by mlepage » Oct 6, 2004 @ 4:01pm
First of all, do not presume that because a group of people (e.g. all your friends and acquaintances) has ROMs and MP3s of dubious legality, that everyone else does. It may be prevalent, but it's not universal. Some people actually, believe it or not, don't do that.
Second, there's a slight difference between an end user doing this, and a company doing this. Are you selling those MP3s and ROMs? You can bet that if you try to open up a little iTunes-like store selling MP3s you just downloaded from Napster, that you'd be in hot water pretty fast.
However, this isn't exactly the same thing (although believe it or not that happens). This is like re-recording a famous song and selling it without paying royalties to the original songwriter. It's OK to cover a song and sell it, but you have to give the original creator some credit (and payment). You can't just "take" their creation for yourself.