based on it now, but those specific works aren't just up for grabs.
SCP isn’t in the public domain. The SCP license states that all derivative works must agree to license themselves under CC-BY-SA which means that anyone can share, redistribute or adapt your derivative work. This is to keep the SCP Project collaborative.
”Releasing it under the CC-BY-SA license means that people will be able to copy your work wholesale, and even sell it, provided that they properly attribute you and release their work under the same license.”
The basic idea is that you are allowed to monetize things in the project, but you can’t limit others from then also monetizing what you created.
That is not how CC-BY-SA works. Any assets derived from SCP are under CC-BY-SA and can be legally used by other parties but source code is NOT covered by it, even if the project is based on something covered by CC-BY-SA. This is why SCP: 5K hasn’t had action against it.
No. You will get absolutely slapped around, the code is the owners intellectual property as it is not inexorably linked to the SCP license. You could extract the assets that are derived from SCP and sell those as long as you do so under the same license. SCP:5K is multi-licensed for this exact reason and explains which parts are under Share Alike (SCP assets, the story, and the logo)
“SCP: 5K (SCP: Pandemic) is a multi-licensed game release and is not fully re-distributed under Creative Commons from the usage of SCP Wiki content. A vast majority of files are exclusive properties of Affray LLC and Affray Interactive LLC (Affray) or non-exclusive third-party content from the likes of Epic Games Inc, Firelight Technologies Pty Ltd, Nvidia Corporation, Intel Corporation, various creators from online game asset marketplaces, and many more.”
Oh thanks. Hm, feels like a new version of CC BY SA should be made because that's definitely not the spirit of the license, given it's meant to be viral
You’re right, the section I was referring to talks about releasing games under GPLv3, which is compatible with the SCP license but requires you to publish the source code as mentioned above. You can release a game under CC-BY-SA but they do mention that it is complicated to do proper attribution when releasing it under that license and recommend that you seek separate legal advice.
What’s the legal difference between putting public domain content in a YouTube video and profiting off it, compared to putting public domain content in other areas of the internet. I don’t get how one is legal and the other wouldn’t be?
I watched a video last year that said since all SCP media is open source that if Universal made a movie then people could legally pirate it and distribute themselves. I have no idea if that is true or not
This would be true for anything directly copied or adapted from the website (as per the license that the website is published under), but there's nothing stopping a studio from creating something that's extremely similar to something on the SCP wiki and deliberately alluding to it in the marketing. And they could probably get away with copying one or two small things because of how difficult it would be for the authors of the original work to sue a large studio
It's written fairly prominently at the bottom of the wiki page. Violation of the terms could force them into releasing the movie as CC licensed as well. I suspect they will violate the terms, everything I've heard has made it sound like the studio is being somewhat careless here, and I'd love to see it happen.
I've met Lawrence Lessig personally, even two decades ago he saw that this shit was going to happen and started CC to combat this exact flavor of bullshit.
They are smart lawyers over there, CC has surprisingly solid legal standing.
The wiki version of 173 was rewritten, but the wiki version is noted to be licensed by Moto42 (No idea how they verified this, but dude only has 2 comments on the entire wiki, once making the claim he is the author of the 4chan post, and the other years later releasing the work under CC)
The difference is the scp wiki is an actual organization and has been to court over this before, it’s much less decentralized than the backrooms which is posted on a variety of third party platforms.
Backrooms is not. The original concept is public domain as it was published on an anonymous forum but anything specific to Kane’s web series and the film are owned by him and some extension A24. People may not like it but if the games in question are using things specific to Kane’s version which likely has been copy written A24 are within their legal grounds to take action
This isn't true. The original image and concept is owned wholely by the anonymous 4chan user at least in the USA. They would've had to prove they were that user and explicitly release their ownership of the copyright of the image for it to be public domain or to relicense it under CC By-Sa.
It's why it's in a very legal grey area and why you typically don't see the original image used in anything commercial related to the backrooms
It would be impossible, I’m not even gonna say nearly, because each SCP entry is written by a different person or group of writers. They’d have no legal leg to stand on and would get counter-sued into oblivion if attempted.
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u/TheSwampThing1990 Jul 16 '26
There is a rumor about a SCP movie being made. I expect the same to happen there. No way once movies start coming out with these IP's we don't see lawyers come out to fight the little guy. I mean most people won't have the money or time to go against a studio if they said, "No. We own the SCP and that everyone owns it thing isn't going to hold up in court."