I agree. If you give a rat’s ass about your intellectual property, this isn’t the way to go about protecting it.

It’s a hell of a soap box though.

P.S. When I read Miss Snark’s blog entry on sex scenes, the first thing I thought of doing was linking to your Reason To Stop about sex scenes. Then I hit the comment string and saw you beat me to it. Bastard.

The grant of rights clause is pretty standard stuff for any wiki project. It couldn’t function if there was any issue over rights.

Rights only matter to the extent that you can legally abuse the rights abuser. Anyone who is obsessive about protecting their rights should stop writing, at least on the Internet.

This whole project was cooked up by a couple coke snorting editors at a fashion show or something.

Editor 1: Hey, Nigel. I got a great fucking idea.

Editor 2: Yeah? Lay it on me.

Editor 1: Right, so look. Let’s get a bunch of sorry, sad sacks to write us a book for free.

Editor 2: Wait you mean…

Editor 1: Yes.

Editor 2: Brilliant fucking idea. A Wikibook, and we retain ALL THE RIGHTS.

(Both editors devolve into mad scientist laughs)

Here’s the important fine print on the MillionPenguins Wiki:

By posting your submission on the Wiki Novel and the Site, you grant us a non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, world-wide licence to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, publish, distribute and display any content you submit to us in any format now known or later developed. If you do not want to grant us these rights, please do not submit your content to us.