Only contributors,authors and other people with official permission get the games. I'm afraid that is a legal requirement.
There are members in the organisation who were in the games industry, and so it is not surprising that we feel very strongly about this. In fact, we have gone out of our way to try to protect the rights of the copyright owners. For more information on that, have a look at the licence agreement that comes with the IPF user library.
This project is specifically aimed at archiving a digitally preservable form of the software for the future. The preservable versions can be used by people who own the original games where:
1)Their disks no longer work
2)They no longer own the hardware to play them
3)They find them more convenient
Copyright owners can also make use of these digital copies of the originals, and we have a special license that will enable them to do that. Indeed, various companies and ex-developers of games have already contacted us to see if they can use our images for their own purposes and/or public distribution. After all, producing an authentic digital copy was not previously possible. The point is that the copyright owners are in a prime position to benefit from our work.
Now people no longer have to fear the (lack of) durability of their floppies, as long as a good version of the game has been found and preserved. This will in turn aid historians documenting the meteoric rise of digital entertainment using authentic sources.
There were thousands upon thousands of commerical games released on magnetic media, over 5000 on the Commodore Amiga platform alone. The thought of even one game being lost forever is a scary thought, and would remove the choice for everybody.
