[adverse possession]
use it or lose it

Adverse possession is the legal and intellectual basis for "squatting"--occupying abandoned property in a "notorious" (that is to say, open and obvious) manner for a period of time, after which the property in question passes from the original owner to the squatter. This concept dates back to the Code of Hammurabi in ancient Sumer, which specified that if a citizen failed to cultivate his land for three years, another citizen could take possession of the land by putting it to good use. Adverse possession favors community benefit over individual control, a basic tenet that advances the good of a particular society rather than the exclusive legal rights of an individual, and like other good ideas it has passed from one society to the next--from the Romans to the British to finally become part of common law in the US. The basic philosophy is that "land use has historically been favored over disuse, and therefore he who uses land is preferred in the law to he who does not, even though the latter is the rightful owner".

There is no such legal precedent for adverse possession as regards intellectual property, but on the untamed frontier of the Internet people are doing it anyhow. You've probably heard of freeware and shareware. Now there is "abandonware"--commercial software that is no longer supported or sold by the original manufacturer (or anybody else for that matter). Enterprising net.citizens have met this challenge with the pragmatism that characterizes their breed: they have duplicated the proprietary data in question and made it available, for free, to all comers.

What kind of data are we talking about here? Well, mostly old computer games that aging geeks recall with fondness (ya know, Wizardry, Karateka, Temple of Apshai, stuff like that) but abandonware can also encompass the ROM images used by emulators, useful utilities (like DiskDoubler) bought up by big corporations (like Symantec) and forced into early retirement--really any intellectual property that has been deliberately hung out to dry.

One site that actually has no abandonware but which will point you in the right direction is www.oldskool.org, a truly great web kingdom of observations, information and raw data that champions the spirited networking of preadolescent computer nerds. Says Trixter, the lord of this domain: "I am of the personal opinion that any game made before 1990 and/or officially off the market (not for sale anymore) should be available to the public so that they can appreciate all the hard work that went into making a great game on such limited hardware. But that still doesn't change the fact that doing so is illegal. So, as a result, you will not find any copyrighted software on this website." So Trixter provides the links, the historical framework, and the street knowledge to assist the abandonware community.

A site that is less circumspect is the Official Abandonware Ring which seems to move around a lot, so if the link is outdated, plug "abandonware" into your search engine of choice and see where it gets you. This roster of archaelogical software digs will yield many curious artifacts for your unauthorized pleasure.

One example of abandonware that is being revived by devoted followers in breach of copyright is Captain Blood (subject of a "shrine" page at oldskool and several other web pages), a combination arcade/adventure game that, according to its proponents, "one of the greatest games ever made", featuring an involved sci-fi plotline and fairly advanced Eliza-like AI simulation where you use the UPCOM (Universal Protocol of COMmunication) methodology to communicate with the various aliens in the game. Sounds cool.