Okay so, Velvet missed the point because he cited something that would be legal in his hypothesis, but not one forces you to do a legal thing.
Also we have never been discussing if it was moral or not to download an abandonware. Someone stated that it was illegal. End of the discussion. There is no not really illegal coming into the play. You can do it at your own risk if you wish to, I'm not going to stop you.

To actually answer your question, it is a breach of IP law to download or copy it. However, as you cannot buy it new, it is up to you whether morally or ethically you feel justified in locating a copy and downloading it for free. Some people hold the opinion that morally you can do so, others do not.

FYI, you are unlikely to go to jail for downloading a copy.

The only countries which do not recognise copyright are Afghanistan, Laos and the Marshall Islands, however Afghanistan are drafting a law to introduce copyright restrictions to the country. If you want to get the game for free, move to one of those countries, otherwise the games are still protected, even if they are 'orphaned works'.

Pirate everything, regret nothing-Leonidas the XXVII

No such person exists, unless you are referring to the Halo player which seems unlikely.

It's a parody of a quote from 300.

Considering the original quote was: "Give them nothing! But take from them everything!", I'd say it was quite an interesting choice of words that you've selected and I shall provide my own: "You shall not pass!"

lol

No Public domaining something is legal. That is giving up your rights to something you've published so it's available to all. In the case of computer software only something written by Ada Lovelace would be in the public domain by time... (UNIX for example is still copyright 40 yearsish after creation) So unless you see an official statement from someone that they have signed their game into the public domain it's still protected by copyright. Sure many turn a blind eye to it (Braben did for elite frontier till he could release it shareware for example) but they still own it it's not "abandoned"
In the case of SS2 if you released it for sale both parties would have the right to sue you and percentages would be assessed in arbitration between them after the trial.

::edit to add::
By that I mean what would happen is the judges involved would between them choose which case would run first (usually the stronger case on evidence) that case would then be used as a precedent in the second in any positions that are compatible. For example in SCO v IBM the Novell v SCO case was heard first when it was decided that Novell had the right to tell SCO to leave IBM alone and that Novell still owned the rights to System V the SCO v IBM case used that information to formulate its response...

Im going through looking at different EB shops when im in area.I think SS1 and SS2 were both on budget labels at one stage so there is always a chance u might one one or the other

It's not for sale either, that's really the point that obtuse people miss about this.

In fact no one is even able to offer it for sale.

If you stated "it's not in the public domain" then I'd agree with your post.
I can. Laws are fucking stupid sometimes.

Who cares if it's for sale or not that has no meaning in if it's legal or not why do you always seem to hold this up as some sort of a trump card?
He stated 2 facts Abandonware is not legal and System Shock 2 is not free.

Excuse me if this is a stupid question, but what exactly makes abandonware so special? Doesn't the IP just stay in a perpetual state of limbo?

Saying it's not "free" is meaningless at best, it's not for sale by anyone with rights to create a new copy, full stop. You can only get it second hand from an exceedingly small (and usually expensive) collectors market.

Speeding isn't "legal" but people don't generally have such a hissy-fit when it comes up. No one is being harmed when someone plays an abandonware game. In many cases that's true legally as well, if you cannot show copyright ownership then you are not legally harmed and have no standing to sue. So saying it's "not legal" is somewhat of a fabrication as well.
You mean copyright, most likely. For many abandonware games the actual copyright holder cannot be determined, so while the work doesn't get forfeited to the public domain, there's no one to enforce the copyright.

For other games some copyright holders simply choose to not make those games for sale for whatever reason. They could still enforce their copyright if they wanted, I'm not aware any cases where anyone's won a judgement in such a case. It would be hard to show financial harm if the product wasn't for sale, you'd have to show it lessened he value of an asset you were planning to liquidate or something (as a guess). Regardless if the game falls into this category you can judge for yourself if you're harming anyone by downloading an abandonware copy.

seeing as how if you were to even find a new copy of it, there really isn't anyone to be paid for it.

EA would sell it on here if they could, so that means they ain't getting it.

Looking glass sure as hell isn't getting anything.

maybe that insurance company would get the money, but it seems highly unlikely 'cause their name isn't on the box and whatever copies were manufactured haven't got a paper trail leading to them.

*shrug* the spirit of "thou shalt not pirate" is that your denying due compensation for a product, but when compensation is not providable .... your not really stealing anything.

I mean, yeah, if you were to grab and walk off with the only copy of a painting that is on display simply because the owner wasn't selling it ... but we are talking about something that is akin to taking an exact photograph of said painting (who's owner is dead) on display, printing it out, and then hanging it on a wall in your house.

if you were to ask "is it ok to break into some place and take the only hard drive in the world that the game's data is save to?" .... but to ask "is it ok to download a game no one will currently get paid for?" FUCK yeah!

hell I encourage you to download that shit, in fact you should probably download it three or four times! everyone else should do it multiple times too: get that shit on the top of the list of "most downloaded shit" so maybe, just maybe those ass hat insurance agents will get the fucking clue and stop fucking dawdling about getting the game back on the market.