Roms poll

arfink · Post by **arfink** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 8:28 am

I have always wondered what people think about MAME roms, so here is a poll for you all. I personally don't like to download Roms illegally, and I own real arcade hardware which I prefer to play on. I keep the roms so that if my hardware breaks I can fix it. This happened to me a month or two ago, when I bought a Tiger Heli board which was not fully working and needed to burn a new chip for it.

This poll will run for 50 days.

Post by **Skyone** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 8:39 am

Well, it sure is illegal if anything. I could see why you might use them for back-ups, but even that might be shaky;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_em ... gal_Issues
http://www.nintendo.com/corp/faqs/legal.html

ATOMICMAN · Post by **ATOMICMAN** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 8:56 am

there is a lot of abandonware out there that would be legal to own roms of since many games either technically no longer have an owner or are made freeware by a company. and there is a lot of grey area not covered with games not released in the country you live in. you just have to research it...

arfink · Post by **arfink** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 7:15 pm

Well, if a company explicitly states that you cannot have a backup at all then they are of course saying that they intend to support their product forever. Which of course, is not the case with any videogame company I know of. Now, in the case of nintendo I can understand, seeing as how they always seem to re-release their games so you can buy them again...

ganonbanned · Post by **ganonbanned** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 3:39 pm

I use em. there fun.

twilightprincess · Post by **twilightprincess** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 5:55 pm

ganonbanned wrote:I use em. there fun.

im with ya.

Jake_Biggs · Post by **Jake_Biggs** » Sat Apr 07, 2007 6:09 pm

i think someone is scoping out rom pirates O O
0

J/K

arfink · Post by **arfink** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 11:16 am

Nope, that's not the intent. I did this poll mostly to promote awareness that, in fact, Rom use without owning the original copyrighted material is actually illegal. The other reason is to discourage people using this forum only as a place to discuss emulation through MAME, since the real purpose was originally to have a forum for arcade hardware, not emulation.

ATOMICMAN · Post by **ATOMICMAN** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 11:27 am

i dont think ive seen any threads dedicated to the emulation of mame in the forum. most of the threads actually discuss original arcade machines, mame hardware, neo geo, and various other projects. i dont think you need to discourage anyone as the emulators/roms themselves are pretty straightfoward.

ganonbanned · Post by **ganonbanned** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 12:20 pm

can you really use them to Repair hardware? what exactly do you mean, like fixing PCB's?

arfink · Post by **arfink** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 2:54 pm

Oh well, preemptive strike is a little off I guess. It's still an interesting poll. For repairs, here is what I do:

Step 1: I get a board that's busted
Step 2: download the rom for that game and as many repair faq's or schematics for it as you can
Step 3: If any of the ROM chips are bad, use a chip burner to burn new chips from the ROM you downloaded.

JAY · Post by **JAY** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 4:03 pm

arfink wrote:Oh well, preemptive strike is a little off I guess. It's still an interesting poll. For repairs, here is what I do:

Step 1: I get a board that's busted
Step 2: download the rom for that game and as many repair faq's or schematics for it as you can
Step 3: If any of the ROM chips are bad, use a chip burner to burn new chips from the ROM you downloaded.

This is still illegal. In order for the ROMs in your possession to be legal, they must have been made from the original software that you personally own (but there are still limitations to the purpose of those backups and their respective uses).

http://www.gamefaqs.com/features/help/entry.html?cat=24

Thus, the downloading of ROMs that have not been released into the public domain, regardless of the intent, is illegal. Anyone who voted for the two "legal" choices in the poll doesn't understand the law too well.

Jake_Biggs · Post by **Jake_Biggs** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 6:15 am

ok, so we're all gonna burn in hell. at least we'll have some fun before we die.

ATOMICMAN · Post by **ATOMICMAN** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:09 am

Jake_Biggs wrote:ok, so we're all gonna burn in hell. at least we'll have some fun before we die.

hah. i wouldnt be doing this to current games but for games with little or no market value, i dont really care. i speed, i roll through stop signs, so i break the law elsewhere also. doesnt bother me =/

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 2:56 pm

If they no longer sell the game, I see nothing wrong in downloading the rom. They don't make anything even if I bought it on ebay, why should they care?

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Roms poll

MAME Roms. When you download them are they:

Roms poll