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Ive read into the legal areas of emulation and roms. Emulators are 100% legit and legal.
When you buy a cart you are legeally entitled to the information on the chips in THAT cart. You ate not entitled to COPIES of that said data thats on other carts. However, if you read the back of most game manuals for NES, SNES, and Genesis, it might say something like "Making a backup or "arhiveal" copy of this cart voids your right to own or operate this cart and the data within". So it basically says you can own the data on the cart as long as you dont try to copy it off the cart, and its that ONE carts data that you are allowd to own.
Having ROM files from other peoples dumpd carts is usually illegal. Most copyrights last something like 30 years unless its renew'd. You will have to wait for the copyright for the cart to die to legally do anything. Unless they manufacturer publically announces that the data is now freeware, I would think its safe to say ROMs are a naughty thing...
I think the Commodore 64 series went freeware and they are actually been ported to java code (or emulated through java) and playable online, or free for download.
im gonn'a shut up now, i can go on forever when it comes to emulation ;}
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