A bit of a philosophical and linguistic aside for a moment:
Values are subjective. Morals are meant to be objective. However, there is great disagreement between people on what the details of morality actually are. We don’t have to actually know and agree on something for there to be a right answer though, nor do we personally need to be right for a right answer to exist (we can simply as individuals, societies, even as a species be entirely wrong on any given point). Some do think that there is no objective morality, and thus essentially believe there is no morality, only values and ethics (ethics is mostly a system so can differ regardless of the underlying principals it is operating on). However, a particular moral instance may be subjective in that at least some of the conditions that lead to whether a particular action is moral, immoral, or amoral are unique to the individual case and actor. (That said, I know there may be disagreement between philosophical traditions/languages on this point as well, but I’d say in English this distinction makes the most sense and is the most useful, and aligns generally well with most relevant and developed philosophical traditions).
On abandonware though:
There seems to be a lot of disagreement over the years about what really defines “abandonware”, with differing ideas offered by people wanting to include different scopes. You’re idea seems fairly reasonable though and one probably easier for people to agree on at least that much of it.
A stricter one would be software that has in some way been officially abandoned, but there’s only a handful of games where this has happened (where the original creator has vacated their claim to it or said “it’s abandoned, do what you want”, etc). Likewise, if really no one holds the rights anymore (the company didn’t sell them when they went under, for instance), I would think that’s a decent marker, though that can be hard to figure out (sometimes individual developers turn out to hold claim to the rights for some years, and sometimes they’ve been known to later do something with those rights).
didn’t expect this to blow up. I figured I’d get a couple of “they have it at this grey-market site” or “I heard they’d be releasing it as part of some pack”.
What I didn’t expect were people to google the subject and tell me the first result as if they’ve stumbled on the scroll of truth, as well as all these stupid debates on copyright law and morals
not really. Their ability to control how their property is used is dependent on modern technology. Whether you pirate or not has no impact on their ability to stop people from pirating. You can not pirate, stick your head in the sand, and pretend they have control over it, but they don’t.
That is so bs. Like Walt Disney wouldn’t of made Mickey Mouse if it wasn’t going to be protected by copyright law for, what is it now? 95 years? Copyright now is a tool by billion dollar corporations to maximize profits. You need to have it protected for 95 years, way past the time that you’re alive, or else there is just no incentive to make something unique, right? If copyright law was to allow artist’s work to be profitable it wouldn’t last longer than like 25 years. What corporation funds a movie or song or videogame and not expect it to be profitable until 25 years later? no one.
So like 50 years ago, a musician makes a good song, well, they need to go to a record label to monetize it. The record labels could charge whatever they want because the artist needs them to distrubte. Digital distribution through things like steam, bittorrent, itunes, and youtube is the modern equivalent to a record label. And record labels are mad because they don’t own that, and are now doing pretty much the equivalent of a musician only doing live concerts, and being mad when people go to them and make records and give copies of the records for free.