roms bios and emulators legal?

[ulaoulao]

Saw this on a wiki, thought the bios bit. Does the mean it can be hosted for download?

United States

As computers and global computer networks continued to advance and emulator developers grew more skilled in their work, the length of time between the commercial release of a console and its successful emulation began to shrink. Fifth generation consoles such as the Nintendo 64, the Sony PlayStation and sixth generation handhelds, such as the Game Boy Advance, saw significant progress toward emulation during their production. This led to an effort by console manufacturers to stop unofficial emulation, but consistent failures such as Sega v. Accolade 977 F.2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992), Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation 203 F.3d 596 (2000), and Sony Computer Entertainment America v. Bleem 214 F.3d 1022 (2000),[1] have had the opposite effect. According to all legal precedents, emulation is legal within the United States. However, unauthorized distribution of copyrighted code remains illegal, according to both country specific copyright and international copyright law under the Berne Convention.[2] Obtaining games through methods not authorized by the developer or publisher is illegal in the United States.

Under United States law, obtaining a dumped copy of the original machine's BIOS is legal under the ruling Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc., 964 F.2d 965 (9th Cir. 1992) as fair use as long as the user obtained a legally purchased copy of the machine. However, several emulators for platforms such as Game Boy Advance are capable of running without a BIOS file, using high-level emulation to simulate BIOS subroutines at a slight cost in emulation accuracy.

[logoster]

that would be awesome especially considering i doubt my parents would let me mess with the wii to get the bios off of that, lol


(and no, im not 9 or anything, im actually 15)

[Mupen64 Man]

Huh, that sure would save a lot of threads being made.

[ulaoulao]

You know also there is this

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the personal use of copyrighted material, irrespective of how those copies are made, or in what format they are stored - even if it differs from the original, is non-infringing (Sony v. Universal).[5]

Chuck Cochems has put forth the argument that copying a legitimate item of software specifically for personal use with an emulator is legally justifiable under principles established by the Sony v. Universal ruling, particularly with regard to personal use being favorable towards justification under the fair use doctrine.[6]

Now 1) I dont know where EZ is hosted from, and 2) I dont see any ads on this page so I would think this all falls under the fair use.

I'm sure Lefteris_D does not want to allow roms around here, but a bios is not really any different. It looks to me like the real issue with hosting is distributing copyrighted materiel. This is mentioned also on the wiki

However, unauthorized distribution of copyrighted code remains illegal, according to both country specific copyright and international copyright law under the Berne Convention.[2] Obtaining games through methods not authorized by the developer or publisher is illegal in the United States.

--- guessing this includes bios files. Key word here is the copyright, they dont own a copyright forever you know

[Robert]

"Under United States law, obtaining a dumped copy of the original machine's BIOS is legal under the ruling Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc., 964 F.2d 965 (9th Cir. 1992) as fair use as long as the user obtained a legally purchased copy of the machine."

So you need an actual machine in your possession.

"Obtaining games through methods not authorized by the developer or publisher is illegal in the United States."
but not illegal in Australia, where if you can't get what you want, you can buy it from overseas, even if its meant for another market or tv system or region. Region locking is illegal in Australia. Clearly this overrules "methods not authorized by the developer or publisher".

Last thing to remember is this site (being .com) is registered in the US, and is therefore subject to takedown by the FBI. So, you don't want to do anything to provoke their ire.

[ulaoulao]

Why did you just re post a quote that was posted above?