on the ‘everything posted publicly on the site was public domain’ part. The only way so far of a way around this is copyright all ideas (this can be done through Anpost) correct me if I am wrong! and again make a notice to say everything posted in public domain. [/quote:6a2b35bab0]
What I was getting at, is that no commercial developer will look at the ideas, unless it’s crystal clear with the IP implications of doing so are.
The copyright of the content posted would rest, by default, with the posters of the content, and so no commercial developer is likely to look at your site, and open themselves to later IP risks, unless you do something to change this. (The thing you mentioned about An Post would be to later prove copyright ownership afaik, but that’s just a mechanism of proof, the copyright legally rests with the author by default anyway).
To talk in terms of your screenplay analogy, if a professional producer or screenwriter is sent a screenplay by a fan they often won’t even read it unless this issue has been dealt with, for fear of opening themselves to future litigation. (Can’t find any references on the internet for this, but I have definitely heard of instances).
So, you’d need to solve this problem somehow.
One way would be by enforcing all submissions to be transferred to the public domain (or some sort of artistic license alike). This means submitters aren’t going to get a cut if their content is used, and might mean you get less quality content – but it’s quite simple to build.
Another way to go, might be to do some sort of an content market type thing, where people receive a (clearly defined) cut if their content is used – this would be hard to enforce etc, and might put developers off looking at it. This would mean you are building a very different type of site, a marketplace, and trying to build an ideas marketplace, whatever about a digital content marketplace, has a lot of challenges.
I say ‘content’ here, and not ideas, because talking about copyright on ideas vs on content is, afaik, entering complicated territory (ianal).
All I’m really pointing out is that you are going to have to think about this issue, and it’s a key issue affecting what sort of site you’ll build.