Outrageous stuff at archive.org's Shareware CD Archive

[MrFlibble]

Last week I decided to check the Shareware CD Archive for new items, and was unpleasantly surprised to find out that someone has been happily uploading pirate Russian CDs from the nineties, from a series called "Classic Fond" (it was supposed to mean "The Classic Collection", but, you know, translations can go awry sometimes). These CDs, while being somewhat similar to the usual shareware CD compilations, have one glaring difference: instead of shareware, demo and/or freeware content they have pirated full (or ripped) versions of games.

I have sent an e-mail to the archive.org staff via the designated address (had to look around the site for a while to find it), but there has been no reply yet, and more CDs from the same series have been uploaded in the meantime. I'm somewhat disappointed that the site doesn't have any visible means of reporting potentially unwanted content, and that there seems to be no control of user-uploaded content whatsoever. I have asked Swizzle from Demu.org, who maintains contact with the people from archive.org, to inform them at the first possibility, but I'm not sure about how soon this may happen. If that doesn't help either, I guess I'll have to sign up and post the information as reviews for the CDs in question (there are already 60 of them there), perhaps that will attract the attention of the archive.org administration.

[DOSGuy]

Russia was (and probably still is) considered a country where a single legally purchased copy of software would be enough for the entire country. I usually find at least one illegal game on every compilation CD I buy (which is why so few of them make it on the site), but a Russian compilation CD would undoubtedly be full of copyrighted material since there were no legal consequences for piracy at the time. I would say that archive.org bears no responsibility for pirated material in the Wayback Machine, the same way that search engines aren't responsible for the sites that they index, but anything that they allow people to upload needs to be legal. Wikipedia came down hard on copyright violations on their user-contributed site, and archive.org must do the same or risk lawsuits and the possible loss of their charitable status.

[MrFlibble]

I would say that archive.org bears no responsibility for pirated material in the Wayback Machine, the same way that search engines aren't responsible for the sites that they index, but anything that they allow people to upload needs to be legal. Wikipedia came down hard on copyright violations on their user-contributed site, and archive.org must do the same or risk lawsuits and the possible loss of their charitable status.

Totally agree with that. As I've already said, it's beyond me why no content control is exerted for user uploads, or why it is so lax. Of course, there are lots of different compilations already from different countries, but they could have at least taken a look or something. Hopefully this situation is fixed soon.

Being a Russian myself, I grew up in the situation where software piracy was the de facto norm. In the nineties, many people could buy a rather cheap personal computer - entirely second hand, or built from second-hand parts, or from parts manufactured in East Asia, - but the majority could not afford licensed software, which was either too expensive or not available locally at all, so often piracy was the only way to obtain a programme or a game. There were also, initially, no localized versions of software, and pirate groups and companies often took on the role of translators too. The situation changed gradually, and now software piracy has probably gone underground - ten or even five years ago you could find pirate CDs sold in kiosks or just in the streets anywhere in Moscow. Internet piracy still remains largely uncontrolled, and there's nothing remotely comparable even to the standards that are practised by, for example, Abandonia. There are, of course, perfectly respectable independent gaming websites like Absolute Games that has a very good downloads database of shareware and demo versions as well as freeware games (the only problem here is that at some point they had a policy of repackaging demos with WinRAR to reduce download size, since most users back then had slow Internet connections; so many game distributives are not in their original form, unfortunately). But the overall reputation of Russia as a haven for software pirates (I remember that Bill Gates at some point promised to take action against piracy in Russia) still does a lot of harm, and the actions of people like the idiot who decided archive.org is a great place to store old pirated CDs for future generations to come don't help at all

There was also another facet to the situation, namely that the pirated CDs mostly came with ripped versions of games that the pirates would download off foreign warez BBSs or websites. A single CD could contain quite a lot of such ripped games, which made pirate compilations rather popular. However, the price for this was that games came in an incomplete, crippled form; and most of the self-made pirate translations came out decidedly horrible, although there were several pleasant exceptions to this. I think one or two companies eventually legalized and turned into official game translation teams.

[leilei]

The same person also uploaded Master Levels for Doom II which is still sold in the Steam store.

I'll admit to downloading ONE Classic Fond that happened to have a certain obscure rare trainwreckian freeware game I have not seen in over 14 years on the internet anywhere, so obscure that dos enthusiasts don't know what i'm talking about when I mention it. It only made its way to the disc because it had a lame scene release.


Software isn't the only thing that's being pirated on Classic fond, but also professional fantasy artist artworks. Who has the gall to put a woman clad in metal pasties on a disc?

[MrFlibble]

The same person also uploaded Master Levels for Doom II which is still sold in the Steam store.

Pfft, this is ridiculous. Has it been taken down yet (the Classic Fond CDs are still there)? BTW, Swizzle told me he'll pass on the info to the archive.org people he's got contact with, so I hope they will finally take measures.

Software isn't the only thing that's being pirated on Classic fond, but also professional fantasy artist artworks. Who has the gall to put a woman clad in metal pasties on a disc?

Well, since those pirate CDs were compiled by people with more or less stable Internet access that allowed them to download pirated games, they probably also got the artwork from the same sources. I guess no one even thought using a copyrighted image without permission could be wrong.

I think the attitude to copyright issues in the post-Soviet countries was also at least in part affected by the period of Soviet history when international copyright legislation was largely ignored, and I suspect there has never been any considerable mass awareness of copyright issues and legislation during the Soviet era and in the times of the Perestroika.

[leilei]

I think emailing Jason Scott might be a better idea in terms of immediate action on something he's more familiar with (scene stuff)

[MrFlibble]

Okay, I'll try it out (the CDs are still there).

[MrFlibble]

It's two weeks already since I wrote Jason Scott, but the "Classic Fond" CDs are still there

[leilei]

Know what's worse? Jason Scott uploaded Rune.

[MrFlibble]

This is consistent with what Hallfiry told me in private conversation about Jason Scott generally not giving a nickel about copyright issues.

I think I don't care anymore

[Rola]

I'm not sure about Secret Service magazine cover CDs either. The mag went belly up 10 years ago, does it mean it's legal to put its copyrighted stuff (see: legal notice on the disc itself) ? While demos and patches are legal to pass on, there were also full games, released as "covermounts", i.e. legal for those who bought it with the magazine, but otherwise not freeware.

[leilei]

Archive.org has the PCGamer 5.10 cd as well, the CD mostly loaded with full version dos games and the Daikatana demo


It's almost like there's some rogue, feign ignorance going on here in the "shareware" archive.

[MrFlibble]

Very possibly. Would be sad if the shareware archive transformed into a de-facto warez downloads place.

[leilei]

I did download all those Secret Service discs for their UTIL\SHAREWAR folders in a rare stuff hunt

[MrFlibble]

BTW, have you considered notifying the staff of the outright illegal CDs via the review option (I'm assuming you've got an account there, right)? I haven't had the time to register there yet, and have generally been busy with other stuff as of late.