What Is Abandonware & Is It Legal? [MakeUseOf Explains]

Most websites that offer formerly paid software for free do so with little to no illusion of legality. However you feel about torrents of paid software and media, it’s unarguable that they are illegal in most countries. Which is why torrent sites are often harassed by law enforcement.There is one type of site that’s managed to avoid most scorn, however – abandonware. Some of the sites we’ve covered in the past, like Abandonia, have been around for over a decade. Does this mean abandonware is legal?What Is Abandonware?The term “abandonware” refers to software for which support has been discontinued or copyright has not been actively enforced. Software usually becomes abandonware because the company that owns the rights to it has gone out of business or has been sold to a new owner who’s not interested in continuing development.With that said, some software becomes abandonware through an official announcement or by cooperation by its developers. Source code for the video game Descent, for example, was released by the game’s developers in 1997. Numerous other games have had similar treatment.Is Abandonware Legal?The simple answer is a definitive no. Copyrighted works that have been abandoned by their creators do not automatically become public property. On the contrary, they remain protected for the duration of the copyright, which varies from country to country. Downloading a copyrighted work is illegal, too, so it’s not just the sites that cou