I spoke with a friend of mine who is a copyright lawyer. He looked over the EULA and was made aware that the source code was released several years ago and had this to say.
He said that if someone was ever going to make a stink about .ISOs being downloaded and somehow was considering a lawsuit, the case would depend on one of two things. Both the letter of the law (the strict meaning of the EULA) or what Interplay's "clear intentions were"
If it's the former, we're covered. The EULA definitively says that it's okay to make copies for "friends and acquaintances" The legal definition of "acquaintance" is pretty darn loose. Reading the "about us" section of a website would make you an acquaintance of the people running the site, for example. If you made a post here and someone responded with "Hi, here are some FS2 .isos", they'd be acquaintances. It would NOT be illegal nor should it be considered warez.
If it's the latter, it gets a little less bulletproof, simply because Interplay took you to court, but my lawyer friend said that when the source code to a game is released, it would make a very very very hard case for Interplay to prove that it did not intend for people to freely download the game.
So on either front, people are covered. It's not a matter of not getting caught (which no one would, a bankrupt company is not going to waste resources on a lawsuit for the downloading of an 8 year old game) it's simply not illegal. Interplay and Volition made the awesome choice to make FS2 absolutely free to anyone who wants it.
So if you find an .iso somewhere, download it. It's completely legal. I'm not telling people to post them here, because the mods still say .ISOs are warez, and they're in charge, not me
