What are commercial Roms?

[glitch]

yaustar, thx you basicly reinforced the jist of what I was trying to get at and apparently it flew over RedKings head..... as did your comment.

-.- this may not be worth discussing anymore.. but here it goes....

READ THE D@MN COPYRIGHT NOTICE OF YOUR FREAKIN GAMES and the TOS. Also read the DMCA and the Fair Use acts and educate yourself before you post again.

And Steam can do whatever they want they made their TOS for their game NOT the COUNTRY or anyone else.

So once more in the old days Fair Use pretty much said you could make a copy of anything you want and even if it has copy protection, your allowed to circumvent it due to you owning it and it falling under Fair Use, so backup your VCR tape? completely legal

Then in 1998 the DMCA came into play and companies were able to use it against Fair Use. Now instead of it being plain and simple it goes like this "Now it says you have a fair use as long as you don't employ certain technologies." And guess what those certain technologies include RedKing..... so please read the DMCA and Fair Use before dishing out any more BS in these forums.

And for your information, know it all, I am from the US, Texas in matter fact. And you should have recognized the word "OUR"(meaning we and myself) when I was talking about illegal immigrants and obviously not the immigrants in the UK or europe because majority of those contries deal with online VAT tax and I specificly said "besides the store tax and maybe not even that if they order online"

At any rate this tid bit right here

"If you are member of any antipiracy or related group or organization you cannot enter this site and view any of site contents. If you enter this site and do not agree with current terms you can not provide any treatment of our hosting ISPs, organization or any persons storing this site information because your actions will be estimated as violation code no. 431.322.12 of the Internet Privacy Act from 1995."

is 100% BS, it was a hoax, an attempt to make it look like what they are doing is legal to one the visitors and two their own hosting company. What you say doesn't have to be true as long as people believe it and most hosting companies will probably let it be, as long as it appears legit they don't care as long as your paying for it and they don't get sued. But there have been a number of host to drop sites like those due to getting cease and desist orders.

Also fine example of the DMCA in action would be www.cherryroms.com , notice how some roms are downloadable but a lot of them aren't? Such as the mario games? That is because those companies have specificly expressed that they will protect their copyrights and they will persue offenders....some offenders at least.... not that the ones that are avaliable to d/l are any less copyrighted but some companies have gone away and others have specificly said they no longer care about their no longer selling games and encourage its distribution aka ID soft would be an example. And even if a company goes away technically their stuff they copyrighted or patented is still upheld. Copyrights cannot be lost, Trademarks however can be.

BUT for the most part due to how Fair Use and the DMCA is inturpeted by a judge, things can get VERY GREY. But to give everyone re-assurance the one with the most expensive lawyer usually wins........

For more info here you go

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
http://inventors.about.com/od/invent...nt_protect.htm
http://www.answers.com/topic/genericized-trademark

happy reading j@ck @ss.......

maybe I am wrong bout all that....but I doubt it..... =)

and yes all this was specificly aimed towards RedKing, and copyrighted by me glitch©

[yaustar]

i can tell your an american by your hypocrisy and YOUR knowledge of copyright (yet your not as bad as those people who are like "i dont know what a rom is, so im saying its bad to "downgode" 'em 'n whut nut")

you said "I am also assuming that downloading copyrighted games is illegal regardless if you own it or not" i dont know if you know the definition of "copyright" and "own" but you should look them up... ok? thx!


EDIT: im going to quote you once more "I am also assuming that downloading copyrighted games is illegal regardless if you own it"

TELL THAT TO THE PEOPLE THAT MADE STEAM!!!!

Actually I am British. Read the copyright on your games/media. It tells you what you can and cannot do with that material as long as that copyright is still valid. There isn't anything more to it.

From the instruction manual of a game:
"The unauthorised reproduction of all or any game part of this product and the unauthorised use of registered trademarks are likely to constitute a criminal offence."

An rom image off the net is most likely an unauthorised copy therefore is illegal as per the copyright notice/TOS.

Now, fair use policy comes into effect here on 'backing up' media and is different from country to country. My understanding is that, a backup copy is only legal if you made the backup yourself under fair use. Downloading a copy is obviously not creating a backup yourself so therefore it is illegal. However as mentioned earlier, it is an extremely grey area.

Steam is completely different as you are downloading an authorised copy of a game from Valve. My wording in my previous reply was probably a little inaccurate in that respect.

Another example of authorised media downloads because either the copyright has expired or the copyright holders have authorised the site so they can host them is http://www.c64.com/ .

Also if you are going to quote someone then at least finish the sentence.

I am also assuming that downloading copyrighted games is illegal regardless if you own it or not since you have not made a copy yourself for backup purposes. This part however is an extremely grey area.

That in itself makes a big difference under fair use policies.

Also, if you are old enough to remember it, the story of mame.dk and unauthorised hosting of roms. If you don't then don't worry about it.

I also propose a lock on this thread before it gets messy.

[glitch]

yea that is funny

I am American and yaustar is British and RedKing said the opposite bout us two...

yea I did not mean for my statements to be so long winded, too bad I couldn't keep it short and to the point.... like you do.... but at any rate he now has plenty of references to clear it up, I don't see much of a rebutal.

And yea I probably could have done without saying ja but it was just too tempting, it just sounded good lol.

[lander777]

Long live governments too afraid to reprimand the people!!! <------Canadia!!!

[Kaiser]

I also propose a lock on this thread before it gets messy.

I agree. The original question has been answered. The rest of the thread is pointless legal chatter. Any one into emulation should know whats legal and whats illegal by now.

I'm taking it your british, the way your talking...

In america the laws are different and these website are "legit" in america. And in America there is no "illegal manner" unless you like broke into some ones house to download a commercial rom... THAT would be an "illegal manner" or if you held a gun to someones head and made them burn you some commercial roms onto a disc.. i think that would be an "illegal manner" but in the U.S. to download an EXACT copy of your own game.... 100% LEGAL!!!!

If you ARE an american, then your being stupid... its 100% constitutional to Download commercial roms because YOU run your government... not the other way around!!! if we did the LEGAL thing and took a VOTE... EVERYONE would vote YES to download commercial roms!!!
(sorry things arn't the same in the UK please dont get offended your country is great too!!!)

and illegal immigrants... i think they're dumb.. why dont they just like "sign in" at the border or whatever.. i dunno, i think your pretty much right about that...

There is so much wrong with this post I don't even no where to start. Both glitch and yaustar are right.