Episode: 4168
Title: HPR4168: Beyond Economic Recovery
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4168/hpr4168.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 20:39:35

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4168 for Wednesday, 24 July 2024.
Today's show is entitled Beyond Economic Recovery.
It is hosted by Trickster and is about 6 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is how to lower your anxiety level as an archivist.
Hello Hacker Public Radio, this is Trickster.
I wear many hats and one of the ones that I'm involved with for the past several decades
is that of archivist.
I am one of the few people specializing in tracking down IBM PC games that have not yet
been archived and released online.
I work with an archival group who shall be nameless for the moment and we coordinate and
acquire games that have not been archived that are available nowhere.
They're not an archive.org.
They're not available on any FTP site or any website.
Then we crack them and release them and we do so through a coordinated organization.
This episode is not about that but it is about something related to that and it's one
of my very favorite phrases which was told to me by a lawyer although it is not a legal
phrase or a legal construct.
That phrase is Beyond Economic Recovery.
Beyond Economic Recovery is one of my favorite phrases because it succinctly describes
how to determine if you can safely share an old program or manual or game online or
privately or to an archive or what have you.
I want to note up front that safe does not necessarily mean legal.
Disclaimer number one, it is always illegal to share things you don't own and you are
responsible for any repercussions if you break your country's laws.
This episode isn't about whether or not it is legal to share these things.
This episode is about whether or not you should be overly worried that you will be pursued
by some intellectual property holders legal department and sued into the ground.
Disclaimer number two, this would be a good time to mention I am not a lawyer.
This is not legal advice.
But unless you are a large scale pirating operation that's already under government investigation,
archiving something that is 20, 30, 40 years old generally is not a big deal.
What usually happens when a company determines that infringement has occurred is that the
infringing party is notified through a cease and assist letter.
By infringing party I mean you, the guy who is copying the software, you get a cease
and assist letter.
Quick compliance with the terms of the letter is almost always enough to stop for their
action.
But what if you are on some coyote-like mission to share this rare vintage content with
the world and you really want it to stay publicly available?
That's when you apply beyond economic recovery.
Again, this is not my phrase.
It was uttered to me in a couple of interviews I had with lawyers on this subject back when
I was researching at gosh, probably about 25 years ago.
So here's how to use this phrase.
Let's say you want to share a 30-year-old game on the web for others to grab.
If you are worried about legal repercussions, perform some due diligence and research
if the company is actively using the work.
The code, its trademarks, its intellectual property or whatever, to earn money.
So if the company is currently earning money with this thing that you want to share.
Or if they have immediate plans to do so or have announced plans to do so or whatever.
So for example, if this thing is, let's say, Super Mario Brothers and actively a sold
and licensed entity from Nintendo, don't share it.
But if it's not, like something like, gosh, I don't know, Orion Software's Space Strike
which came out in 1982 for the IBM PC.
If it's something that old and obscure and not currently sold, you have almost nothing
to worry about.
Disclaimer number three, I am not a lawyer.
This is not legal advice.
So when a company is made aware of infringement, and it's almost always through automated
Google searches or machine learning or crawlers or something along those lines, whenever
a company is made aware of infringement, they perform a quick check of whether or not
they would lose money sending the infringing party a cease and desist letter.
The average cost of a cease and desist letter accounting for all time and services rendered
is roughly $4,000.
If the company has an internal legal department or prepares communication in batches, that
number can be a little less, but it's still thousands of dollars.
So the mental check this company does is essentially, can we make more than $4,000 on the asset or
intellectual property this person is threatening to dilute by giving it away for free?
And if the answer is no, they don't bother.
So that is essentially it.
Ask yourself if the thing you are sharing is beyond economic recovery.
The Internet Archive enjoys both nonprofit status and various DMCA exemptions, which
allows them to make various historically relevant software works available online.
And a DMCA exemption doesn't prevent companies from sending them cease and desist letters
to protect their trademarks or intellectual property.
It also, unfortunately, doesn't succinctly define what is covered under the exemption,
as it uses words like obsolete without defining what time period obsolete refers to.
Thank you DMCA.
Some works that used to be public on the Internet Archive have since been hidden at the request
of the IP holder for everything else that is still public there.
The phrase, beyond economic recovery, is the principle that protects those software portions
of the Internet Archive.
They are simply beyond economic recovery.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does work.
Today's show was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording podcasts, you click on our contribute link to find out
how easy it means.
Hosting for HBR has been kindly provided by an honesthost.com, the Internet Archive
and our sync.net.
On the Sadois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution 4.0 International
License.