What are some of your favorite examples of creativity in new media, which in your view were not possible before the information age?
A common rationalization, but I believe, it's a straw men argument. For who's really interested in "creativity"? Maybe you and a few more others, but hardly the majority.
For example: Let's assume, there's been a law ten years ago that allowded anybody to redistribute a published movie. Is it conceivable to think anybody would have invested money to make a movie since then? Only a small minority, maybe.
The majority of movies, however, would have never been produced. We wouldn't have seen neither the Spiderman series, nor Lord of the rings, nor most other movies that were popular on the file sharing networks.
In reality, these movies were made and millions of people worldwide spend money to see them. That looks like proof, millions of people wanted to see them! The majority of people don't care whether a work is "creative".
It's not the job of the media industries to foster "truely creative" works. The industry's job is financing, filtering, and informing about creative works. Therefore, the "creative" argument is a straw men argument.
[1: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Power-without-Responsibility-Broadca...] [2: one I've become aware of recently - Dodgem Logic (http://www.dodgemlogic.com/) that are very deliberately subversive. I think one of the guys out of The League Of Gentlemen is involved.]
That's why whenever I hear about "piracy is killing the big production companies" and am thinking "and that would be bad because...?" They have been shoving junk down people's throats (or should I say "eyes" and "ears") for so many years, they make artists sign draconian contracts, etc, etc. If they disappear, I'll be alright with it.