Sobek said:
My understanding of US law(Admittedly out of date) is this: You may download and use a ROM, legally, for a maximum of 24 hours, after which you MUST delete it unless you have the physical cartridge for the game.
Misnomer, I'm afraid.
ROM sites used this a lot back in the day but it has no legal merit...well...anywhere.
US law, right now, is bound under the terms of the infamous DMCA(Digital Millennium Copyright Act). It states, in no uncertain terms:
QUOTE
(1) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that -
o (A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof;
o (B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof; or
o © is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof.
* (2) As used in this subsection -
o (A) to '
circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure' means avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating, or otherwise impairing a technological measure; and
o (B) a technological measure 'effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title' if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, prevents, restricts, or otherwise limits the exercise of a right of a copyright owner under this title.
Effectively, since all console games are manufactured in a way to discourage or prevent any copying, it means any such device as can copy a cart or CD is illegal by US law. Even if you own the game, the very act of moving it from medium to medium is illegal. This is also the case in Australia, having signed on to the WIPO nonsense the US is hellbent on cramming down the rest of the world's throats. Canada is also a member of WIPO, but at this moment, at least, we haven't signed on to any such laws and at the moment, medium shifting is legal(so if you're in Canada, a cart copying device, for example, is legit).
Also, it is illegal to distribute or acquire media protected by copyright from anyone except those authorized by the copyright holder in the US. In Canada, you can acquire anything made available publicly, but can not aid in its propagation(you can download, but not make available). Australia, again, follows the American method in regards to this.
So the short of it is: in Canada, under most circumstances, emulation is fine. As long as you don't distribute copywritten material(note that bittorrent counts as making available as you download as well as make available).
In the US, under no circumstances is it legal. Actually, some emulators may be considered illegal in the US(PSX emulators that don't emulate the mechanism that prevents copied discs, for example, could be challenged under the DMCA's anti-circumvention, but then again, so do bolt cutters).
I ain't a lawyer, but I do follow copyright law as a hobby
