Hello
Forgive me if this question is inappropriate (if so, please delete this thread!)
I am wondering how people here get legal versions ROMs, such as Super Mario Brothers for instance. Do they buy the cart and then copy the ROM themselves, or is there a place where you can buy pre-extracted ROMs? I know there are services around where you can rent ROMs. Is this how people do it?
Thank you very much for your help,
Richard Hughes
We're not lawyers on this board, but here's the situation as I understand it:
Copyright means nobody is allowed to make a copy other than the publisher. The only copies that publishers sell are embedded into commercial emulators, such as the Virtual Console games in Wii Shop. Under U.S. law, there is an exception to copyright codified in 17 USC 117(a)(1) allowing one to make copies needed to run a particular program on a particular computer, but the only way to take advantage of it is to dump them yourself, using a device such as CopyNES or Kazzo.
rhughes wrote:
I am wondering how people here get legal versions ROMs, such as Super Mario Brothers for instance.
The answer is that most people don't.
Renting ROMs? That sounds strange.
thefox wrote:
Renting ROMs? That sounds strange.
http://www.consoleclassix.com/
Its quite clever how this works.
Hmm, so it seems that I need to buy some carts and extract them myself.
But I am assuming though that there are enough homebrew NES ROMs to accurately test my emulator enough though?
rhughes wrote:
But I am assuming though that there are enough homebrew NES ROMs to accurately test my emulator enough though?
I've gathered together all the test ROMs I've ever come across
here.
The "other" folder contains some pretty cool demos. Most of the folders are test ROMs put together by blargg or other NES RE geniuses to help emulator author's test their emulator implementations against things that pass on a real NES and test some aspect of NES graphics, sound, or processing.
EDIT: Also on
this page are many of the homebrew projects [Alter Ego, Russian Roulette, ...] that I've used as example projects for NESICIDE with the author's permission. They are source packages--don't contain the ROM--but since they're distributed with almost everything needed to build the ROM [you'll need python...] that's an exercise for "the student".
Thank you. That is very helpful!
I always thought it was legal to download a dump another person made if you own the original.
It is illegal to put a dump someone made for download, i.e. distribute it, in the first place.
There's a difference between it being illegal to distribute a dump and it being illegal to receive an illegally distributed dump. Assuming they are both illegal, they are not the same crime.
One theory is that you are both infringing copyright because the "distribution" happens at the sender's side and the "reproduction" happens at the receiver's side.
tepples wrote:
One theory is that you are both infringing copyright because the "distribution" happens at the sender's side and the "reproduction" happens at the receiver's side.
If you downloaded a ROM of a game you own in cart form, it's impossible to know if you downloaded it or dumped yourself, as the end result is exactly the same (so I'd consider downloading a game you own 99% legal). However, the person who uploaded it is doing something illegal, because in the process of getting you a dump of your game, several people who don't have the cart also downloaded the same dump.
If they own the game and let you check it out via "renting" it (See: vNES's legal excuse, which is garbage because the ROMS can be downloaded anyway) then who is more at fault?
snarfblam wrote:
There's a difference between it being illegal to distribute a dump and it being illegal to receive an illegally distributed dump. Assuming they are both illegal, they are not the same crime.
It is. For example in Japan you can download whatever you want, no problem, but for "making avaliable copyrighted material" (in other words upload) you will most likely go to jail or either pay penalty equal about cost of new Lexus.
However, in "copyright race", everyone forgot about "evaluation copy" and "educational purposes"