Romhacking isnt illegal?!

[bigjoe]

I've heard some stories of members of AGN being threatened with bans for having links to rom hacking sites and open domain roms(or, in other words, roms programmed from scratch) in their signatures. Now I know the issue isnt advertising, because its already been concluded that advertising via your signature isnt in the wrong.

And I also seem to remember it being resolved that anything related to emulation can be posted, so long as there isnt copyrighted ROMs on the site.

Now, I ask, why? Rom hacks are as legal as making modifications of commercial games. Because the actual 'ROM' isnt provided on the site, but an IPS file, which contains no copyrighted material. Just a line of bytes which explains to a program how to apply a patch to a file. So why are people being threatened for having links to rom hacking sites in their signatures?

[MottZilla]

ROM hacking and translations are perfectly legal, however you might get introuble if you remove any copyright notices. Otherwise, so long as you don't distribute the ROM itself you will not likely be sued or anything.

[bigjoe]

Okay , well maybe the threatening member should know that. I wont even say who it is. Everyone knows who cant get enough of threatening people around here.

By the way, I wouldnt say that Nintendo is mad at rom hackers. Why ,I heard they even modeled a level in one of their Super Mario 4 Advance cards after one of the levels in a rom hack. One might say the would have never even made new levels for Super Mario Advance 4 if they didnt know how many fans were interested in playing new levels.

[KJAZZ]

I was under the impression that Rom Hacks were legal if all you provided was the .ips file. It makes sense to me. :shrug:

[bigjoe]

Okay, Im not going to quote him exactly, but Shadowblazer has cleared things up. Rom hacking sites may be posted as long as no copyrighted roms are made available for download. (i.e. if it only provides ips patches and open domain roms) So all of the people who were driven into hiding or told to take links out of their signature, you need have no worries ;-) (This is mostly for JS and Vagla)

[MottZilla]

I think that makes sense don't you? Just don't post anything copyrighted without permission or links to sites that offer such. ;)