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JWeinCom on 01 May 2022
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Doctor_MG said:
Pemalite said:

The legalities of Roms actually varies from region to region... Pretty sure in the USA you are not allowed to circumvent copy protection mechanisms in order to do a ROM dump... Where-as here it's perfectly legal.

Some countries also allow you to download ROM's if you own the original media in some form...

The thing with websites though is that there is a bit of a grey area, the website doesn't actually make money from the Rom's themselves, they make money from the page visits, so it could be argued (Again this will vary from region to region) that they are making money on advertising clicks rather than Rom downloads.

It's a mess frankly.

Ah, yeah I was just thinking about US laws. You're right, it's really messy when you are considering other countries. That said, I'm fairly certain US Copyright law allows for a backup/archival "exception", where you are allowed one backup copy. However, you are not allowed to distribute your physical copy without transferring ownership of the backup copy as well (or vice versa). 

Personally,  I think it would be fairly easy to find and show the court a causal link between advertisement pay and the distribution of the ROM's based on site traffic. That is, the website simply would not be receiving the advertising space they do without the use of ROMs to bring the traffic in. 

I am pretty sure that is incorect. There is a copyright exception for libraries and archivists, not for individuals. 

What I think people are referring to is the first sale doctrine. This allows you to generally do what you like with a particular item you bought. If the rom is considered a copy of the item, then that could be allowable, but based on other cases, I'm pretty sure it would not be. For example in one case, a website tried to sell used mp3s, by having users upload their copy and delete the original (verified by software). This was held not to be ok. So I don't think a rom would fall under this exception.

That being said, if you just made a rom from your physical copy, I don't think anyone could really do anything about it. Just on a practical level, who is ever going to care if it's not distributed somehow?

As for the causal link, yeah, I don't think a court would buy that at all. Contrary to popular belief, lawyers cannot simply make any argument they want, and their are potential sanctions for bringing frivolous arguments. Usually that's more for if you bring a whole case on a frivolous argument, but in any event, that's something I probably wouldn't bring up.