IANAL and I have no idea where in the world you are, but downloading (as in with an http client) an ISO[1] is often treated rather dramatically very differently than distributing an ISO (as in a p2p torrent).
replyAlternatively: eBay. Encarta 96 CD-ROMs are available for about $20 in the US, delivered.
This is the second time on HN this week I've seen someone reference Stars! It was such a fun game to play back in the 90s. I've had a similar desire to have Codex decompile a pet 90s game of mine for further modification. Not sure how far one could get before Codex complains about reverse engineering software.
replyEDIT: Here's the other Stars! thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49755378
Codex had no problem developing a big plan for me, but I didn't ask it to proceed. Maybe you're right and it'd of got shy at some point along the way. Thanks for that other thread, I must've missed it. Definitely going to fire up Stars! this weekend one way or another.
replyMany of those ISOs end up on archive.org if you dig around.
replyMemories of the ISO mounting program I had; so nice for all the disks to live on the server and just be mounted when needed.