| JWeinCom said: 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. |
I'm going to respectfully disagree with your analysis there at the end. To start, this isn't a frivolous argument. Even if the court wouldn't buy it that doesn't make it frivolous, that just means it wasn't convincing. There is definitely some base to suggest that the monetary compensation that the company received from advertisement was influenced by the sites downloadable software. Especially since these ROM sites are typically single purpose sites, and you could analyze how often people click on an advertisement from the home page vs. the page that offers the file. In addition, there are many sites that force a tab open to an advertisement when you click on the download (I know this because I'm an awful person who downloads ROM's). These would not be baseless claims to suggest that their monetary compensation is directly tied to the files they are offering.
As for the rest of your post, I suppose I'm not as sure as I thought I was before. It seems that the DMCA is not nearly as clear about copying videogame software as I thought that they would be, and since there are disclaimers within the game itself about the ownership of the game (i.e. it's entirely owned by the copyright holder) then Title 17 wouldn't really matter. Still, this makes the determination about the legality of ROM sites even more black and white, IMO.
