Another question about emulators...(and the legal stuff)

Fyda

Hey there!

I hope I haven't overseen anything, the search function doesn't give any clear answers either.

If I own a SNES game (though they're both at my parent's house right now) - is it legal to download it's ROM and an Emulator?
I'd immediately do to the store if they'd re-release those games...

But yeah, I don't want to do anything illegal. The games in question (mainly Terranigma & Illusion of Gaia) have been released in the late 90ies if that's important.

Cheers!

o1s1n

I'm not going to link you to roms but it should weigh on your conscience about as much as jay walking or keeping a euro you found on the ground.

Fyda

Mmmmh... alright, thanks! I'll take that as a "no"

o1s1n

No, it's actually a 'yes'. You're downloading copywrited material so in a way, it may be deemed as breaking copywrite law.

But it's a victimless crime that nobody cares about. Morally, it's no different to buying a second hand SNES game. (in both scenarios, the original developer gets zero money)

I'm fairly sure nobody has ever been prosecuted for downloading 20 year old roms in the history of the internet, ever.

Anyway, the above comment is meant purely for information purposes, we can't discuss downloading roms on boards.ie (it's a bit different when you're a website/legal entity)

Oh and on a side point, there's nothing dodgy about downloading emulators as long as they don't contain any copywrite code. (most don't, some later ones may require a bios image but you tend to have to download them separately)

CiDeRmAn

All Vectrex roms are public domain so they can be downloaded at your leisure.
However you are not permitted to sell them.
The new releases on the machine though, some of them may still be in copyright, so check before you download.