This I don’t know. I remember reading somewhere on forum that when home of the underdogs was down – several users tried to contact Sarinee to find out what happened and volunteered to take over site and continue her work but she never responded. I really miss the site. I think it was on hotu when I first felt affection for retro-gaming - which finally brought me on gog. I wonder if Sarinee is among us now?
Source, please?

then those who can prosecute do condone it in a way else they would have taken action.

you are right but people are not aware that abandonia is hosting pirated games. they believe its alright while pirating is not. just look at this thread.
"its grey area"
"its not a crime"

and abandonia does not do anything to change that viewpoint therefore they are to blame for the abuse which happens.

If you want legit downloads of oldies http://www.classicdosgames.com/ is the best place. For shareware stuff they offer only the free episodes, but there are also a number of really free games they carry. Get Skyroads, load tittle screen, enjoy the soundtrack.

As for the death of Hotu, there are at least 2 revival projects online.

you are speaking about morality.

im speaking about legality. whether someone loses money is hurt is not relevant. copyright infringement is still infringement and a crime even tough nobody cares

So fucking not true.
Think about this. I have a book that I wrote. It's mine. I DON'T WANT TO SELL IT TO ANYBODY.
And you, or guys like you would say "hey! it's abandonware! let's upload this on rapidshare!"
Which is totally bullshit.

The owner is the only person in the world, who decides to sell or not to sell. Even when you don't know who the owner is. If he doesn't want to sell and you download his program without permission - you are pirating this game. Period.

Your comparison falls apart because these games were already commercially released.

It was abandonia that led me to GOG. I don't usually download abandonware but I was looking for an old favourite Countdown and I coundn't find it anywhere else. In the game they plug Mean Strees (Countdown is also made by Access Software) I looked up Mean Strees on Abandonia and they led me here. I don't really agree with abandonware but it's hard to see what harm they are doing as long as they take games down if they are sold anywhere else.

Yeah, we have lots and lots of laws on the books that make no sense whatsoever, so "that's against the law" just doesn't resonate with many people. Most folks take a much more nuanced view that considers not just the law, but also the reasons behind the laws, what harm (if any) is being done, their own sense of what is ethical, etc.

So what? The owner has no right to change his mind?
By uploading "abandoned" software, you are deciding over things, that should be only in the owner's hand.

I have a question. Why do folks get so upset about this topic?

I think we can all agree that technically some laws are broken by at least one party when someone like you or me downloads one of these games. But in the cases where the ownership of the game is in question and no legit source is offering the game for sell, where is the harm?

Speeding is technically illegal and much more dangerous to society, but I am willing to bet the majority of us have gone over the limit from time to time, there is no moral outrage about that, why does this strike a nerve?

The only arguement I have seen that makes any sense is the situation where someone downloads a game from a pirated site only to have a place like GOG purchase the rights a week later. You could make the claim that GOG was robbed on their $5.99 but that makes a lot of assumptions about what would most likely be a very small set of people.

So I ask, what is the greater of two evils? The possible monetary loss to a place like GOG, or great games being lost forever due to neglect (over dramatic I know).

There is, although, one bright side of abandonware. It keeps old software from disappearing.

But Abandonia.com don't give a shit about this, because most popular games on the site are Wing Commander 2, Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat 3, Sonic CD , Need for speed and many others,

that ARE CERTAINLY NOT abandonware at any circumstances.

Once you make a creative work public it is part of society, part of culture. You should make money off it as long as you can or choose to, but if it is not possible to pay the creator of the work that should not mean you can never experience it again. That does not mean it should be removed from culture.

That's a different argument, really. If your real point is that some of these abandonware games list titles that are not truly abandoned and that is bad I would agree with you completely. Anything still for first-sale anywhere is not abandonware.

Me lol'd to that socialist argument. You just try to claim things you DO NOT own, and this is the only fact here. And by law, in vast majority of the countries, somebody's work is "part of the culture" 70 years after creator's death. No] software is old enough.

Ps. Abandonia hosts many games avaible on GOG.com and my vote goes for "sue them". EDIT: oh, i can see now, that for games avaible on gog.com, download link redirects to gog.com. That changes the situation a bit.

Also, by supporting this site, you're letting THEM to make money (from ads and donations) on games they don't own.