Ok, that's it. If I hear anyone saying 'abandonware' again...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIaORknS1Dk

You left out the part about not being sold or distributed by the owner anymore. The entire point and debate revolved around that, so you probably shouldn't skip over it without a word. When something becomes a part of culture like, say, Grim Fandango, and the rights holder shows no interest in making it available anymore in any form then I think people should still have access to it.

You're right... But what if this piece of art isn't available to any piece of the culture it had influenced, because there are ten different people holding different parts of the rights (music, game-engine, artworks, etc) and they are all doing different things now? What if not a single one of those greedy guys is interested in this old, useless and unprofitable game, because they want to use their valuable time for profitable projects and not to talk with their old coworkers about something that won't bring them the big money they are looking for?

I don't think it is immoral to COPY (not steal!) something that is easily distributable but not buyable due to the too little profit margin.

Wikipedia says:
"Copyright holders frequently refer to copyright infringement as "theft." In copyright law, infringement does not refer to actual theft, but an instance where a person exercises one of the exclusive rights of the copyright holder without authorization.[6] Courts have distinguished between copyright infringement and theft, holding, for instance, in the United States Supreme Court case Dowling v. United States (1985) that bootleg phonorecords did not constitute stolen property and that "interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright... 'an infringer of the copyright.'" In the case of copyright infringement the province guaranteed to the copyright holder by copyright law is invaded, i.e. exclusive rights, but no control, physical or otherwise, is taken over the copyright, nor is the copyright holder wholly deprived of using the copyrighted work or exercising the exclusive rights held.[1]"

And I say you're just another troll. Please go find a corner and die in it. Thanks.

Not being sold or distributed makes no difference to my argument (if anything it adds against it, as it wouldn't be distributed at all without expectations of sale). The owner of the property owns the property, if he chooses to stop selling something which formerly had a viable market, that's his choice. It doesn't mean the "culture" suddenly has free reign over it.

And I disagree with you, simple as that. I believe culture, society and access to previously mainstream and massively available art is more important than 20 year old copyrights.

But this goes back to my original analogy. My brother's art is easily distributable and copy-able. But if he chooses to stop distributing it, he would feel unjustly betrayed had someone decided it wasn't his choice to make. As his brother, I respect his feeling of betrayal and thus it is immoral for me to distribute it.
And I believe, as a part of that culture the creator deserves our respect for his ownership of his creation (including the culture he has contributed to) and I believe it is better for our culture that we not feel entitled, as a culture, to any piece of art. I'm open to change in copyright laws, but I'm not going to pretend my arbitrary choice of copyright length is any better than the current one (the one which the creators agreed to make their works under).

That's a bad analogy. Publishers and developers don't decide to stop distributing anything. They don't tell Steam to take Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare down. Why should they? Every single sale is money and they exist for making money. But with old, pre-digital games... Most of them aren't available in online stores 'since ever'. They were boxed games, designed for DOS or Windows 95 (or even worse C64 or Atari).

They just think it's not worth the effort to distribute their old games. Calling all the rightholders to find an agreement and fixing bugs and issues on modern systems just to be able to negotiate with digital distributers is a waste of time. They don't depend on those few thousand Dollars. It's better to invest their time in new projects. They'll bring far more profit. Why should Ubisoft invest time to get Anvil of Dawn running on Windows 7 and to clear all legal questions? The next Assassin's Creed is far more profitable.

They don't say 'no' to selling games. They just say 'no' to the effort it would take to sell those games again, because it won't make enough profit. They don't want their games for themselves.

If you ask me: A copyright could last forever. A person's lifetime, hell, even a company's lifetime... As long as the rightholder is doing 'something' with it. But if the rightholder stops caring for his work the copyright should expire after some time. No, stop, that's wrong... They can keep their copyrights, I don't care... But at least the copyrighted material should be free for non-commercial use. It shouldn't be locked away forever just because the owner doesn't remember it. That's something entirely different.

And I agree with you.

I wrote my post for those who think abandonwarez is as bad as warez.

If you ask me, the point where they decided the work would be owned among several bodies and that they would depend on it as a business, that's when they decided they would stop distributing at some point.

But really, I'm not in total disagreement with any of you guys over the concept of abandonware. I think it's something we as citizen's should propose to lawmaker's that there be some form of copyright maintenance, or possibly, that there be a predisposed clause that releases the copyright in the event of of company collapse to prevent post-market-viability legal costs which doom the re-opening of these projects.

All in all though, we should be doing our best to respect the artist's intentions, within reasonable limits, as may be applied by (possibly over-restrictive) law.

Just thought I would throw this thought provoking link in here - I think I remember getting it from one of the previous discussions we have had on copyright

Haven't we already established that eternal copyright is nothing less than a cultural holocaust?
http://spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html

This isn't about what IS the law, it's about what SHOULD BE the law.

Slavery, racism, and torture were all perfectly legal as well.

If a company wants to stop archival sites like Abandonia, there will be a need for continuous copyright maintenance. Society loses if copyright squatting is allowed.

You should just read the story. Now imagine they would still be copyrighted! And go on! Imagine that would still be copyrighted! Nobody would be allowed to copy the Bible! Nobody would be allowed to recite Shakespeare! Nobody would be allowed to sing traditional songs! Because they still would be copyrighted! By people that lived hundreds or thousands of years ago!

Imagine the implications for future generations! Imagine in a hundred years, nobody would be allowed to hear today's musics, read today's books or play today's games because they STILL WOULD BE COPYRIGHTED! In a thousand years, they still would be copyrighted! There is no infinite number of ideas, or of rearrangements of notes. At some point it will get exhausted. And nothing new could be made because everything was copyrighted thousands of years ago!

Tell me how this would NOT be a cultural holocaust.