But, of course, whenever I get inspired to write about something unrelated to Japan, it goes straight to The Tartar Sauce, and today I stumbled upon this article. If you're feeling too lazy to read its three paragraphs, it basically says that Square Enix has just sent a cease and desist letter to the creators of Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes, a 35-hour game that was based on Chrono Trigger and made entirely by fans (so this post is related to Japan, but not related to my own experiences in Japan). Of course I wish this didn't happen, but if it had to happen then I wish it was during piracy week. If you read my post on music piracy, you'll know that while I'm somewhat against illegal downloading, I'm completely in favor of illegal art forms such as remixes, mash-ups, and, in this case, what could accurately be described as fan-fiction. I feel that in general as long as a consumer pays for a product, allowing the producer to profit from it, then that consumer should be able to use that product as a basis for new production. If someone obtains a recording of a song in an ethical way, then they should legally be able to make a remix of it. If someone legally reads a book (although it's pretty hard to illegally read a book), they should legally be able to make fan-fiction based on it. And, if someone legally obtains a video game, they should legally be able to hack it and make a new video game based on it. The only catch is that everyone should cite their sources when they make fan-art. Thus, culture becomes richer since amateurs are able to respond to influential artworks, and professionals are still able to profit, since people have to obtain their artworks legally, and since when sources are cited it prevents plagiarism and leads to more people finding out about the original artists.
Therefore, I'm really sad that this new, exciting fan-art was crushed. If you read the article, you'll see that not only will the game not be released, but that its creators destroyed it. No one will ever be able to play it. Does anyone else agree with me that this is a little extreme? Especially since no one was really harmed by this fan-art being created. No one is going to play this game as a substitute for Chrono Trigger. Most of the people who play it will probably do it because they loved the original Chrono Trigger, which they have already purchased and played. And all the people who played the fan-game and not the original would certainly want to play the original afterwards. This game is not plagiarism, since it is an entirely new game. And, judging by how it was created, I bet that this game would have been released for free, or at least without DRM, so the creators wouldn't profit that much from it either. And even if they did, it would be OK, since it's not a copy of the original. This is different from someone downloading an illegal copy of Chrono Trigger. In that case, Squaresoft gets hurt. This is someone downloading a different game that was meant to be downloaded and that promotes the game it was based on. This basically would have been free publicity for Squaresoft.
And, technically, it still is. But it's bad publicity. This cease and desist letter just makes Squaresoft look like the big bad mega-company treading on the weaker indie game developers. When I read this, I couldn't help but think of an earlier case involving two music groups, Negativland and U2. Heard of U2? Haven't heard of Negativland? Good. That's the point of this story. One time, Negativland sampled a U2 song in one of their songs, and were sued for more money than they even had. U2 didn't need the money. And they weren't harmed by the new song that Negativland made. All that happened was that while an underground band failed, U2 profited and became the epitome of corporate rock, assigning money a higher value than art. That's basically what Squaresoft is doing right now. And that's hard for me to say, since I love Squaresoft games. But I've hated on Squaresoft before and I'll do it again. My love of Squaresoft games doesn't compensate for the fact that right now they're doing something absolutely terrible, abusing their power to no good end by crushing weaker game developers.
Leonard Katzman mentioned in his post that copyright is intended to "promote the progress of science and useful arts." While you could argue that video games are not "useful," you can still see that there's a point at which copyright laws halt the progress of the arts. Copyright laws that prevent people from playing Chrono Trigger for free promote the progress of the arts, since they allow companies like Squaresoft to profit. But copyright laws that prevent people from making tribute games halt the progress of the arts in a really obvious way. At this point, copyright laws simply cause companies that are already rich to benefit while underground artists fail. This is exactly what happened with Chrono Trigger and with U2 and Negativland, and it's terrible. How does this promote the progress of the arts? It doesn't. Squaresoft wouldn't lose any money because of this tribute game (in fact, they may be losing money now that they're preventing it's creation). And even if this legal action were causing them to make more money, this still wouldn't be promoting the progress of the arts unless, for example, Squaresoft couldn't make FFXIII without the money that they were losing (which they aren't actually losing). Sorry if that argument's really convoluted, but basically what I'm trying to say is that copyright laws against remixed art-forms don't promote the progress of the arts. Instead, they stop it. Companies argue that they lose money because of remixed art, but
a) that's debatable, and
b) even if they did, they wouldn't feel it as much as remix artists who can't make their art anymore. Therefore, these laws halt the progress of the arts.
It IS possible to have it both ways. It IS possible to have copyright laws prevent illegal downloading but promote remix culture. This is the only way for copyright to truly promote the progress of the arts.
Squaresoft has a history of doing this. They have quashed at least two major projects that I know of, and more are listed on Wikipedia. Some were "fan-fics," others were out and out remakes. The really frustrating thing is that Squaresoft has refused to move forward with creating a remake, despite a massive demand. Hell, it even took them until last year to port the game over to a portable system. So you have a corporation that is refusing to expand on its art and actively moving to stomp out people who want to explore it further, on their own time and money. It's really unpleasant and, unfortunately, endemic in the industry.
Bobbicus
May 12, 2009 at 9:12 PM