Roms are illegal unless you own the game right?
Much like the PSX Bios. If I own a model SCPH1001, then I am legally only allowed to download that number right?


Also, what keeps this site from being closed or charged with piracy?
I mean, your front page advertises as follows...

"Roms Added - Posted on 13 Jan 2005 by SB
Also 100's of Roms were added to the following systems: NeoGeoPocket, Neo Geo, and TG16PCEngine. We've got 20 systems with complete Rom sets, totaling over 21,500+ ROMs. "

Wouldn't the owner of the site have to possess these games? I'm not trying to be a smartass or anything but how does this legally work?

last i looked, all the roms on this site were for systems that are technically dead, meaning that they are no longer for sale by the owner company. since the owner company is not making any money off these games, they are not looking for such a place that hosts them as roms.
thats also why you wouldnt find any gba ds or similar roms/isos

OK!
I always thought that the reason why you never had them was because they were to big. Cuz I hate DL N64 games.

But what about my bios question?

There is no actual law that really states if it is wrong/right but technically owning any playstation/2 bios is illegal, and if you hosted it on a website sony would probably ask you to remove it if they found it.

But as for having them on your computer, there is nothing they can do about that.

There are plenty of legal issues, but in the end only the international laws really matter, and none of those really touch it much.

That's pretty much it.

thought so......

cool.

So i can download ever nes game and not go to jail or pay fines out my pie hole?

*evil grin*

. . . as though being on the download side of a pirating ever got anyone any fines or jailtime. . .

tho i wouldnt call it piracy untill one sells what they get for profit

Just don't say aaarrrrrrrrrr a lot and wear an eye patch.

Aarrrrrrrrrrr. Yeah pussy be making my eye water. Aarrrrrrrr.

how I love that pick up line IRL

new meening to :r d me matey"

Typical of a site of this calibre, spamming.

As far as the Law goes, it simply states that you can only make one backup copy of a game if you own the original. And it must be a backup copy of the original that you own. Ignore that 24 hours crap. That is just to make the site seem legal.

Actually, you are almost completely wrong. It is still illegal to host Commercial ROMs on the internet, unless they are officially proclamied by the company as 'abandonware' even so, if the ROM hasn't been abandoned then it's illgegal. And that means all the ROMs hosted on this site is illegal. If they actually worked that is.

And in fact there are plenty of DS ROMs on the internet, but they are mainly found on Chinese sites or other language sites where it's hard for IDSA to track them down and employ the necessary people to find these. And plus DS ROMs aren't hugely in demand due to lack of good emulators and efficient flash carts.

WHAT.. THE.. HELL.. Rather than just saying crap, where you have no idea what your talking about you should just not say anything. It would save a lot of the raised eyebrows and it is evident that you have no idea what your talking about. Shut the fucking hell up and never talk again please.

If you can find every NES game, though i'm sure that if someone managed to get a hold of your harddrive, they'll be more than happy to sell it in for a good price to IDSA. Which will mean that yes.. you will be fined and you could possibly go to jail. So next time you go blabbing about downloading ROMs, try and keep your mouth shut.

Read what i said above. And be extra sure to shut the hell up.

Wise, but stupid. Piracy really has nothing to do with all this ROM crap, that's why groups like IDSA only follow the Emulation groups while different anti-piracy groups follow the Piracy/Warez groups.

In this context piracy is copying something and distributing it, whether it is for money or not. And in this context it's warez.


Back to the start:

A site like this is too pathetic, ever to be targeted by IDSA, and not for piracy either of course. You need to be a popular site, you need to have ROMs, and you need to have a lot of ROMs too before they put you over a n00b site to a more '1337' type site. As in, a site that is run by people who are not n00bs. The sites that are mainly targeted are the ones that require you to to pay to get their ROMs, as this is very simlar to what Piracy should be known as.

Thing is it doesn't.
[b]
theroms.com is: 100% Illegal[/b]

ok, well now that i see there is a knowitall bigger than Lamperus, i'll have to flex my Law school muscle.

first off: you can make as many copies as you want of a rom, because like software you purchase the license of the game, not the actual game, so you own the license and of course you can back it up X times.

as for it being illegal and such, a company would have to prove in court that they can still make money off the selling of said product in its original form. Since they probably cant (who buys nintendo games now adays) then they would lose in court. so it is illegal in a sense, but it is highly unlikely that there would ever be a court challenge, and i think precendence in canada leans toward favouring the rights of the downloadee (Music downloading).

Additionally if someone took your harddrive and shipped it off the the IDSA, that would be an illegal search and seasure of property, As well, its impossible for the IDSA to prove that you did not legally buy the games.

therefore, downloading roms is much akin to highering an Escort service. while it is not entirely legal, theres really nothing the law can do to stop it.
And "The Hypr One" is still a virgin, hasnt even touched a boobie.

Heh. That's funny. But your still an idiot, and you have no idea wtf your talking about.

lol. I really can't believe that you went to Law School, and if you did then congrats, but still.. you are completely wrong. I don't know from what source you pulled these laws out from, but it was obviously an incorrect source.

You must be crazy. Well i'm crazy myself, but your something else. With the licences of many games and every single NES/SNES Catridge that you could only make one backup. Which is acceptable. There's always a good chance that the software that you use, and the games that you play can screw up your system, or screw up themselves, so it's only fair to be able to make a backup. But by making any more backups than one, then you could potentially distribute them to someone who doesn't have a licence for it. Therefore you are wrong. And you obiviously don't know much about Emulation and Piracy Laws.

They could quite easily extract money and win court cases against offenders. But fact is, it would cost more money to bring them to court and get money from them. Than it would to do nothing and let them continute. The only thing that the companies can do is change the attitudes of the public, and make them at least buy some of their games instead of none of them.

Let's say that even if money was taken into the equation or not, it's still illegal.

If you have every single NES ROM, then they can easily track you down to where the ROMs come from. Unless your ever so careful to cover your tracks, it's in fact possible to trace the ROM back to the .zip file which you can trace back to the ROM site. Plus i was only kidding. But still it's true.

Maybe you might see some sought of.. connection between ROMs and an Escort service. I don't know how you can liken ROMs to escorts, it's quite ridiculous, no? Commerical ROMs are 100% illegal, unless they're abandoned, and there is nothing you can do to change that.

And if the best thing you can do to flame me is make assumptions then i'm afraid that it only looks poorly on you. Don't turn this into a flame topic please.l

... if we could rate posts here ... 5/5. 8)


And hypr, almost your entire post was flame ... do you even know what that word means (in the context it's being used)? Ziptal was entirely right about the laws; you can look them up if you want ... they're pretty well documented and not hard to find.

In the words of hound...."pnwned".

No actually both Hypr and ziptal are wrong.. very wrong in fact. Though certain parts about what they say are correct. I'd actually say 'The Hypr One' is more correct in this case. Then again i could be wrong altogether but i've had a lot of experiance with these laws.

The law states with ROMs that you can only make 1 backup copy due to the fact that you don't need any more than 1 copy. Not that this law has ever been enforced so a lot of people take it on as being 'any number of backups' actually some of the laws are different in other countries.

In Canada (where i live) you can only make one backup copy while in Russia you can make as many as you want. So it can vary.

Law seems to be very flexible in the modern world and it's always very hard to enforce the law but it's probably still illegal to have NES ROMs without the original catridge, as it is still 'stealing' in some ways. As your not giving anything at all back to the developer for using them. I'm not really sure how this would turn out in court as it has never happened before, thankfully indeed ^-^

BTW, it would be nice if you could stop the flaming as it's wrecking the topic. And no offence but some of the jokes being made are sexist.

Nahhh, most of the jokes are sexist! (don't worry about it, just make them back -- we all love girls here)

Anywho, that's pretty much my whole point in saying that only the international laws wind up mattering.