This article originally ran under a different banner/website in March of 2020 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.
HEAR YE!!! HEAR YE!!! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!! Gather round as I regale stories of peeking behind the vale to find the cracks in our reality. The rules we have written are not as concrete as we thought. There are objects within our world that do not obey the natural law. A staircase that appears to be never-ending. A concrete statue that can move if eye contact isn’t maintained. A plague doctor who is convinced there is a great pestilence and the only cure is turning those infected into zombies. At the heart of all these anomalies is a shadowy organization tasked with securing, containing, and protecting these dangerous objects, and it all operates with a simple wiki page and endless imagination.
For those unaware of the SCP Foundation, it is a communal writing project about a fictional government organization that deals with anomalist items. From an indestructible reptile that hates life to a living LEGO set to an interdimensional spaceship caught in Jupiter’s atmosphere, the fictional foundation is an endless fount of objects that operate outside our laws of physics. SCP wiki has served as an almost test ground for new writers looking to exercise their writing chops especially in the world of horror. Many of these anomalies, commonly referred to as SCP’s, have a knack for making the hair stand on the back of your neck.
The latest one to keep me up at night is SCP-1562. While appearing to be a normal metal slide, if one were to slide down it head first, they disappear moments before exiting the slide. Through extensive testing, the Foundation has been able to conclude subjects are transported to a dark narrow dirt tunnel. While subjects reported eventually being able to wiggle forward, they eventually run into the feet of the previous person who slid down the slide headfirst. While I am not normally claustrophobic, I can’t escape the feeling of the walls closing in on me as I reminisce on this simple metal slide.
While the SCP wiki has been around since 2008, it has more recently been seeping into the mainstream media. SCP Containment Breach is an indie first-person horror game where you try to escape one of the Foundation’s facilities when all the dangerous monsters have escaped containment. SCP Blackout is a similar premise but in virtual reality. More famously, Control’s Federal Bureau of Control is heavily inspired by the SCP Foundation. Certainly, the fridge that requires eye contact shares similarities with SCP-173. Even filmmaker, Max Landis has contributed an entry to the SCP wiki. His entry, SCP-2137, is a copy of Tupac’s Me Against the World album that replaces the track “Heavy in the Game” with a new song that outlines a crime taking place and how to solve the said crime. As someone who believes that the path to becoming a better writer takes practice, I am very much in favor of this communal writing project aiding current and future writers.
Unfortunately, the SCP Foundation has come under siege from a dangerous threat. While you might be wondering what interdimensional monster could be threatening this fictional foundation, I promise you the threat is much more real: the Russian trademark. Towards the end of 2019, a Russian man illegally registered for a trademark of the SCP with the Eurasian Customs Union. With this trademark, he has been able to take down Russian SCP merchandise sellers and demands the Russian branch of the SCP wiki be handed over to him. Some sympathy could be grander if he had a big hand in shaping the SCP wiki, but he did not. He never contributed a single entry to the site. He is just looking to milk the Foundation for every single penny, or Russian equivalent Ruble, that he can muster.
This is very much against the spirit that the SCP community has fostered over the years. The SCP wiki operates under a pay-it-forward mentality. As long as proper credit is given, the SCP community encourages writers and artists who were inspired by other works, to allow others to build off their own work. Also, the SCP wiki operates under a creative commons license. This license allows anyone to create and sell any work based on the SCP foundation. With this in mind, the Russian SCP branch is able to fight the illegal trademarking of the SCP in Russia, because its activity breaks copyright laws when our Russian friend blocks others from selling SCP merchandise.
Now many of you might be rolling your eyes at this point, you care not for the SCP or the world of horror. Why is this story relevant to you in this world of burning countries and Umbrella Corporation viruses? Well, my loyal followers, I hazard to guess that you love the internet. You may be using the internet to distract yourself from the daily horror plaguing modern life. Now if one single Russian is able to override creative commons license with a Trademark license, what is stopping others from drawing metaphorical battle lines across the internet. Any clip on Twitch or YouTube could easily be locked down and squeezed for money if this precedent is set. This has the potential to threaten sites like these, suffocating even more avenues for creative expression.
Now while some might find this to be more depressing news to add to the existential dread plaguing our life, I must assure you there is hope. Even with the trademark, our Russian friend is still breaking copyright law, and even though it is tough to fight international trademark law, it can be done. Yes, these fights require a lot of man-hours and even more money. Thankfully, the SCP community has come together to create a GoFundMe account to fund the lawyers needed. They have also beat their fifty thousand dollar goal by one hundred sixty thousand dollars. I still urge you to donate if you can. There is no telling if this will be wrapped up in a timely matter that doesn’t require additional funding.
My loyal followers, in troubling times, we often use storytelling as a means of escaping everyday horrors. Our ancestors would tell stories to help explain some of the phenomena they faced. With all the panic we face, I urge you to consider fighting for this fictional organization now more than ever. To some, a terrifying story of a monster who will stop at nothing to kill you if you see its face seems much quieter than the news about spreading infection. Stories can act as a comforting light in the dark. Don’t let the SCP stories be a light that is snuffed out.