On sharing ideas and community

I’ve been surprised recently by the frequency with which I hear people (even those who should know better!) express concerns about sharing ideas in public or online before they are fully articulated or “protected.” This strikes me as symptomatic of a cultural moment marked by both desperation and the subtle triumph of today’s intellectual property regime.

I think it is worth thinking clearly about the consequences within a community of sharing vs. not sharing ideas. In the commercial realm, it is probably reasonable to expect the worst. This is why we have ham-fisted systems such as copyright, digital rights management and the DMCA. On a listserv devoted to Games for Change (G4C), a newcomer recently expressed her #1 concern with participating on the list as “How do I protect my idea?”

A number of the responses to her message suggested ways to import the copyright-centric conventions of commercial culture into the G4C community. I suppose that this would indeed prevent someone from stealing an idea, commercializing it and cutting the originator out of the profits. At the very least, it would provide lawyers with ammunition to use in court when a lawsuit for copyright infringement goes to trial.

Assuming that this is not really the primary issue for a community focused on social issue game design, I would instead propose a thought exercise to explore possible “worst-case scenarios” if we were to treat the G4C community as a shared, collective space for exploring and developing ideas at all stages.

Worst case #1
You mention an idea on the G4C list; someone takes it and makes exactly the game you were intending and they do so before your game can get off the ground. Perhaps the game will have the very impact you wanted to achieve, which is not all bad; or it will fail without taking up any of your time or resources. Everyone in the community will know what happened and the “stealer” will be regarded with suspicion thereafter.

Worst case #2
Someone takes your idea and tries to make a game out of it but botches the job; in this case, you can go on to make the game you originally envisioned, with the benefit of learning from their mistakes. The stealer will thereafter be regarded as both untrustworthy and incompetent.

Worst case #3
Your idea is not exactly “stolen” but it sparks a creative impulse in someone else, who makes a related project with significant variations, perhaps applying it to a different social issue or context. Again, your idea has brought something good to the world; you are free to go ahead and make your game, having learned from, or perhaps even collaborating with, those who made the other project. In this case, it is worth asking whether your current idea is really 100% original. Surely the best ideas sometimes build on the creativity of others; perhaps the initial idea was made possible precisely because someone else decided to share their own thinking with you or the world.

Worst case #4
Your idea circulates through the G4C community, you receive suggestions for improvement, references to related projects and ideas for collaborators; the original idea evolves and becomes stronger and more achievable; you make connections with others of like mind and G4C becomes an even more dynamic, creative space. In this case, you no longer feel total ownership and control of your original idea; it is no longer “intellectual property,” but it has become one among many parts of a community that shares certain goals and values.

In any case, participating in such a community improves the chances that any given idea will not be the last one (good or bad) that you ever have and certainly it increases the likelihood that both your idea and the community will get better. For me, the question comes down to what kind of creative communities I want to be a part of. I come to communities such as G4C to find creative, socially conscious people who care about issues and the potentials of games to make a difference in the world. Such a community is enriched when ideas are shared freely and openly and it is greatly impoverished, even poisoned, when ideas are held back or treated as property to be either protected or stolen.

Ideas are cheap and they should be plentiful; doing good work that makes a difference takes a whole community.

Media Mapmaker: An Interview with Rick Prelinger

An interview with film archivist Rick Prelinger, focusing on his recent work as an artist and activist at the forefront of the copyright wars.

Abstract:
For over two decades, his name has been synonymous with “Ephemeral Films,” but ever since Rick Prelinger turned over his collection of 50,000 advertising, educational and industrial films to the Library of Congress to be (ironically) preserved as part of our national heritage, he has continued his work as an artist, activist, litigant and librarian at the forefront of the copyright wars. In addition to serving as president of the Internet Archive and co-plaintiff (along with Brewster Kahle) in a pro-public domain lawsuit against the US government, Prelinger completed the all-public domain feature film Panorama Ephemera, which has received acclaim at festivals around the world. Most recently, he and his partner Megan Shaw Prelinger have opened an “appropriation-friendly” library in San Francisco that houses some 40,000 volumes. In all of these efforts, Prelinger remains committed to the value of cultural preservation, contemplation and recombination and a thoughtful engagement with the artifacts of the past.

Published in Res Magazine Sep/Oct 2005

Download “Media Mapmaker: An Interview with Rick Prelinger”

Open Source: Cinema in the Public Domain

An article examining the historical, political and technological implications of the open source movement for cinematic production.

Abstract:
February 24, 2004. Also known as Grey Tuesday. Over 100,000 copies of DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album are downloaded from hundreds of sites across the Internet. An estimated million copies of this celebrated remix of the Beatles’ White Album with Jay-Z’s Black Album are traded over peer-to-peer networks within 24 hours. A symbolic gesture perhaps, but the electronic civil disobedience of Grey Tuesday eloquently speaks to both consumer frustrations with increasingly restrictive copyright laws and the growing power of peer networks to subvert the enforcement of those laws. Clearly the battle lines have been drawn for the culture wars of the 21st century. At stake is the continued existence of a meaningful sphere of free culture called the public domain. The battle promises to be epic, bringing cherished American ideals of originality, creativity and the ability to profit from one’s labor into seeming conflict with equally powerful desires for freedom of speech and expression. And what happens when the movie industry finally has its own Grey Tuesday? In spite of its demonstrated ineffectiveness, the MPAA appears determined to follow the music industry’s shock-and-awe strategy of indiscriminate prosecutions. All of which means more lawsuits, more bitterness, and ultimately, more effective tactics of resistance.

Published in Res Magazine Jan/Feb 2005

Download “Open Source: Cinema in the Public Domain”