Posting ROMs, but with archiving intentions can lead me to trouble with the law?

10 months ago by MeowerMisfit817 to c/emulation

So, I have a blog that posts about/archives media related to a franchise. And I got a related GBC game's ROM, which I used to record a gameplay to show the game on the post. I'm thinking about also sharing the ROM, but will this lead to me being sued or something?

I don't really wanna get in trouble with law.

sgh 9 points 10 months ago

If you don't have the rights to share that ROM then you likely don't want to share It.

ROM sites are required to not hold a ROM for more than 24hrs or 48hrs, and I believe they rotate their URLs files in order to circumvent abide by that rule.

Frankly, why bother at all? Why not link to a ROM website directly? Unless ONLY YOU have that ROM, then it's more of a risk than a feature.

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wizardbeard 2 points 10 months ago

Unless this is a dump of something that hasn't been catalogued by one of the dump checking groups like nointro, there's no advantage to even risking it.

You can search their database on their website, and you can find full romsets (collections of roms that match their known good file hashes) on archive.org.

And if it's a romhack, wouldn't you better serve your readers by pointing them to the safe downloads on archive.org, to the patch, and to tools to do it themselves?

It's just not worth the risk.

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MeowerMisfit817 3 points 10 months ago

Thanks, friend.

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