Now you're talking about shit implied by the behavior of the parties, not an actual contract.
Once you're arguing that an unsigned implied agreement with no written form, signed by none of the parties, without even a click, is somehow a binding contract, you're not in a great position.
For a contract to be binding, it has to involve consideration by all parties,
Since we are getting real in the legal weeds here, I thought I’d tell a story around this here digital campfire that muddies SCP’s legal origins even more.
As everyone is well aware by now, this all started with one dude posting on /x/. A bunch of people copied him and wrote derivatives. They compiled them off 4chan on a few places; EditThis, some other host, and finally WikiDot. EditThis’ TOS explicitly said to not post what isn’t your own work (I can find this again, I know I saw it one day when digging). They stole IP and broke the TOS’s of both EditThis and WikiDot when they the derivatives on them. Both would have deleted the project, had they known.
SCP started as IP protected by general rules of internetdom (forum posts are protected copyright unless stated otherwise iirc), was only slightly infringed upon (no one was seriously going to reeeee at 4chans mimicking the style in /x/), it was officially stolen by EditThis and illegally ported, and by the time it got to WikiDot, it was CC.
Within days of the scp wiki being created, that original author, under the name Moto42, stopped in. He was floored by the project and clearly hadn’t known all the derivatives had been created. On the site forum, he posted “oh hey cool. my one about the drink dispenser is my favorite”. Then he disappeared for 5 years.
In that time, SCP lore and “canon” solidified into what we know it as. The name “The Foundation”, the object classes, etc. Moto42 came back in 2013, around the time the SCP-2000 contest was announced, and commented on his ported SCP-173 to explicitly release the work as CC-BY-SA 3.0 (my guess is at the request of staff, to head off any legal pickle), thus instantly making all subsequent derivatives that too. This coincided with the dawning of staff’s (belated) understanding of the license they had unwittingly wed themselves to. Staff sighed collectively and celebrated this as a weight lifted from their shoulders. Because things developed
before that in those 5 years was a a very grey area in the eyes of the law.
So happily ever after right? Nah.
Nearly everything that comes to mind when you think of "The SCP Foundation" was developed by the community on wikidot. But “Special Containment Procedures” and the article format came before the transition to Wikidot and the BY-SA license. When pressed on this, the licensing team cites “implied intent” to cover their legal tracks during that time; a real nebulous and undeveloped legal concept. They say that since Moto42 came by those first days after the wiki, and didn’t have a fit over the obvious IP copyright infringement, that that meant their CC BY-SA 3.0 usage was implied through behavior as ok.
But we’ve seen it demonstrated that the SCP staff themselves didn’t understand what the license meant as late as 2012. So how could Moto42 have in 2008? They thought they were going to make an LLC or a mainstream movie off it. They talked about becoming incorporated. It’s likely they would have cut Moto in on any enterprise or entrepreneurship, if he asked (or demanded). So how could he have been implicitly intending the CC BY-SA 3.0?
Everyone’s pointing out of no acknowledgement when signing up for the site supports this too. It’s clear from the link I shared that WikiDot’s own admins were unsure of a content license in 2010, 2 years after Moto first came by.
He probably made it CC BY-SA because this huge project had sprung up, the CC license was the boat staff realized they were stuck in, and they asked him to play ball; he did because he was nice and was happy enough with what he inspired. Who’s to say Moto wouldn’t have originally wanted to make a fortune had he known what it would become? By that point, he could almost only pursue that if he destroyed the project.
Things like “The Foundation” and the logo are undeniably CC BY-SA 3.0 bc they originated on the wiki; but SCP-173 doesn’t ever mention the foundation. It does mention “SCP”. So each and every SCP article is a legal derivative.
The question is if the derivatives produced between 2008 and 2013 are necessarily subject to CC BY-SA 3.0, as legally speaking that license was imposed on them mid-flight. The SCP licensing experts would tell you this is “strongly established” and “fully under control” by implied intent, but that is a defense mechanism for some real shaky ground. Implied licenses are a very deep grey. There is little in the legal literature to suggest it is certain to apply here; it is entirely far from strong.
Given that a Harmony article might not mention “The Foundation”, and only stick to the bare bones elements — i.e. the SCP format — she might have a legal chance of making them a more strict CC license that does not allow derivation, and so no rewrites for SCP (or RPC). SCP would have to take them down. This also might give the international communities — like Russian branch, which was established before 2013 — a justification for posting under an alternative license. But that’s another story for another day.
ADD: The application of “implied intent” also might relate to Harmony’s expectation of being able to take down her articles if she requested it.
EDIT: This is not legal advice.
