@Justin
In answer to your question: it is *not* illegal to download software you own, and have bought and paid for. There is nothing in the legal bindings you agree to when you buy the game that says you can't, to my knowledge. So if you have someone who can copy it for you, go for it.
I have the same problem with Nightlong, since I have the defective mastering too. Only my PC 8x drive reads the cd properly. So instead of playing the game from CD, I installed it (via Samba), and copied all the files to that dir, and assigned Q: to it. It would also work if I copied across all the files from the CD and burned them on a fresh CD.
I can only hope this game is released into the public domain some time like Genetic Species was, and then everyone who couldn't play it properly can get to finish it.