It was a small joke as the rest of the US find Californians to be weird. I was expecting someone to point that out.

I'd have to find it again but Archive.org was using that as a source to say what they're doing is legal.

Please kindly remember that I work a 3 day 40 hour weekend. Things are a little busy for me and I;m posting in a hurry.

Did not know about this - but maybe that's because I am German :)

Archiving things because of this decision seems to be all right but distributing them would not. At least according to this article. The actual legal decision is probably much more detailed.

Of course, I did not want to offend you or critizise you in any way.
My statement was not directed at archive.org. I tried to adress the general question if there is such a thing as freely distributable abandonware. This question is ages old and there are still many out there who say that you can do what you like the moment the legal rights seem to be in limbo. However in most cases that is untrue.

Regarding that link to a court ruling that allows copyright laws to be ignored for the purposes of cracking games that are no longer distributed or updated by their publishers...
While it is true that the ruling does not make the distribution of abandonware allowable, (as the article itself points out,) there are very few, and extremely rare, cases where abandonware distribution is brought to court.
In those few rare cases, it is also still a civil offense under US copyright law; not a criminal one, and from what I can tell, the vast majority of those cases were settled with the "offender" simply stopping distribution of that specific IP, and that's it.
Nothing more than an "Okay, I'll stop."
This is probably because, while still held under copyright, those IPs were no longer being worked on by anybody, meaning no loss of sales due to the distribution can be proven.
(It's not being sold, so the IP holder isn't going to be making a profit from it anyways.)
Again, this doesn't mean that distribution of abandonware is strictly legal; but it does mean that it is not criminal.
(Under US copyright law. Other countries may still have criminal ramifications for this type of distribution without financial gain or loss.)

In terms of older games specifically; while one of the major draws of GOG is in fact the ability to download and play games I used to play, with compatibility patches that make it easy to do on newer systems.
(Even for myself, a veteran in getting old games to work on new systems, and new games to work on underpowered systems at a fair frame rate.)
That said, there are many titles that I would love to play again that I simply can not find.
(Actually, there are a few titles that aren't available anywhere I can find that I happen to still have on floppy disks, and old 20GB HDDs.)
Personally, my favourite place to find these old games for the last 8 years or so has been Abandonia, mainly because they will remove the ability to download games at the request of their IP holders, making it a little more legitimate in terms of copyright law.
Effectively, they take the least gray of the gray areas regarding US copyright this way; ensuring that old games that are no longer sold and supported are still available, while providing listings for games that are actually still be sold.
(Amazingly, there are actually a few games from the late 80s to early 90s designed for MS-DOS that are still being sold.)

Regarding newer games, there is a huge list of things that could technically classify things as abandonware, or not.
For example, the Red Faction series has been retired by the current IP holder, and no plans to make new games, or update old ones, has been made for the foreseeable future.
Does that make the franchise abandonware?
Only games in the franchise unavailable for sale anywhere?
It's weird, copyright law.

Personal opinion: I;ve always been real iffy about archive.org. One gentleman started it way back when. When they first started, they totally ignored robots.txt files. That doesn't sound that important but to those of us who actually started back on the web back in the early 90's, you didn't disrespect a webmaster's choices about being indexed or not.

Their bots were coming in from different IP addresses, they were labeled as other company's bots, etc.

There was a lot of gray area when it came to these folks.

Their new website has issues with accessibility and it seems like they just do not care. (Of course most folks who do websites now a days don't care about accessibility. Even GoG doesn't seem to care.)

*shrug* I use their index when I need to. Doesn't mean I like them.

I could keep ranting but rather busy today.

If we accept the premise that society should be beneficial for all who comprise it, then we have to ask which is of greater import: private ownership -- which is inherently accumulative -- or the free exchange of thoughts and ideas? No, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but if private ownership is placed above the free exchange of thoughts and ideas, the latter will diminish relative to the degree of imbalance, which in turn will give even greater weight to private ownership, thus the rate at which this imbalance increases becomes exponential. At this point, the benefits of society are proportional to the degree of ownership, and the rate at which this increases is also exponential.

The end result, of course, is economic disparity so extreme that it is incredibly difficult to comprehend -- which is precisely what one sees in this world if one bothers to look.

Usually the answer is "If you have to ask..."

Also, just be glad such sites exist. There are numerous reasons this is a good thing, many far overshadowing the obligatory "but it's a crime" reason (which it is albeit a victimless one). And if you want them to exist longer, don't talk about them in public. Don't do crimes. Kthxbye.

I think the public knows about the website:

https://blog.archive.org/2018/03/05/andrew-w-mellon-foundation-awards-grant-to-the-internet-archive-for-long-tail-journal-preservation/

https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/25/internet-archive-wins-webby-lifetime-achievement-award/

Having said that, many swtor gamers don't. We have two large index sites for the game that have shut down over the years. Both are indexed in archive.org. Suggesting to folks to use archive.org to pull them up is well something many folks don;t understand.

By neglecting to mention how this has impacted society, I think you are tacitly/passively approving.

Neutrality is a fiction that was invented for the purpose of excusing behavior that is ethically repugnant.

if I could just make things difficult for the internet archive so publishers can make more money developer-free then let me just fucking do that today.

I feel like the internet archive is totally stepping on gog's toes right now and we should do something about it. do you guys agree with me?

No, i don't see how, so i don't agree.

Congratulations, you're the worst person on the site, and I'm counting the spamming retard, the wannabe rapist, and all the nazis.

That's nonsense.
Because of the discussion about archive.org the question about abandonware/public domain was raised. Somebody said that people should not be allowed to stick so long to their rights so that society will be happy. I just said that people creating arts are doing this in most cases to gain money and they will try to gain money for as long as they can. Since it is THEIR product it's not different from any other product. That's just how free market is working. I did not know this was a discussion about how or if the government should invent into the free market so I did not mention anything abouut it.

thanks fam

What exactly is "free" about markets that are essentially owned and operated for the benefit of the wealthiest of the wealthy?

Turn your sarcasm detector on, maybe? o.O