actually no surprise at all - indeed, it was only a matter of time. we all know that, this was to happen that way...

you can still get the emulators you know...

That guy's ones were removed due to beaking licenses of other projects and stealing their code, not the legality of emulators in the first place.

That doesn't mean that the copyright holders might sell their game at some point in the future. You can't assume you know their intentions. Thus by distributing their content available without their permission, you are taking away their right to make money on that property. It's their property, if they decide not to put it on the market for whatever reason, then that is their right. It is not your right to take that away from them.

1) It depends on your local law, so I really can't comment on how it is in where you happen to live. But in here a digital copy is someone's property, if you take the ownership of said copy without compensation - you are stealing.

2) Public domain is public domain. If a game is public domain, then you can copy it legally.

If you borrow a book from a friend, your friend or the person who he has acquired the said book from has compensated for acquiring the ownership of the product. If you take the book from the legal owner without his or her agreement, you steal it. If the legal owner (your friend) agrees to loan/gift/sell the book to you, you are not stealing it.

Same thing goes for the used dvd, original author has already forfeitet the ownership of the said product to the person who has acquired it. You will pay for the ownership, so it is not stealing. Again.

3) If you use the program within of what is said on the license, you are using it legally. That is, once again - not stealing.

Your examples are piss poor and so is your reasoning for accepting piracy.

The problem here is that copyright owners own the content for life plus 75 years. If there is a NES/SNES/Genesis/etc. game out there that isn't available for sale in digital form and the IP owner just selfishly decides, "oh you can't download it because I might re-release/remake the content in the future but I'm going to selfishly cocktease you and not give you the content you want through legal channels anytime soon (and mostly likely never give you the content)" I say fuck off to the content owner. That's some bullshit. And considering a lot of those abandonware titles have been out of print for over 20 years, that's quite the case of blueballs. How much fucking effort does it take to sell a digital copy of your work in this day and age? If you're too lazy to put your shit on the market through legal channels so that you can profit off your own shit (whether it be putting up your stuff on Virtual Console or as ghetto as selling a ROM on your website) , then you have no right to bitch if people download your shit for free. Downloading roms instead of buying used copies (the IP owner sees nothing from that) is a victimless crime. Copyright law really needs to be revamped. It's a joke. It's going to take a shitload of time before the first videogame hits the life plus 75 years mark. Just because something is the law doesn't make it the morally righteous way. Not that long ago, interracial sex was illegal. The law doesn't mean shit. If the fucking game industry had their way, buying used games would be a crime too (and I don't see anything wrong with used games because the content owners already made their money off that copy. If they don't like it, they can go fuck off to Steam/Games on Demand/PSN and stop whining about GameStop).

Meanwhile I'm going to continue downloading Roms and old PC games and not get caught so I really don't give a shit what the industry does either way with abandonware (since I don't use torrents. People who use torrents these days are asking to get sued). All I'm saying is: if you don't want people downloading your abandonware for free, then stop bitching and sell that shit. Because I'm going to download that shit regardless and get away with it.

Time for Homebrew :)

I never talked about distributing, because that's a wholly different problem. I'm talking about choosing to consume digital content that is available (as in you can download it from somewhere) but has no commercialization.

As an individual it's up to me choosing to buy a book I've borrowed and read from a friend, buying a costly technical manual I've found great but only used as a photostatic copy before, or buying a game I've already had in emulation as soon as it's officially available by the authors, in a new format.

These are all perfectly good choices that respect the only ethic and economic imperative that makes sense for intellectual work, that is support the makers of what you enjoy. Copyright was born for that, every use that deviates from it is a perversion of its real goal.

I think the problem is that you didn't get the real point of my examples, that is the difference in economy and ethics between physical items and information.

A physical book is a material object, that obviously can be owned by e.g. a private individual. That does not entitle that owner of the paper and ink with rights over the "intellectual content", that is the words on the page. Which rights are restricted by copyright regulations.

When I borrow the book from a friend and read it I'm acquiring that intellectual content, even though I'm not acquiring the ownership on paper and ink and returning the actual book. If that intellectual acquisition does not end up in me buying that same book, the net result is two events of information consumption, one book sold. If my friend lends his book to twenty people, he might be causing the authors to lose up to twenty sales.

Same happens when a DVD, book, or game is resold and bought used. You are technically right in saying that it's legal. And still, it's a way for users to gain consumption of content in which only the first owner has compensated the authors.

Again, the point is: information is not like physical objects. Talking about "stealing" is intellectually naive and legally incorrect. Authors have a right to be compensated for their intellectual work, the community at large benefits from it and legislation and economy has to find new ways to make that happen that follow the technical and social changes.

Draconian copyright legislation that allows so many ways to consume content without helping the authors, but forbids consumption of some digital content that has no commercial availability don't help in this sense. As such I have no ethical problem acting against it - as in practice it's like borrowing it from a friend who got her hands on an old instance - and logically legislation itself will have to adapt.