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100 lines
6.0 KiB
Plaintext
100 lines
6.0 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 4168
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Title: HPR4168: Beyond Economic Recovery
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4168/hpr4168.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-25 20:39:35
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---
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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4168 for Wednesday, 24 July 2024.
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Today's show is entitled Beyond Economic Recovery.
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It is hosted by Trickster and is about 6 minutes long.
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It carries a clean flag.
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The summary is how to lower your anxiety level as an archivist.
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Hello Hacker Public Radio, this is Trickster.
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I wear many hats and one of the ones that I'm involved with for the past several decades
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is that of archivist.
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I am one of the few people specializing in tracking down IBM PC games that have not yet
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been archived and released online.
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I work with an archival group who shall be nameless for the moment and we coordinate and
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acquire games that have not been archived that are available nowhere.
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They're not an archive.org.
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They're not available on any FTP site or any website.
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Then we crack them and release them and we do so through a coordinated organization.
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This episode is not about that but it is about something related to that and it's one
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of my very favorite phrases which was told to me by a lawyer although it is not a legal
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phrase or a legal construct.
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That phrase is Beyond Economic Recovery.
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Beyond Economic Recovery is one of my favorite phrases because it succinctly describes
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how to determine if you can safely share an old program or manual or game online or
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privately or to an archive or what have you.
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I want to note up front that safe does not necessarily mean legal.
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Disclaimer number one, it is always illegal to share things you don't own and you are
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responsible for any repercussions if you break your country's laws.
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This episode isn't about whether or not it is legal to share these things.
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This episode is about whether or not you should be overly worried that you will be pursued
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by some intellectual property holders legal department and sued into the ground.
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Disclaimer number two, this would be a good time to mention I am not a lawyer.
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This is not legal advice.
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But unless you are a large scale pirating operation that's already under government investigation,
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archiving something that is 20, 30, 40 years old generally is not a big deal.
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What usually happens when a company determines that infringement has occurred is that the
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infringing party is notified through a cease and assist letter.
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By infringing party I mean you, the guy who is copying the software, you get a cease
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and assist letter.
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Quick compliance with the terms of the letter is almost always enough to stop for their
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action.
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But what if you are on some coyote-like mission to share this rare vintage content with
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the world and you really want it to stay publicly available?
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That's when you apply beyond economic recovery.
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Again, this is not my phrase.
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It was uttered to me in a couple of interviews I had with lawyers on this subject back when
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I was researching at gosh, probably about 25 years ago.
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So here's how to use this phrase.
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Let's say you want to share a 30-year-old game on the web for others to grab.
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If you are worried about legal repercussions, perform some due diligence and research
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if the company is actively using the work.
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The code, its trademarks, its intellectual property or whatever, to earn money.
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So if the company is currently earning money with this thing that you want to share.
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Or if they have immediate plans to do so or have announced plans to do so or whatever.
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So for example, if this thing is, let's say, Super Mario Brothers and actively a sold
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and licensed entity from Nintendo, don't share it.
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But if it's not, like something like, gosh, I don't know, Orion Software's Space Strike
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which came out in 1982 for the IBM PC.
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If it's something that old and obscure and not currently sold, you have almost nothing
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to worry about.
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Disclaimer number three, I am not a lawyer.
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This is not legal advice.
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So when a company is made aware of infringement, and it's almost always through automated
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Google searches or machine learning or crawlers or something along those lines, whenever
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a company is made aware of infringement, they perform a quick check of whether or not
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they would lose money sending the infringing party a cease and desist letter.
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The average cost of a cease and desist letter accounting for all time and services rendered
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is roughly $4,000.
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If the company has an internal legal department or prepares communication in batches, that
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number can be a little less, but it's still thousands of dollars.
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So the mental check this company does is essentially, can we make more than $4,000 on the asset or
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intellectual property this person is threatening to dilute by giving it away for free?
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And if the answer is no, they don't bother.
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So that is essentially it.
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Ask yourself if the thing you are sharing is beyond economic recovery.
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The Internet Archive enjoys both nonprofit status and various DMCA exemptions, which
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allows them to make various historically relevant software works available online.
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And a DMCA exemption doesn't prevent companies from sending them cease and desist letters
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to protect their trademarks or intellectual property.
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It also, unfortunately, doesn't succinctly define what is covered under the exemption,
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as it uses words like obsolete without defining what time period obsolete refers to.
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Thank you DMCA.
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Some works that used to be public on the Internet Archive have since been hidden at the request
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of the IP holder for everything else that is still public there.
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The phrase, beyond economic recovery, is the principle that protects those software portions
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of the Internet Archive.
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They are simply beyond economic recovery.
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You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does work.
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Today's show was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself.
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If you ever thought of recording podcasts, you click on our contribute link to find out
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how easy it means.
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Hosting for HBR has been kindly provided by an honesthost.com, the Internet Archive
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and our sync.net.
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On the Sadois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution 4.0 International
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License.
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