gt24

Originally Posted by wifi_thinking

I hope we can talk about roms, because there are many legitimate roms such as GrandTheftendo!!! Grandtheftendo, google it now! it is an awesome to be released program written for the NES and he uses NES emus to run it, I am looking forward ot this on the PDA, So I think talking about roms should be allowed, and links encouraged. Of course, legal roms only!!! I will post a link when he gets a release out! And a link to an emu (so both legit links!) Thanks :exc: :hide: :)

I think the fear is simply because of the signal to noise ratio, in other words the majority of illegal traffic far outweighs the legal traffic, so it is easier to just declare discussion on that whole topic as discouraged instead of picking and choosing what is right and wrong, and finding that the majority is illegal anyways. (I am being very black and white here... technically nobody knows whether to consider ROMs illegal (black) or legal (white) so it is considered grey (avoided). Simply stating this to report the facts)

Similar issue with Peer 2 Peer (P2P)... nifty technology, used for mostly illegal stuff and rarely for legal stuff (Linux downloads without hammering overwhelmed central servers being a legal example), so P2P is generally considered something to not talk about.

IANAA (I am not an administrator), if push came to shove, however, the spirit of your post may outweigh the rules, of course because there is legal ROMs out there, there are programmers who enjoy coding for emulators.

On that lighter note, I have a ton of respect for ROM programmers (as in, people who make new freeware games for emulators), because those programmers make a good, new, innovative game which has severe limitations on it (graphic, sound, space, processing wise). They have to be good to even get the program to work, must less be playable. Something like the programming competitions done on Commodore 64, and the fact that a C64 now has a GUI and can browse the internet at a pretty fast clip. Some pretty cool stuff...

jusu

At least in the country where I come from it is completely legal to make a backup of your own GBA game and play it on an emulator. Copying a rom from somewhere is already on, at least, gray area, even if you own the game. I have a nice bunch of my C64 games on my Pocket C64 and it is not in the least illegal.