Legality of Roms

[hockeydude]

Basic Questions:

1. Is it legal to download roms if you own the original cartrige?

2. Is it legal to download roms if you own the original cartrige, but not the hardware to play it on? (ex: You own a "Paperboy" cartrige, but have sold your gameboy and no longer have it.)

3. What is up with the 24 Hour thing? Is it real? (You may only keep rom for 24 hours if you dont own the cart.)

Just wanted to know what you guys know/think, because I have seen so many different idea's and I dont know what is true or not. It would be nice to play some GB games on my PPC, but I dont want to do it illegally. I do own "Paperboy" and "Billy Bob's Hunting and Fishing", but I want to know if I can legally download the roms for them?

[Digital Chaos]

[damian]

[randall]

[sponge]

[Guest]

So even if you download software it is no big deal. The government can't stop us anyways.

[Bradskey]

Of course the feds don't care. If they had to prosecute this stuff they'd have to arrest almost everybody who ever got on the Internet for SOME little thing they downloaded. You only make yourself a target by being a big warez distributer, and that's if they're not too busy solving REAL crimes like murders, kidnappings and terror plots.

[Guest]

if the government arrested ALL THE PEOPLE who uses pirated software then I'll bet that will take 100 years.

[James S]

They can do whatever they want. As soon as you break the law your rights as an American citizen are severely trimmed.

It is a crime. If you want to pad that fact by saying "everyone does it" or "they can't really do anything" then you're lying to yourself. It doesn't make it any less of a crime, and it doesn't make the possible penalties ($50,000 per software/mp3/game you warez and 20 years in prison) any more leniant.

[hockeydude]

So if it is totally illegal to download roms, then why do people work so hard on making working emulators?

[sponge]

[randall]

[SiGen]

[lion2]

[DillRye]