Is emulating GBA games legal?

[MoonlightSylv]

I'm just wondering because I would love to play some GBA games on my phone, I don't have any cartridges though as I sold them.

[Godlygamer23]

Emulation is legal I think, but downloading the games isn't.

[manikyath]

it's a legal grey zone.

 

i believe it's something along these lines: its not piracy if you own the device, and own the cardridges you're downloading the roms for. (implied that you could dump the rom yourself, and have the official device for those cardridges to be played with.)

 

not sure how the laws are at somewhere, but in belgium there's a law that allows "copy for personal usage" that basicly implies if a person buys a copyright protected physical (breakable) item, they can make a copy for personal usage in case the original would break or wear out.

 

that said, there's no way those rom websites can check if you own the rom or not, so it's all a bit of a "yeah.. we know 99% of this is piracy, but it's technically a legal practisce".

 

this also comes with a warning that some websites modify their roms for.. reasons i guess? i actually have a gameboy tetris rom that had it's iconic soundtrack replaced by something that to my ears more or less resembles a ripoff of the song used in the early pokemon games' pokecenters.

[straight_stewie]

It's legal as long as you don't get caught. Good luck finding good ROMs or a safe website to get them these days though...

[TheBestUserName]

1 hour ago, straight_stewie said:

It's legal as long as you don't get caught. Good luck finding good ROMs or a safe website to get them these days though...

I can appreciate the sentiment, but that rationale is incorrect. If it were correct, then murder would also be legal until you get caught.  

[straight_stewie]

1 minute ago, TheBestUserName said:

I can appreciate the sentiment, but that rationale is incorrect. If it were correct, then murder would also be legal until you get caught.  

I'm aware that my rationale is incorrect. It's a joke...

Do you really believe that I think that "murder is fine as long you don't get caught"?

[Scruffy90]

4 hours ago, ShadowTechXTS said:

I'm just wondering because I would love to play some GBA games on my phone, I don't have any cartridges though as I sold them.

Emulation is legal. Downloading copyrighted ROMs are not. The expectation is that you create your own Roms or not do it at all

[TheBestUserName]

7 minutes ago, straight_stewie said:

I'm aware that my rationale is incorrect. It's a joke...

Do you really believe that I think that "murder is fine as long you don't get caught"?

There's no telling. There is a large number of children that post on the forum that say all kinds of things and don't know what they're talking about.  The OP asked a genuine question and you posted a response that had no sign of being a joke.  And then the second sentence (about a download source) was actually sound. 

[Theminecraftaddict555]

Emulating games are not illegal but getting roms from websites are tehnically illegal...But of course like stated before it is a grey zone...It is illegal to get those roms but its not enough for you to get sued or have fbi/swat bash down your door..From what I have seen and researched so far there has been no arrest, suing of anyone for doing such a thing but however it is technically illegal though

On 7/16/2016 at 8:56 PM, straight_stewie said:

It's legal as long as you don't get caught. Good luck finding good ROMs or a safe website to get them these days though...

No one has to this point anyway

 

Joke or not, there are several safe websites you can get roms and isos but of course not going to list them due to community rules

 

[Zodiark1593]

If the emulator was developed in a clean-room environment via reverse engineering (meaning illegally obtained or stolen trade secrets and other such information cannot be used during its development ) then it is 100% legal. 

 

As for games, the legal means of obtaining them is dumping the rom from the cartridge yourself.