Remembers that morals/ethics, law and retail are all often in disagreement
ie: Nintendo will tell you emulation is illegal, when it is very obviously fully legal and been going on since the 1970s; furthermore, some will tell you its wrong to rip rOMS, but its certainly ethical to carry your own legally owned ROMS around in your pocket on a mobile device. Legally.. well.. depends.
So any discussion has to be careful to split things up between the three .. ethics, legals, and retails .. two are polsitions of interest/opinion, while one is nailed down (though sometimes gray.)
Legals - depends on the medium and topic, age, your country and legislation, etc; ie: You'd never know but in Canada its legal to copy mp3s around, since they're charging us on blank CD media (and hard drives etc); total bullshit, but strange laws do come out. Likewise, in the US, the DMCA is a total crock of crap, but it does at least have an interesting provision to allow you to copy software around that is nolkonger supported (go check the wording carefully as I'm just glossing.) So things certainly vary by area. Furthermore, music and ROMs are very different of course, and game and application software different yet again. In some countries, decryption isn't legal, while others it is. The law is fairly clear, and doesn't vary much by age -- an application that is 3 years old or 20 years old is still likely owned by _someone_ and only that entity has the right to decide what to do with it. (Fair use and such doesn't apply to software as it does to music or artwork, usually.) So abandonware is really bullkaka for most applications (though the reality is that software thats been 100% dead for 20 years is probably not being looked after, the law is still clear about about it regardless of what you choose to do.)
Retail (and individuals!) - will take whatever profitd them more.
Ethics - Varies by person of course; my own stance is that distributing IP that is still viable (on the shelf or not, viability is whethor it _could_ be on the shelf) is plain out. ie: Distributing Infocom game story files isn't kocher, since once in awhile they do pop up.. a few years ago the Activision boys were shipping collection of them, such as the Comedy set, or Masterpieces, etc. SCUMMVM games are pretty dead, but you neve rknow if Lucas will put them out. On the other hand, no one has ever remade an Atari ST game, so I think most of them are beyond abandonware to the point of 'never heard of', so those are open game. Certainly, anythign you _bought_ you are entitled to.. if they dont' support it, thats their tough nuggets.. 20 years later, its still your purchased material as they didn't declare any lifespan on your license (and back in the day you actually bought things, not licensed like nowadays.)
If something was on sale a year ago, its not kocher to distribute it for free; its still viable, and its not your decision but theirs legally.
jeff
