Thanks for digging this detail out! I'm a bit disappointed since I was looking forward to playing this with friends again (fond memories), but I can totally understand how the dev might not have the necessary time to implement this.

If you want to play online, I recommend checking JJ2+, jazz2online.com and the discord link there. It's fairly easy to setup. You just need the base game, which is available on GOG and runs perfectly fine one modern Windows computers. Check gog.jj2.plus website for the installation process.