The Future of Creativity
Creative Commons is something I strongly believe in, because I believe that innovation and imagination are in fact simply reinnovation and reimagination. Nothing we do is new, everything always draws upon existing stories and ideas.
Will locking away ideas, knowledge and stories behind a wall of legal protection for one hundred years cause the loss of many great works and perhaps most importantly instigate the stagnation and decay of creativity as we know it?
There are many examples today of copyright causing the loss of important works and also many examples of today’s creative works being simple copies or “recontextisation” of works from hundreds of years ago. Where will we be in a few decades when all of todays creativity is locked away or lost?
My concern in this essay however is for games and motion pictures, even though books, music and other forms of creation are all in this boat.
The big word in digital media today is DRM. It was conceived as a way for corporations to protect digital media. The data is encrypted and can only be played with permission obtained from the content provider, often the permission needs to be obtained in realtime while playing the media.
However, what if the content provider goes out of business or simply decides to abandon the content type? The content may be lost for ever! And if I were to be less dramatic, certainly it will be lost to the person who was gullible enough to pay money for it.
Many hackers have made sure that DRM can be broken, despite this being illegal in the USA, EU and many other so called civilized nations. But what about ten years from now when the billion dollar giants outpace the hackers in technology and tie them up in draconian laws?
Then, yet another decade later when a corporation decides to move on to “bigger and better” things or perhaps goes out of business, what will happen to the content?
But even without DRM, there are many examples of creative works being lost because of this so called “protection”.
Most old movies and tv series are all protected under copyright. Sure, a few of them such as Dallas or Dukes of Hazzard are available on DVD. But where are the smaller titles? Where can I get my copy Cry Onion or Captain Power. By any standard crappy titles that no one makes any money on, but I like them, if only for their nostalgic value. They do not exist on DVD and are hard to find on VHS.
I might have been able to purchase them back in their heyday, but I was under 10 years old at the time and these things were not sold on tape in Russia. Even if I had found them on tape somehow, that tape would be obsolete today, and thanks to the Macrovision anti-copying system I would not easily have been able to transfer the content to a DVD anyway.
To the rescue comes youtube. Where everyone can find many of these old classics. In subpar quality, segmented, disorganised and under constant threat of being removed due to copyright violation or some other reason which you can find in youtube’s lengthy EULA. And since youtube is designed to prevent downloading, when youtube is gone, these works will again be lost!
Will the one person who taped a copy all those years ago and uploaded it to youtube, upload it again to a new video service? Can we take that chance?
Certainly some protection is required, but haven’t we crossed the line already?
What about computer games?
Games that were created in the 1990’s are often unplayable on modern computers, which is not unusual since hardware and software evolves. Of course before you can actually even try to get the game running, you first have to find it. And finding these games in a store is almost impossible. You might find them in a deep dark corner of a specialty game store, but most of these games have either been lost or destroyed. So folks today will never be able to enjoy great classics such as Stunts or the original X-Wing.
Places like the-underdogs have many old games, but many titles have recently been removed because of publishers going legal or laws changing. In the end, your only options are seedy bittorrent sites where you are more likely to get a virus than the actual game, not to mention all the porn ads.
So what about the company that made the game? Surely they would help you? Unfortunately gaming companies usually have a notoriously short lifespan and an even shorter attention span. They might support a game for a few months or at best, years, but soon it will be forgotten.
I often install older games to enjoy a moment of nostalgia and I almost always find that the game’s official website or support site is long gone. This is true even for games no older than 5 years old and even when the publisher or developer is still around!
So if you were able to obtain the game somehow, now comes the hard part. Getting the game running on your modern hardware and software! While emulators work for some games, they often provide a subpar gaming experience. Most users don’t even know what an emulator does. The alternative is modifying the game code because you can create a new copy of the game that everyone can play. However the source code is often a well kept secret, and many companies would rather destroy it than let it fall into enemy hands since that could cause legal repercussions. The enemy here is none other than you!
In some cases, programmers have given their free time to create an new version of an older game, using the game’s original graphics and often significantly improving upon the original. Some projects were shut down by the original game’s creators with the help of the law, while others have been lucky enough to avoid that fate. Luckily for the Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe project (and me, since I enjoy that game quite a bit), some companies are less sue-happy than others.
They say, imitation is the highest form of flattery. Apparently that old saying has been forgotten.
While many projects die from direct legal pressure, most die because they are forced to operate under a tight legal leash, so people are afraid to join in to lend a hand. Some of course, die from bad management 
In some cases, projects are plain underground such as a large portion of the game console scene.
The old Nintendo NES and Sega Megadrives machines are long since out of production, the few that still exist and work are often considered priceless relics. They were not designed to last and neither was the media on which the games lived.
These old games and the machines to play them on are almost impossible to find in stores since they are no longer manufactured. Does this mean they should be lost? Luckily, no.
Smart geeks have copied down the contents of gaming cartridges and crazy programmers have written emulators for the NES, the Sega Megadrive and all those old kick ass platforms.
These games have indeed surpassed all life expectancy prognoses and thanks to many cool smart people working in legal gray areas, we can still enjoy them today.
This is the power of freedom operating under a tight leash, hiding in the shadows. Imagine that power if it were unleashed! Everyone could enjoy great classic games and movies without having to browse the underbelly of the internet to find them! The sites that today only dare put up pictures and stories, could host the entire thing.
The Library of Alexandria suffered many fires and many works were lost because replacing the handwritten manuscripts was expensive and difficult. Is that not lesson enough? Why does our society, which has overcome these technological hurdles, still wants to move back to those days?
We live in an age of digital media. Digital things can be copied without limits. So there is no reason to pick one NES game to go down in history or one 80’s classic movie to be re-released on DVD. Everyone can enjoy their favorites without limits. Without having the whims of the reviewers or box office numbers dictating what they can or cannot force their kids to watch a few years from now.
There is no doubt that we must protect the rights of creators. But what about protecting the right of future generations to know their history, our history?
Perhaps one solution lies in Creative Commons et al.
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