Are emulators of out-of-date systems (old Ataris, NES, etc) illegal? And are the ROM's for them illegal? I've searched the web, and all I've found is a few news articles, which didn't tell me much. And I'm asking this to learn, I like the study of law, not to find out if I can DL them and then do so. Thanks!

Hi,

As far as i'm aware making an emulator is not illegal.
With regards to the roms, that solely depends on the rom. If the rom is of a homebrew demo/game made and released as freeware ...then it is legal. If the rom is of a commercial game and dumped from a cart or made from a cd image ...it is 100% illegal.

Regards,
ViLiO

100% Illegal? If I recall, it's legal if you own the original game, and are using the rom for "back-up purposes".

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
100% Illegal? If I recall, it's legal if you own the original game, and are using the rom for "back-up purposes".

I'd like to know if this is true too, or just one of those pieces of copyright folklore that float around to justify the legality of emulation. Does anyone know the definitive answer to this (I'd Google search for it, but I'm in the lab at the moment, and while browsing GameDev.Net is a perk I'm proud to have, searching on "console emulation" for the answer to this might seem a little dodgy [grin]).

Edit: Sneftel's reply makes sense to me, from a legal perspective.

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
100% Illegal? If I recall, it's legal if you own the original game, and are using the rom for "back-up purposes".

Nope... that's another copyright loophole myth, along with "abandonware" and "24 hour evaluation period". Under fair use provisions, it's okay to make a copy of your own media as a backup. It isn't legal to give a copy to someone else, regardless of whether they have the game.

EDIT: note that this is based on my understanding of US copyright law. I have no idea about other countries, or about international copyright treaties.

Right...it's legal for you to own a rom of a game you purchased...still that would mean it's not 100% illegal.

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Right...it's legal for you to own a rom of a game you purchased...still that would mean it's not 100% illegal.

I think the argument is that you already own a ROM of the game you purchased; it's on the cartridge or the CD-ROM. Under some countries copyright law, you are allowed to make a back-up copy of this ROM (provided you don't bypass any encryption, I think). But you aren't allowed to take a copy from someone else, since that technically isn't creating a back up of your copy but making a copy of someone elses. At this that's the gist of it, I think (note: I am not a lawyer, and know precious little about the minutinae of U.S. laws [grin]).

You're legally allowed to use a reader for whatever cartridge you want a backup of to rip the ROM and save it on your hard drive.

NOT download ROMs of games you own.

When a game is published, it is protected by copyright. This differs slightly depending on country, but rule of thumb is that the copyright is in force for 70 years. This remains the case unless the owner of the copyright specifically relinquishes it. Even if the company goes bust, the copyright will stay in place, making any use of the game without purchase illegal.

It's quite a frustrating state of affairs: I've seen interviews with developers/designers etc, and almost all of them agree that allowing people to play their old games for free would be a good thing to preserve the history of gaming. Unfortunately, it is usually the publisher who owns the copyright, and they just see it as hassle with nothing really to gain.

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Right...it's legal for you to own a rom of a game you purchased...still that would mean it's not 100% illegal.

Nintendo says this is 100% illegal, even if you own the original cartridges.