Legal Question: Are Nintendo ROMS Free To Distribute?

[gregor7777]

Further info: Bascially I'm building some Home Theatre PC's and I think it would be very cool to distribute some old Nintendo ROMS along with them but I am unsure if these are free to public domain or not.

Now, these people are paying me for these systems. I'm not sure if this would factor in or not, but I thought I'd include that. Anyone know for sure? I won't distribute them until I know. Thanks everyone.

 

[Confused]

I *think* that it's only OK to have the ROMs if you actually OWN the game as well, but i'm not 100% sure. So you would have to make sure that the people you are building them for own the games to start with.

Confused

 

[SimonCrux]

Nintendo is very protective of ROM distribution of their games, even for the NES. It is legal to have the ROM if you own the actual cartridge, but otherwise it is illegal to own the ROM. I think Sega has a much more lenient stance, their Genesis ROMS are distributed much more frequently with few repercussions.

 

[gregor7777]

Interesting, I guess that'll pretty much put my idea out of the picture then.

BTW, if Nintendo is reading, I sure do own all 670 of the ROMS I have. 🙂

 

[Damascus]

They won't become public domain for another 60 years. (or was it 45?)

 

[TheCorm]

Where can I find some ROM's?.......Purely for further investigation you understand 😉

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

for snes roms, cherryroms.com has a decent selection, although they have gotten worse lately due to copyright issues. other than that, google......

 

[gregor7777]

usenet my friends, usenet 🙂