Currently, the site is under the Creative Commons License, which is cool and all, I guess, but we run into an issue. People are freely able to make derivative works from the site and sell them for a profit. I, for one, don't know how happy I'd be about someone making an SCP Foundation t-shirt and selling it for cash, especially if they've not got anything to do with the site. I am reminded of the "lolwat" pear, where people were producing merchandise with the image, and the artist didn't see a dime.
Switching to the Creative Commons Non-Commercial license should prevent that. It will not allow anything published on this site to be used for profit. For the full text of the license, check here. For the TL;DR, check here. This would, effectively, prevent groups like the MC&D wiki (whom I still support, but…) from making T-Shirts and making a profit off of them. Derivative works are still permitted; commercialized works—those done for profit—are not.
There is the problem, though. I'm not sure what it would take for someone to publish one of their stories under this license. For instance, if Gears wanted to make a book of his CreepyPasta, and someone were to agree to publish, could he remove them from the site and have them published in that fashion? I know Creative Commons allows for the author to retain some rights, but how much? Furthermore, could the Electronic Shadows project actually take place?
If possible, I'd like for us to talk to someone who knows the code a bit better (I think we've got a lawyer or two in the site population, and if necessary, I've got one on retainer that I can talk to, but that'll cost me money) and find out just what sort of ramifications this would have.
Thoughts and opinions?
"WELL FOUNDATION. YOU MADE IT SO EASY. SO VERY VERY EASY." - dimensionpotato