Play me a song, you're the chiptune man...
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12:43 PM |
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It's funny to imagine what a world would be like if 99% of all videogames would become public domain. Can you imagine being able to play those games of old...is what I would ask if it wasn´t already possible. Thanks to emulator technology, the games of old, from those who are still bankable to those that licensing and technology would leave behind remain accessible to those unafraid of an FBI raid on their house destroying their lives.
This resurging interest in old style games, in itself, has enabled a growing interest in old style game music. Scour the internet, and you´ll see the trend of chiptune music, music made from primitive low quality music samples played in sequences similar to what was done in old games, when games did it because of limitation in memory and storage, but which gave this "game music" a style of it's own. From original compositions, to remakes of more modern songs, to websites dedicated to sharing the samples that can be used for such a thing, the interest in these old bleeps and bloops is stronger than it was before the interet.
This might give you a clearer idea
When we discuss the idea of videogames becoming public domain, often people feel that, at our heart, our protest is about not being able to have "free shit that doesn't belong to us, which cost somebody blood sweat and tears to make." But I want you to make an exercise with me:
The premise is this: Let's say every Nes, Snes, and Sega Genesis game had five songs. I can't vouch for the accuracy of that, because the amount of games we're talking about is enormous, but let's say five as a conservative figure.
There are 713 amount of official games for the Nes, 721 ammount for the Snes, and 915 ammount for the Sega Genesis. Put together all those games make 2349 ammount of games.
Now, before I tell you the amount YOU ALREADY LOOKED IT UP IN THE CALCULATOR? LET ME MAKE MY POINT! 99 percent of all works used to lapse when re-registry was required, so by that logic most of these games and their 11745 songs would have been public domain, but there's a bit of a catch: Many of these where based on preexisting properties, so songs based on that would obviously not become public domain if the property itself remains copyrighted. So it wouldn't be this amount exactly. The other caveat is that I didn't count all the games for the Gameboy, Virtual Boy, Atari Jaguar, 3DO, Arcade, PCEngine, Game Gear, Sega Master System and more that existed back then, so the real amount of songs we'd be able to use should actually be much, much, muuuch higher even when taking into account preexisting copyright, multiple versions/ports, and he odd game that had less than 1 song.
And sure, maybe you want to be original and not set your love scene to "Lesbian Match" from '89 Dennou Kyuusei Uranai because you want to be original. That's fine. But is it so wrong to have a CHOICE between using in a new work music that, let's be frank here, nobody is making any money out of anyway or just making something new?
This is the real tragedy of our current copyright system. Not that I can't play the latest Halo for free 95 minutes after it's come out without facing legal action: but rather that I can't play Halo's Theme in my own game I made until 95 years after it's invented, or even a song from Konami's Raging Fighter for the Gameboy. And no, Martin O'Donnel isn't losing money every time you make a cover of the Halo theme, because Martin O'Donnel makes money COMPOSING, and that theme is ALREADY COMPOSED. He can't compose it anymore, and he certainly can't use the same song on other games, since Micros owns it.
I believe it was Jesus that said that The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. The laws do not exist in thin air, they are meant to bring a benefit to the people. Is there a benefit to locking 11745 songs behind a wall of legal uncertainty? What are YOUR favorite songs in the bleep and bloop genre?
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