thanks for the replies, gentlemen.
my thing is i don't want to have to say to an editor, 'this isn't on the web, other than i e-mailed it to some beta readers,' when, in fact, in one form or another it has been. that's for fiction. now, of course, i'm a dude, so i can lie and through the wonderful art of semantics can convince myself that by changing a few words around then, no, no one else has read it.
on the surface of things, i wouldn't think a script was under the same rules, per se. i think it was one of dp's links i followed that lead me to a pro writer's board (forget his name), where people share stories, but only the first 13 lines, then it's up to them to e-mail it to interested parties. this protects their editor's electronic first use rights, apparently.
i wondered if by having passwords that put things in a different light. were i an editor with a hard-on for these things, it wouldn't make a lick of difference to if a password was involved or not. other than registering to be able to read the stories, there's no real protection there. my biggest argument as a writer would be these are workshops and as such should be protected. that is, even as a relatively private forum (as private as you can reasonably be without having to pay for a subscription or otherwise have any qualifications to enter), what the writer is really doing is asking for comments and suggestions in a critical manner.
still, that's for fiction. i had the impression it didn't matter much if at all considering all the screenwriters' sites i've visited who had for sale up to about ten page samples of actual scripts.
as an aside, i read the first draft of 'the star wars.' ouch, yikes and yuck. at the time, you'd *have* to have a buddy read it, as few others could have suffered through it without being paid.
i guess this lax attitude, for lack of a better term here, is yet another reason for me to write scripts, eh? cool.
