What I think is that it makes me miss the old home of the underdogs. :(

I feel the same about it since the last time it was asked on GOG, and the time before that.

To add on, they also respect the presence of GOG. Games that have been added to GOG will be redirected to GOG via their website.

Abandonia is great. Personally, I like it a lot. Are there anymore sites like that? I used to frequent Abandonware-France too, and the original HOTU before Sarinee pulled the plug.

Intentionally infringing a copyright for various purposes, including profit, most definitely is a crime in the US. Now, getting the Feds involved for anything less than a million is unlikely. But your claim that copyright infringement is not a crime is false, and you should retract it.

http://www.bsa.org/country/News%20and%20Events/News%20Archives/en/2008/en-03072008-robberson.aspx

I don't know how factual that statement is.

Personally if a game is not legitimately sold anywhere I see absolutely no problem with downloading it.

If it is not sold on GOG then I download from Abandonia. Got a folder for all my "abandonware".

Neither do I, but I've seen some very outspoken posts holding a contrary view.

i have got loads of old games/abandonware through torrent sites.
99% of which i probably wont even ever play (kinda hard too with that many)
it's also preservation. there are people who try to search every old game out there that exists so it stays preserved and wont go forgotten never to been seen again.

alot of games cant already be downloaded anymore on any site, nor are they even being sold anymore. so what is anyone's gain there?
also what if i want to play a specific game again and it isnt available for sale,even on ebay?
do i have to wait years till i see a copy or if i can't i may never play it again?
also from sites like ebay the game companies wont ever get money from again anyway.
so yes i rather download them knowing there will always be a copy then not doing that because it's "wrong".

I used to think that abandonware sites, while illegal in practise, used to be an important way of preserving old PC gaming culture, because game companies didn't mostly seem to be interested in preserving them (with some exceptions, like I do remember seeing compilations of e.g. all Wizardry games, Ultima Collection, old Sierra games, Wing Commander games etc. in retail shops; many of which I even bought).

But, ever since sites like GoG and others have started the preservation work legally, I don't support the "abandonware" sites anymore. Now I consider them mostly just as pirate sites for older games. Well, maybe they still have some obscure titles that would never end up even in GoG due to whatever reasons, so maybe to preserve them...

Did you miss the "if" or are you being dishonest? Non-commercial infringement is not necessarily a crime.

The part of the law you didn't quote also says that it's a crime to distribute for more than $1K in "retail value" or to distribute something before it was commercially released. Proving that true abandonware has retail value wouldn't be easy. Any unjust conviction based on such a technicality could probably be reversed on constitutional grounds anyway.

thats my point not just a few obscure titles there will be alot of classic games that will never be on gog or anywhere else. 4d boxing, alleycat, castle , captain comic, stunts, thexder,zany golf, just to name a few random ones.
even those are too old for gog or would have too many legal issues.
though i think if they made packs like this with atleast 10 or 20 of those type of old games that it might be sellable.

There are titles which would never end up on GoG.
Anything on GoG is obviously not abandonware and distributing GoG games widely would therefore arguably be a crime in many jurisdictions.

Exactly. It infuriates me when somebody starts saying, on these forums, no less, that a game being sold here on GOG is Abandonware.

Yes, but then we can't know for sure which old games will become e.g. GoG-titles in the future, or the copyright holder will sell them in yet another retail compilation.

So let's say people get Jazz the Jackrabbit 1-2 from some abandonware site now, and next week GoG announces that it is selling Jazz games as well. Are the people who pirated Jazz for free a week earlier going to buy it from GoG too?

Abandonware is a very grey area, I know it is not an easy question. It is hard to say which games can really be considered "abandonware", and which will be re-released later by some official outlet.

Re-released later is not the same as currently available. If a company does not bother to sell the game anymore then they have abandoned it, hence the term itself, abandonware.