I have just found this collection of DOS games playable in browser:

https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games

It seems that th website has full versions of games which are also offered on gog. I wonder whether that is legal....

It's not legal and I suggest you remove the link.

It is legal. A few critical court cases have been heard to ensure its legality, but it's all legal. Because archive.org is a library/museum, so long as they follow certain rules, it's covered under US copyright laws.

I haven't found any games there that played well enough that I wanted to use them there. But I have visited old memories and perhaps shown my kids a few.

So in this case it is covered for archival and conservation purposes, however if you live outside the U.S you would need to check to see if your country has similar laws.


Update: There are some adult games on the site though so this thread could get flagged for that.

It is indeed the case that (at least some) games there run slowly.

I just played Oregon Trail and it worked well. I haven't used Archive in a while, but that was a great time. First time I ever beat the game, too! :)

Let's assume it's not legal. Raise of hands how many millions of people with PS4/PS5's XBones and large gaming rigs wants to play the Original Mechwarrior at 5Mhz and big bulky graphics and PC speaker sound, or the original Sim City at 640x480 monochrome as it was intended to be played.

Seriously, it's not anything to worry about, no one is buying them or hardly playing them other than nostalgia, and it affects no one's bottom line.

Copyright law needs a major revision, you can't own everything forever. You only make money on it the first few years, after that anything else is at best icing on the cake. Large corporations wanting to own everything forever seem to be imploding, unable to be creative because they're so busy trying to send out re-releases of only those games and nothing new creative-wise, and nothing new that they don't shove micro-transactions always-online DRM, and loot boxes.

I agree about the copyright law needing revision, technically Mickey Mouse should be in the Public Domain now but Disney have been doing a lot of pushing in federal government to extend copyright length and are still at it as the copyright is coming up again in a few years.

Nintendo is another company that heavily go after others for copyright violations.

Yeah you used to be able to download said dos games too but they removed that feature

so many doom and duke nukem mod disks rendered useless because of that.

Unless you know where to look...

Oh well, we've put our 2 cents out. If someone really thinks archive.org is piracy, whatever it won't affect anything.

Yes!

If Carmen Sandiego and Oregon Trail are released on GOG, those will be insta buys for me. Especially if it's a remake.

All depends on who complains.

How can it be when some of these games are still actively being sold? Just from the top of the page I can already see The Settlers 2, Prehistorik 2, Aladdin, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom 2, Warlords, Leisure Suit Larry 5, Master of Orion, Jazz Jackrabbit, Tomb Raider, The Secret of Monkey Island... and that's just for some GOG titles. Quite a few of these were re-released through digital distribution long before archive.org opened up that section of their site.

Anyone who's trying to defend that is talking complete bullshit.