Menu
What's new
By:
Filters

The Use Of EMUs ANd Roms Illegal?!?!?!?!?

Status
Not open for further replies.
S

ShadowUmbreon50

New member
It says on the nintendo site this. I'll copy and paste.

Can I Download a Nintendo ROM from the Internet if I Already Own the Authentic Game?

There is a good deal of misinformation on the Internet regarding the backup/archival copy exception. It is not a "second copy" rule and is often mistakenly cited for the proposition that if you have one lawful copy of a copyrighted work, you are entitled to have a second copy of the copyrighted work even if that second copy is an infringing copy. The backup/archival copy exception is a very narrow limitation relating to a copy being made by the rightful owner of an authentic game to ensure he or she has one in the event of damage or destruction of the authentic. Therefore, whether you have an authentic game or not, or whether you have possession of a Nintendo ROM for a limited amount of time, i.e. 24 hours, it is illegal to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet.

How Come Nintendo Does Not Take Steps Towards Legitimizing Nintendo Emulators?

Emulators developed to play illegally copied Nintendo software promote piracy. That's like asking why doesn't Nintendo legitimize piracy. It doesn't make any business sense. It's that simple and not open to debate.

People Making Nintendo Emulators and Nintendo ROMs are Helping Publishers by Making Old Games Available that are No Longer Being Sold by the Copyright Owner. This Does Not Hurt Anyone and Allows Gamers to Play Old Favorites. What's the Problem?

The problem is that it's illegal. Copyrights and trademarks of games are corporate assets. If these vintage titles are available far and wide, it undermines the value of this intellectual property and adversely affects the right owner. In addition, the assumption that the games involved are vintage or nostalgia games is incorrect. Nintendo is famous for bringing back to life its popular characters for its newer systems, for example, Mario and Donkey Kong have enjoyed their adventures on all Nintendo platforms, going from coin-op machines to our latest hardware platforms. As a copyright owner, and creator of such famous characters, only Nintendo has the right to benefit from such valuable assets.

Isn't it Okay to Download Nintendo ROMs for Games that are No Longer Distributed in the Stores or Commercially Exploited? Aren't They Considered "Public Domain"?

No, the current availability of a game in stores is irrelevant as to its copyright status. Copyrights do not enter the public domain just because they are no longer commercially exploited or widely available. Therefore, the copyrights of games are valid even if the games are not found on store shelves, and using, copying and/or distributing those games is a copyright infringement.

Can Websites and/or Internet Content Providers be Held Liable for Violation of Intellectual Property Rights if they are Only Providing Links to Illegal Software and/or Other Illegal Devices?

Yes. Personal Websites and/or Internet Content Providers sites That link to Nintendo ROMs, Nintendo emulators and/or illegal copying devices can be held liable for copyright and trademark violations, regardless of whether the illegal software and/or devices are on their site or whether they are linking to the sites where the illegal items are found.
Click to expand...

So what do you think on this? I think its awful.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
JKKDARK

JKKDARK

New member
Emulation is legal. You can make a rom/omage of your own game, and it's still legal. Also, some emulators need the bios, then you need your console for dump the bios.
 
Toasty

Toasty

Sony battery
Nintendo goes into great detail about what is not legal, but doesn't really say a thing about the legitimate aspects of emulation. Emulation itself is perfectly legal, and playing a game that you have ripped from your own copy of the game is also perfectly legal. However, they are correct; acquiring a copyrighted ROM/ISO from any source other than your own copy of the game is copyright infringement and is illegal in most countries. As to whether it's always immoral or unjust, well that's a bit more subjective.
 
Clements

Clements

Active member
Moderator
Ya. That's in a very similar vein as something I was told today. A US group based in Salt Lake City first discovered the gene BRAC1 responsible for causing early onset breast cancer, who then immediately patented the gene so that other researchers have to pay them in order to conduct research legally with the gene. While it is legal to do this under current law, I don't think many people would say this is in any way ethical.
 
Z

zilmar

Emulator Developer
Moderator
It would be funny if one department sued another one inside N since there new console uses emulation to play the older games .. emulation is not illegal never will be .. tho it is hard to use a lot of the emulators legally :p
 
Flash

Flash

Technomage
If you'll grab an axe and murder a few people - you are killer and you will end your life in prison or even will be executed (depends on country). But if you'll start a small war and a few thousand soldiers from both sides and many civilians will be killed - you are politician and nothing will happen to you.
 
Flash

Flash

Technomage
zilmar said:
It would be funny if one department sued another one inside N since there new console uses emulation to play the older games .. emulation is not illegal never will be .. tho it is hard to use a lot of the emulators legally :p
Click to expand...
Well, for Nintendo systems emulators it's true, for Commodore64 or Spectrum emulators it goes to opposite direction - system ROMs and about 80-90% of software now PD.

Some companies not as greedy as big N - Marathon, Star Control II, many early 3D Realms' games, GTA1,2, - very good games and can be downloaded for free legally
Even Microsoft (!) made some games freeware - Allegiance and MechCommander II (all MechCommander series games can be downloaded for free).
 
Iconoclast

Iconoclast

New member
I have also read this page several times before. I think they're trying to use roughly true but persuasive statements to get us to see it as a really bad thing, like it being the greatest thread to date. That's crap. Nintendo also says that the emulators themselves are illegal, but according to the way Toasty explained this page, he seems to be disagreeing with that. I don't know the details on law, though. I think they can be considered illegal, since they support the illegal playing of ROMs you did not rip from your own N64 cartridge. Speaking of which, I didn't know it was legal to emulate N64 ROMs if you got it from the cartridge you own yourself...of course, Nintendo would never directly admit that.
zilmar said:
It would be funny if one department sued another one inside N since there new console uses emulation to play the older games .. emulation is not illegal never will be .. tho it is hard to use a lot of the emulators legally :p
Click to expand...
I think their page says something about the copyright expiring on games after 70 years since their first publication, so wouldn't emulation of those ROMs be legal then? No ****ing way I'm waiting 70 years to play N64 games on my PC, though. Jesus Christ.
 
Bighead

Bighead

Oversized Cranium
I saw this post and had to comment.

Emulation is illegal, but like many americans and members of other countries with strict laws, I say "Who cares". People break laws every day; whether they are trivial or not, laws are constantly broken, and emulation is not even close to a threat. There are new laws passed every year, and in my opinion, there are way too many laws to follow and way too many people to stop. How bad would it suck to never jaywalk again, stare at a red light and sit there with no one around when in a hurry, wear your seat belt on every car ride, obey the speed limit at every instance. It would take a lot of effort to make emulation disappear and I'm sure many people would fight for some form of legalization if they ever decided to take action.

Which is also kinda scary, with the new Nintendo Wii coming out that can support emulation (which may cost money, never looked into it) and the new Gametap that allows you to play classic games at a cost, this could be a way of trying to do away with the free form, the illegal form. And honestly, I pay enough for taxes, bills, gas, and food with little money left over for luxory, which is not uncommon in America. But this is not a debate for here.

And why would Nintendo care, NES, SNES, N64, gameboy, etc... they are all dead and nothing is being produced anymore, they are not being sold, so they aren't making a profit anyway. To obtain the number of ROMs that can be downloaded in a few hours, you would have to spend a good portion of your life searching auctions, yard sales, ebay.... just to have stacks apon stacks of games that take up valuable space, as opposed to a neat little folder holding them all in file form.

Also emulation is more convenient to double click a game rather than sitting there punching and beating on your NES to stop the power light and TV screen from flashing, and register the game. So after spending 20 minutes of blowing into the cartridge and adjusting the game just right, you get it to work.. to play it for 3 minutes and realize "Hey, this game sucks!". Let's not forget we can use any controller for emulation, instead of the one designed for the system. I prefer my PC controllers over the dinky little NES controller with 4 buttons or the N64 controller that has a joystick that wears out after playing with it too much.

So to end my rant, I'll conclude that I'll continue to play my emulated games until I'm sick of them, and nobody is going to stop me!
 
Toasty

Toasty

Sony battery
Bighead said:
Emulation is illegal, but like many americans and members of other countries with strict laws, I say "Who cares".
Click to expand...
Emulation is legal. If it weren't, like zilmar said, different departments in Nintendo could actually sue each other for emulating older hardware. (Or more realistically, Intel could sue AMD for designing CPUs that use the x86 instruction set.) You can't copyright an interface. All that emulators do is behave like hardware. Copyrights can only apply to written (or sung, typed, dictated, compiled, assembled, etc) data.
 
Iconoclast

Iconoclast

New member
I sort of agree with BigHead's way of looking at it. Mostly because they shutdown the N64 game production, and now everyone's calling the console 'old', a thing of the mere past. Pathetic, so I don't take any remorse over emulating it. And Nintendo is way too strict about this, so they persuasively try to word it like emulation in entirety of Nintendo's consoles is a crime and even say it's the "greatest thread to date."

OK, so what Toasty's saying is, emulating the games is not illegal, but downloading and possessing N64 ROMs you did not get from your actual N64 cartridge is illegal?

I also agree with BigHead that I prefer to use my keyboard over the N64 controller or NES controllers. My brother says the only reason he doesn't want to play N64 games on my PC is because I don't have it set up so you can use an actual N64 controller to play the game, but only the keyboard. OMG, is it really THAT disappointing? I prefer the damn keyboard, anyway.
 
Bighead

Bighead

Oversized Cranium
Toasty said:
Emulation is legal. If it weren't, like zilmar said, different departments in Nintendo could actually sue each other for emulating older hardware. (Or more realistically, Intel could sue AMD for designing CPUs that use the x86 instruction set.) You can't copyright an interface. All that emulators do is behave like hardware. Copyrights can only apply to written (or sung, typed, dictated, compiled, assembled, etc) data.
Click to expand...

Yeah I guess I did mess that up a little, saying "Emulation is illegal" sums it up incorrectly. Emulators and PD ROMs are legal and should be, because they are not copyrighted material (unless the author decides so) but made by little people like us for free download. But when it comes to obtaining cartridge dumps and system BIOS's (like most playstation emus require), now it's a different story. But like I said before, who cares, it's not like they are losing money... every new system released takes years before a team of dedicated programmers even comes close to making commercial games play, and with how advanced they are becoming, IF they get it to play commercial games.

XBox, Gamecube, and PS2 have been around for a few years now, and only PCSX2 (the PS2 emulator) has been showing great progress playing more and more games, and this should be no threat to Sony, or at least not a big one, with PS3 on the way. Nintendo Wii is almost here and Gamecube emulators have shown little progress in some time, Bust-a-Move 3000 still being the only fully playable game. Xbox 360 is already here, and how many Xbox emulators can actually play a game? None from what I know, except Halo on one of them.

Because they really never lose money (or much money), I highly doubt game/console developers will take any forms of action unless they try to develop forms of "legalized" emulation which will make them more money. (This is why Gametap and Wii scare me). And of course, this type of crookedness happens everyday, so I would not doubt it for a second the Nintendo Wii can play emulated games just because they can now say "it's wrong to download ROMs for your PC, pay us to play it on Wii, or we will take action". Now you have to dish out the money for the system, and possibly a monthly fee or a set price for obtaining a newly dubbed "legal" ROM. Of course there is no evidence to anything I just said, it's just what I see could be a possible future.

I can't believe how much I just typed to correct myself (I love to rant!), so I'll stop here.. :evil:
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top