There are legal issues about ROMs and emulators.
The reason why I'm posting this is because I believe that this issue has already been resolved and I want to get direct information about it.
This is how I believe:
Software is protected by copyright that lasts 75 years after author's death.
Hardware is protected by patents that last 15 years after issuing.
This means that all hardware before 2000 is legal to be modded.
By default, ROMs can only be dumped if you are the copyright holder or the license grants the permission to do so or if you already have the game.
However, the evil greedy License Agreements have bigger power over the third default. Nintendo explicitly forbids all ROMs on their legal site.
Forbidding emulators is however beyond their control because the patents have expired.
Now I don't know what exactly is actually legal. Can you help me? Please correct me if there's some incorrect about what I said. I've seen Mario ROMs and Mario hacks and they are all so awesome and I don't want to throw them away because they're derivative work.
The reason why I'm posting this is because I believe that this issue has already been resolved and I want to get direct information about it.
This is how I believe:
Software is protected by copyright that lasts 75 years after author's death.
Hardware is protected by patents that last 15 years after issuing.
This means that all hardware before 2000 is legal to be modded.
By default, ROMs can only be dumped if you are the copyright holder or the license grants the permission to do so or if you already have the game.
However, the evil greedy License Agreements have bigger power over the third default. Nintendo explicitly forbids all ROMs on their legal site.
Forbidding emulators is however beyond their control because the patents have expired.
Now I don't know what exactly is actually legal. Can you help me? Please correct me if there's some incorrect about what I said. I've seen Mario ROMs and Mario hacks and they are all so awesome and I don't want to throw them away because they're derivative work.