Irish Law?

Ivan

From what I understand of Irish Law (and unless I'm mistaken boards is set up in Ireland and so is governed by its laws only)
It isnt illegal to point to Roms, its illegal to download them if you dont own it. Its however legal if you only keep the ROM for 24 hours and/or are using it for educational purposes. Thats the reason I have most of my ROMs, reverse engineering them so I can learn.
Ivan

Stephen

Boards.ie is [ currently ] hosted in the USA

Victor

Originally posted by Stephen
Boards.ie is [ currently ] hosted in the USA

But because it is an Irish company, is primarily subject to Irish law. If they were so interested, the relevant state and federal authorities in the States could have legal input to Boards Ltd.'s US assets.

I don't know the law in relation to ROMs. However, general copyright law here allows to to copy / quote 10% of a copyrighted document.

The following can be found at http://193.120.124.98/front.html , however I understand there is more recent law not included on that website.

COPYRIGHT (AMENDMENT) ACT, 1987
COPYRIGHT ACT, 1963
COPYRIGHT (PRESERVATION) ACT, 1929

Ronan|Raven

Most games companies are very touchy about the whole roms issue. Especially Nintendo, in fairness one cant blame them for not wanting people to go around downloading brand new games for their systems, as after all that is warez.

One the other hand most companies dont really take to much heed of people downloading roms for the old systems as they no longer make a profit out of them, and besides imho the whole reason I love and others love Emulation is for the old old arcade,home systems is so ya can relive the magic of those old classics.These games not being readily available anywhere else as they are no longer in producton (try finding an arcade machine with w0nderboy1 on it in yer local arcade!)

Kairo

Originally posted by Ivan
It isnt illegal to point to Roms, its illegal to download them if you dont own it. Its however legal if you only keep the ROM for 24 hours and/or are using it for educational purposes.

As Shinji pointed out in another post, this is not true. It is not legal to download roms and keep for more than 24 hours.

I know it's not illegal to point out links to roms, but it does promote the activity. You don't see any mp3 links on the music board do you?

Shinji

And besides, if you posted links to illegal software, I'd just forward the link to ELSPA and the publisher. So you probably don't wanna do that

Raskolnikov

No, you are not allowed to have ROM's for 24 hours, that's just an urban legend. You are only allowed have ROM's if you own the original copy with no exceptions

Mixie

The 24-hour window is a common Internet rumor, but it's not true. The backup-copy theory, commonly used with computer software, does not apply to game data contained inside ROM semiconductor chips. You couldn't make a "backup" copy of the new Pokemon movie or photocopy every page of the latest Harry Potter book, and the same logic applies to games. It's against the law to download a ROM even if it's no longer widely available. Public domain refers to a work that has been around so long that it's free for everyone to use - like a Bach composition or a Shakespeare play. But product copyrights are good for 75 years after they're filed, which means it will well be past 2050 before any Nintendo games enter the public domain.

You may believe it's legal, but it's not - plain and simple.

Shinji

Indeed - the backup rule only applies to software on "perishable" media, which does include CDs, floppy discs and hard drives, but ROMs are not, to the best of my knowledge, covered by this.

You're entirely right on the topic of copyright, but what the Abandonware principle comes down to is the fact that most companies will turn a blind eye to piracy of these titles as they're not making money off them anyway.