There is no legal precedent for ripping and downloading ROMs for games you own though an argument could be made for fair use.

Are video game roms legal. The proprietary code in ROM files belongs to the company that created the video game or later acquired the property. They do however have a detailed document on their site explaining that ROMs are illegal and that emulators facilitate their use and damage the company though crucially stopped short of calling emulators illegal. Since ROMs are the game files that emulators use to enable people to play games they are illegal in almost every case.

Emulators are legal to download and use however sharing copyrighted ROMs online is illegal. After all ripping a CD you own with iTunes or other software is broadly considered legal. Cracking a ROM is illegal as it means youre breaking the copyright management protections in order to access the game.

A warning on downloading ROMs Remember. No video games until well into this century or 4 it is an archival copy that YOU created for backup purposes it cannot be a downloaded copy. On the other hand homebrew titles are free to download.

Downloading a ROM or backup off the Internet is always illegal unless the copyright holder authorized it. The official Nintendo website directly answers the question about whether or not ROMs are legal without any ambiguity. I discovered according to internet individuals I don.

Emulators themselves arent exactly illegal. I am not a lawyer however. Id like to add that the ONLY time that you can legally have a ROM is if it was 1 purposefully released into the public domain by the copyright owner 2 was given or sold to you by the copyright owner 3 has had its copyright expire 75 years after publication ie.

Yes Downloading Nintendo ROMs Is Illegal Even if You Own the Game By Scharon Harding July 26 2018 If you want to play classic games on a modern PC downloading emulators and ROMs files ripped. Emulators are legal to download and use however sharing copyrighted ROMs online is illegal. In a video games context emulators are simply a piece of software that pretends to be a physical gaming system.