It's well and good to point out that it's not illegal, it's good to have it clarified with me.

But what I can't stand is people reinforce it it with the sniveling underlying moral tones that a small but prominent few of the replies in this thread have. Illegal != Should be Illegal, not be a long shot. So many people think according to the law, and society's values, without realising it, never reasoning for themselves.

I think Abandonware should be freeware.

Some people are, quite frankly, right wing idiots who have a vendetta against anyone getting anyone for free(probably because it means they can't use annoying little phrases like "There's no such thing as a free lunch" to construct their weak arguments). I'm someone who believes in sharing, I love the philosophy being Linux and it's community even if I'm not a very big part of it due to gaming.

Obviously, a company needs to profit from recent games, it can't just give people games for free or it couldn't and wouldn't exist. But if they're not making money anymore, then why not share it? The rate at which games change and expand, old games become outdated rather quickly. Some stand the test of time better than others, for example Shenmue on the Dreamcast still measures up to a lot of games today. But most don't.

We shouldn't look for cold hard reasons to have things for free, that's silly. If there is no reason for something NOT to be free, it should be. You should only need very good reasons to hurt and limit freedoms, not reasons to provide things that make people happy if it comes as simply as allow them to be copied.

I hate people who get a kick out of saying "It's STILL Illegal", because unless you're just laying down rules for the forum so there's no legal trouble, we really don't need to hear it.