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Quote:
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Originally posted by tabten5
i think at this point aximsite should issue a disclaimer! there's a lot of people dispensing legal advice all of a sudden...
i'm a lawyer, and one of my training seats was in intellectual property, and i wouldn't be able to give you a quick answer on the legality of certain roms. Some are freeware, some have been OFFICIALLY made universal by the companies, and some are still very much guarded by them. In my experience, the companies....and i name no names....used to get very tetchy when we dealth with their "personalities", e.g. Sonic, etc. Even NES roms were not outside the realm of litigation.
At the end of the day, its dangerous to say its ok, and ignorant to say its illegal, because different rules apply to each and every rom out there. IP Law, especially in the UK, is very complicated stuff (which is why i moved across to medical negligence!). To be on the safe side, assume it is an illlegal download because it probably is. If you're unsure, phone the makers of the product, or simply don't download it. Unfortunately emulators often seem to be like guns....they're only illegal if you use them.
Play safe!
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If you go back and read some of the past threads on these topics, you'll notice that I (as well as others) used to get very specific and tell users that different rules apply to different ROMs based on the copyrights associated with each ROM. However, discussions continued to pop up simply asking "Where can I download ROMs?" At that point, we just simply had to ban the discussion of ROMs in general to keep the site out of trouble. To make it easier for the "average user" to understand, we now usually just tell people that a large
majority of ROMs are illegal, and that's why it can't be discussed. If you start getting very technical with the laws regarding ROMs, many people become confused and think that certain things (which are actually illegal) are okay to discuss here.