Is it illegal to torrent discontinued games

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There is a game that i have been looking around to buy, or electronically download, i could not find it anywhere and then found out it is discontinued. Would it be illegal to torrent it? The company wouldnt lose money from it since its no longer sold.
 
Solution
Some software is considered abandonware and is presumably legal to download. But in general the amount of time it takes for a copyright to "ware off" so to speak is a lot longer than any software would be relevant for. Personally though I don't feel too bad about downloading a copy of a piece of software that can't be bought or at least can not be bought via retail. Just don't do anything stupid with it and you should be ok as far as legal prosecution goes.

sgtmattbaker

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Aug 21, 2009
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Yes it is. It is quite silly to not sell a game but to also not let anyone play it though. If a game isn't available through retail and has been that way for 5 years it should be free. The owner could still say that other people couldn't take it and make money off of it but maybe that would get them to quit nickel and dime-ing us with downloadable versions of 10 year old games. Didn't iD open source Doom (1) and Quake (1)?
 

purplerat

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Jul 18, 2006
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Some software is considered abandonware and is presumably legal to download. But in general the amount of time it takes for a copyright to "ware off" so to speak is a lot longer than any software would be relevant for. Personally though I don't feel too bad about downloading a copy of a piece of software that can't be bought or at least can not be bought via retail. Just don't do anything stupid with it and you should be ok as far as legal prosecution goes.
 
Solution