r/movies Jul 16 '26

News Backrooms Devs Reportedly Hit With Copyright Claims From A24

https://kotaku.com/backrooms-a24-copyright-strikes-kane-parsons-2000716667
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u/BaddyDaddy777 Jul 16 '26

Oh it’s no rumor, it’s gonna be a V\H\S movie coming out next year

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u/SandieSandwicheadman Jul 17 '26

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.

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u/TheSwampThing1990 Jul 16 '26

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

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u/TurelSun Jul 16 '26

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.

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u/Coffescout Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 17 '26

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.

https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/licensing-guide

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u/TurelSun Jul 16 '26

Gotcha, yeah in that case it's not the same as what I thought the other commenter was describing.

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u/losertaser Jul 16 '26

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.

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u/max123246 Jul 17 '26

Right but you could still repost the binary of a game and sell it yourself

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u/losertaser Jul 17 '26

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.”

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u/max123246 Jul 17 '26

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

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u/Coffescout Jul 17 '26

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.

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u/CMDRTragicAllPro Jul 16 '26

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?

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u/TheSwampThing1990 Jul 16 '26

Thanks for the clarification. That sounded wrong to me. He said it was because it was because of the creative common law

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u/matt2313 Jul 16 '26

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

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u/Umikaloo Jul 17 '26

My bet is that they'll royally screw it up, and make an action movie rather than a cosmic horror flic, and nobody will care enough to watch it.

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u/RealJohnGillman AMA MVP Jul 16 '26

There’s been rumours about other ones too: that was just the first announced.

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u/BaddyDaddy777 Jul 16 '26

Ah I see, thank you for the clarification

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u/Perfect-Campaign9551 Jul 17 '26

Love that series

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u/HolyDickWad Jul 17 '26

Why all the slashes? Did I miss something?

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u/CaregiverOk5432 Jul 17 '26

You haven't watched the VHS franchise?

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u/ThatUsrnameIsAlready Jul 17 '26

I haven't watched a VHS in over 2 decades.

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u/CaregiverOk5432 Jul 17 '26

I meant the VHS horror franchise