Downloading NES ROMS...Legal or Not Legal???

Nintendo has been actively been persuing legal action against ROM sites for well over 20 years. The problems come in with the wierd legal wrinkles ROMs involve.

Firstly, the "It's only illegal if you don't own the original" is actually wrong. It is still illegal even then (in most countries at least). It is only legal for you to have a ROM of a game on your computer if you own the original *and* you make the ROM yourself from your original. As such, downloading the ROM is always illegal, unless you were the one who made that ROM that is posted on the net.

However, because of that loophole, it's pretty much impossible to take action against most ROM sites. There's no way to prove that the site isn't there just for the person who put up the site, as a sort of long-term, portable storage solution for their own ROMs. This is why law enforcement tends to only go after sites that have both the ROMs and the emulators for those ROMs.

Which brings us to the emulators. Most emulators skirt the edge of legality in such a way that they require you to break the law to make them work. While some emulators (almost always systems before the 3D revolution) are legitly made through reverse-engineering (which is legal), most include or require the user to point it to a BIOS image file from the system beign emulated. This BIOS file is illegal to have outside of the original system, even if you rip it from the system yourself.

Here's the real problem. This is how it works in the US and many of the other countries that video game consoles are sold. However, the laws are never identical, and some don't conform to this at all. If the site is based in a country that sees ROM downloading as OK, as there is no simple way for the average end user to make an archival backup (which is allowed by international copyright laws), there's nothing that can be done to the site. Also, at least in the US, most of the details on how this situation is are based on court interpretations of similar media from 30 years ago, and have never really been challenged specifically in the case of video games.

Nes Roms

It's only illegal if the titles are still protected. Copyrights expire over time, and if the company chooses not to renew their copyright then you can legally distribute them for free because no one owns it.

However, I would think that 99% of those titles are still copyright protected.

i like getting all the games i want for next to nothing i'll let everyone else worry about the legality while i play the games these are the sites i use thepiratebay.org and http://www.pleasefeedmywii.com/

You can download complete Wii Games, Software, Music, TV Shows, Movies etc. for Wii Media now surely!!!

For more information about what you are exactly awaiting please check here:

About the downloading, copy and backup service: There are serveral sites providing such download services. They are very excellent on the contents, not only Complete big Wii games like Metroid, SSBB, American Idol and Guitar Heroes etc. But also many movies, Wii tv shows, music and videos much more!!!

All you need is to join one of those sites to download so many resources. So you can download all those media as you wish!

And some sites can provide simple software help you to burn the ISO Games into DVDs, it is very easy and fast. After the instructions by them, you can go ahead to play those games you burned onto your Wii.

Maybe a good review site to those download sites might help you very much on judging which is one is the best for you:

http://www.great-monitor.com/reviews/wii.htm

Good luck and have fun with your Wii!

They won't stop it, simply because they can't. It's illegal, but I dont see why it's illegal either..