Doesn’t that mean it’s not protected anymore?
16 years is not long enough for the work to lapse into the public domain, so the copyright holder retains all rights.
The game in question is freely available to play in the browser or download at the Internet Archive. That fact alone does not tell you whether it was originally uploaded by the author/rights holder himself, by someone else with his blessing and desire to see it freely distributed (as in the case of the game author who posted in the original thread), without his knowledge (who knows if the author is still alive?), or other conceivable alternatives. It’s there for you to access as would be a book in a public library.
I wasn’t trying to claim anything about the copyright on the game. I was wondering why a 16 year old thread was revived with such anger. xxx777 doesn’t say anything about any game, they just call lno an asshole.
[Moderating]
First, the obvious.
Second, while there is some renewed discussion in this thread, it’s really not about the original topic. If anyone wishes to continue the discussion about copyright on abandonware, feel free to start a new thread on that.