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are emulators legal?

M

Maverick2002

Diamond Member
are PC emulators of consoles (and the corresponding game roms) legal? are they legal if you have own the console game? are they legal if you don't own the console game?
 
Emulators themselves are legal, but downloading the games is not. They are still protected under copyright laws even if the console is "dead," or even if the company that made it is now defunct. If you own the actual game, the question gets murkier. A friend of mine did some legal analysis and basically it came down to the fact that it would probably be legal to have the ROM, but only if you dumped it yourself from your own source. The thing is, how could they tell? If you owned it, would they bother prosecuting? I don't think the DMCA was taken into account either, there might be some way to apply that as well.

Short version, downloading ROMs for games that you don't own a hard copy of is illegal.
 
Originally posted by: Nik
ROMs of games that you own should be perfectly legal with the right lawyer citing the person's right to have one backup copy on whatever medium they choose.
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I assume you meant this -- ROMs of games you don't own a copy of are clearly illegal

 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Originally posted by: Nik
ROMs of games that you own should be perfectly legal with the right lawyer citing the person's right to have one backup copy on whatever medium they choose.
Click to expand...
I assume you meant this -- ROMs of games you don't own a copy of are clearly illegal
Click to expand...

:cookie:

Critical Thinking classes obviously paid off for you. 😉
 
Originally posted by: Nik
:cookie:

Critical Thinking classes obviously paid off for you. 😉
Click to expand...
yep, my mastery of pointing out the obvious is unparalleled! 🙂


(which makes hyperthreading kind of useless for me.)
 
i remember reading somewhere that it is perfectly legal to have roms that you dont own, as long as you delete them within 24 hours of downloading them. Can anyone confirm this?
 
The grey area is that I believe it's still illegal to download a ROM off of the Internets even if you own the cartridge. If you backed up the ROM yourself than you are in your right to do so..
 
Originally posted by: dguy6789
i remember reading somewhere that it is perfectly legal to have roms that you dont own, as long as you delete them within 24 hours of downloading them. Can anyone confirm this?
Click to expand...

That's BS that's usually spread by the sites offering the ROMs for download. It's not legal.
 
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