So a few days ago someone posted this thread: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/internet_archive_brings_many_dos_games_to_your_browser/?search=Inernet%20Archive

From that day I've been browsing the website for games from my childhood. Most of the game links from the thread above don't allow you to directly download the game, only stream it through dosbox, however after further searches I found some games have a straight "download" button slapped on the game page (full iso's), a few them:

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Janes_Combat_Simulations_AH-64D_Longbow_1996

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Powerslave_1996

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Retribution_1994

If you're born in the 80's or earlier you probably already know what kind of games are these, especially Powerslave (aka Exhumed).

Considering it's a website ran by public donations, would it be considered illegal to download these games for personal use? I've known about this site for a bit but never knew there are full sized games with iso's straight for download.

What do you guys think?

I can't say for sure. What really makes me raise an eyebrow regarding Internet Archive, is the inclusion of the complete Mame romset, not just as browser-playable games, but also as a torrent and the ability to directly download each of these roms separately.

Archive.org is legit and are very responsive if any rights holders objects to the downloads that are made available. They serve a very important purpose (preservation) and deserve support.

It would depend on your country.
Copyright isn't an international thing anymore.
Those FBI warnings do NOT have anything to do with Canada or the EU.
The argument goes that there were international conferences about this stuff.. years ago.
Those conferences and agreements have been ripped apart by lawyers and court systems throughout the world.
I think it would be fine to download stuff off of there. If the publisher is defunct and can't hold a copyright, you can't retroactively defend that copyright for the past two decades. Lawyers would have a field day if anyone tried to sue an individual.

internet archive basically collects everything legally free and in the public domain on the internet.

I myself use it for a lot of OTR (Old Time Radio) stuff and the occasional B-movie - in the cases of those, the copyright has expired and in no way been renewed.
IA spends a lot of money on that end of things - the research / legality).

HOWEVER - You'll note on the site a lot of it is only in the public domain in the US.

In the case of things like MAME it may be certain copyrights (and even patents) have expired in the US, but not in the EU - or even vice versa.
THERE WILL be a related page on there / linked there somewhere explaining it - the same as with OTR.
If IA finds anything to be incorrectly listed / hosted by them, they do immediately remove it.

So... in the short, I would say your quandry is one of localised legality (and being in Malta, I'm pretty sure your laws follow the UK on that still, so you should be okay) and your own moral compass - unless of course IA does not provide a download link and you are downloading via your own technical knowledge or a third party application?! oh, it is - just the US does not recognise much of it (and many lawyers in the US are not even aware of the changes - as I myself found out in an international legal battle I won against one such lawyer earlier this year).

Internet Archive received a DMCA exemption so they can preserve "endangered" software using outdated hardware protection or distributed on obsolete media. In practice, however, it contains a lot of questionable user-submitted content, such as CD images of retail versions of games or pirated copies of software disguised as copyright-free audio.

This is largely the main reason why I asked this question. Some of the games available for download are available for sale here on GOG. I'm not going to download them out of respect for GOG's hard work (and any other distributor), My main interest is games that are not available on sale and the ones I have damaged CD's of.