The "ownership" that copyright provides only has meaning because it is granted by the law, and more generally by society itself. When much of society no longer sees any reason to buy into the idea of copyright in certain situations (such as abandonware) then the "ownership" that was granted by society to begin with quickly starts to lose any kind of meaning. If you want people to start buying back into the idea of "ownership" that copyright confers then you need to start giving them a reason to do so. Otherwise you can just continue to rage impotently while the rest of society simply does as they please.

So you would feel ok If I copied tour vaccine and get all the profit? ( I remember you work for pharma companies)

PS. In Poland much over 60% people are pirating software. By your means it mean piracy should be legal here. Because society thinks it's ok. Billions of flies can't be wrong.

I support (sometimes financially) and praise Abandonia for it's contribution to us gamers. That's all.

Copyright itself was built on the idea that a creation or cultural work would belong to the public at a certain point. If that is socialist then the whole idea of copyright is socialist.

If society gets to the point where a sizable portion sees no reason to buy into the idea of patents then so be it. It would just mean that the patent system either needs to be overhauled so that people once again see a reason to buy into it, or that the whole idea of the system is outlived its usefulness and people in my industry need to find a new way to monetize the work we do.

Pointlessly screaming that people aren't thinking and behaving the way I think they should would just be an exercise in futility.

It doesn't necessarily mean that copyright should be completely eliminated, but it does mean that a large portion of the population isn't buying into copyright as it stands, and thus that copyright should be changed to be something that most people are willing to buy into. You can either direct your efforts towards such a goal, or continue to rage impotently. Unfortunately I think I have a good idea of what you'll choose to do.

at some point. not 20 years.

I hope when you get on deserted island with two more people, and they both decide to EAT YOU you will say "that's ok, because the majority wants this" ;) Believe me, majority of the people wants music for free, and notihng else matters, like some fame musician sang.

Sure, but no longer selling the games tells me they are no longer interested in profiting from them. Or on a more sinister level, that they no longer can distribute them due to licensing issues.

Also you are focused on legality and I am not.

Thanks for clarification, i guess i am a bit of a paranoid parrot when it comes to downloading things from websites and such. I have Noscript and Adblock Plus so i guess i am pretty safe when it comes to cruising the internet?

Just to put some perspective on this: I am an unabashed music pirate. Why? The music I listen to is often not sold in a format I can consume, or is simply not fucking sold. Also, I often find that there are bands I think I like then I realize they're shit.

But exceptions exist. And they are big ones.

I own the Angelspit discography, and if Tree Dusk Muir would allow me to buy physical copies of their music I would buy 30 copies of both albums just to support them and help spread the word. Cyanotic has gotten at least 50 dollars from me in exchange for random band merch alone. Considering I barely eat some months, that's huge.

Furthermore, the majority of musicians make most of their money via licensing and live shows. That 50 dollars Cyanotic got from me? They get at least an order of magnitude more than that from a cheap show at a tiny venue attended by 30 people, half of whom don't even know who they are.

Music piracy is in a situation similar to what DarrkPhoenix has said, and what a lot of people don't realize is that -- assuming the embrace of the obvious change is inevitable -- it's actually an improvement. The music itself could very well be completely free and many bands would still be able to monetize it perfectly: supporters could buy band merch and physical copies of the music. Live shows will never go away, and even trance artists can have those. Meanwhile, due to the actual music being freely available, the artists have MUCH bigger market penetration, even tiny bands. That means they have far more fans, increasing the likelihood of getting people who will pay them for the chance to be a source of word-of-mouth marketing.

14 years, actually. But since copyright was initially instituted that length as been extended to ridiculous lengths, with the public receiving absolutely nothing back in exchange.

You are the one who said: So I was just comparing piracy sites to Abandonia.

Now, for torrents, I'm sorry but that IS how they work. No single part that is downloaded from any single user when using torrents is large enough to fall under the heading of copyright infringement which makes the only copyright violation the end user. At which point even if they continue to seed it, they're only violating the copyright in so far as having an unlicensed copy of (blah), not the distribution thereof.

That's how torrent services continue to operate.

My comparison to Ford doesn't fail, because I'm not comparing Abandonia to Ford, you keep reading things in to what I'm saying and changing your story. SO let me explain this very clearly.

You:
"I don't like Abandonia because the people will abuse it."
Me
"Then your problem is the people."
You
"I don't like Abandonia because they don't advertise that using their product how most people will is illegal."
Me
"So.. you don't like a car company because they don't advertise that driving fast is illegal and unsafe?"
You
"I don't like Abandonia because what they do is illegal."
Me
"OK, that's fine."

If you'd just said up front that your problem with them was that what they do is illegal, instead of beating around the bush, this would never have come up. We may disagree on that point (what they do is illegal, but I don't think it's wrong, especially not how they do it. Yet right and wrong are subjective, while legal and illegal are objective), but I'll accept your opinion that illegal = wrong.

I really don't get what your point here is. I would not have a problem with the site if they admitted they are pirate site. not make up terms. if they do not i have problem with that. what are you talking about?? everyone who shares is copyright violator. so is everyone who downloads it. You cannot claim under fair use that you share only parts so it fails under fair use. That's not the spirit of the law and you reproduce whole copyrighted work by sharing the torrent even tough random users might download small parts of that work from you. that's why they are fighting to close them. Piratebay defense was that they are search engine not your crazy idea about small chunks and fair use. that's why many torrent sites were closed down, that's why they try to find people who share stuff as well as download. It ain't easy of course or worth the effort but that's not relevant. Ford is a COMPANY! they follow law. they do what they are allowed to do. you cannot compare a company to a site hosting illegal things.
but lets go with your train of thought.
Ford is prohibited to promote speeding in ads. it cannot show in any way that car is fast.
Ford also puts money in ensuring safety of drivers.
Ford also provides their expertise if they can when new safety laws are being worked on.
Ford DOES fight speeding, mate.

yet abandonware sites create faux terms to describe something which is illegal. Probably so we can pretend thats its not really piracy, its not illegal. Completely different situation.

back to the argument about abuse.

I might not have been clear enough so lets rephrase it.

People are dicks and they will abuse anything they get their hands on.
Abandonia, a site which claims to respect publishers, copyright and does what it does for noble reasons such as preservation of old games.
yet they are making up some stories about what is abandonware. that its somehow not a crime to download a 20 year old game.
they contribute to the abuse. For being so noble they are creating a situation where a gamer who got a game from abandonia will not buy it because "it was abandon, why should i pay for it now?"
heard that before, heard that as an argument against gog, this thread shows how people don't get that copyright infringement of old games is no different legally to a modern game.