are snes roms legal???

[jollyfactory]

Well, I have a website and I had a snes rom section. I shut this area down for a while because I did not know whether snes roms were legal or not.

I have a legal disclaimer and everything, and the rom section is on a server that allows this material. So is it ok to have these on my site or not?

[whkoh]

Illegal in all forms. Really. This disclaimer(or some other form) can be found in many ROM sites:
Disclaimer
You can only ENTER if you agree to the following terms:

You own the actual game that you are downloading.
If you do not have the actual game for the ROM you are downloading, then the ROM must be deleted from your computer within 24 hours.
No ROMS will be sold by you.

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For controversial reasons, if you are affiliated with any government, ANTI-Piracy group or any other related group, or were formally a worker of one you CANNOT enter this web site, cannot access any of its files and you cannot view any of the HTML files. If you enter this site you are not agreeing to these terms and you are violating code 431.322.12 of the Internet Privacy Act signed by Bill Clinton in 1995 and that means that you CANNOT threaten our ISP(s) or any person(s) or company storing these files, and cannot prosecute any person(s) affiliated with this page which includes family, friends or individuals who run or enter this web site.
You are not allowed to create any links to any part of this site, except for "--REMOVED--"
We Reserve the Right to Change this at any time
If and only if you agree to all of the above then you may enter.

So...its up to you to decide whether it is legal or otherwise, but, video game manufacturers strongly insist that you cannot even have one of them, even if you have a genuine version and is using the ROM as a backup.

[retro]

consult a lawyer friend if you got one. or use a frame with a list of roms that you keep on free webspace, using a falsename. always keep your roms on a few different accounts, then when the free webspace closes your account just change the framed page to a new one.

this way you can say the roms are not on your site you just link to a page with links to them.

this should be enough to prevent legal action against you, i know a few people who have used this tactic for a number f years with out problems, but make sure your main site hosts dont object to links to material they consider "inopropriate"

by the way, this is just my opinion, dont sue me if you get sued :)

[jollyfactory]

thanks for that. Yes, the website that I keep the roms on allow me to keep them on as they consider them appropriate. But I still dont know what to do. I'll probably just close that area of the site off for a while.

thankyou!

[Jason]

Moved from General Discussion.