Legality of downloading iso

[Vernon9398]

Hi guys! I know downloading iso's from site xxx is illegal but what if you have no friend with a psp (all of them have ds or similar nintendo devices) and your psp is busted that you cannot rip iso's from the umd's you own. So does owning umd's allow you to legally download roms?

[TheDax]

I'm not a lawyer, but I've always understood it to be illegal unless it's your own disk that you've ripped. In some countries like the USA, though, it's not supposed to be allowed to rip your own disks at all, but as far as I know, there's no legal precedent for it, so it's a gray area, but I don't see why anybody would care if you're not spreading the game on the Internet, and merely using it to play your investments (i.e., games) on phones, PCs, or whatever.

With all that said, even if it may be legal in some places to download ISOs or ROMs if games you already own, we still need to keep this site neutral and on the side of not discussing possibly illegally-downloaded games.

Other opinions are, of course, welcome.

[Vernon9398]

(06-23-2014 03:29 PM)TheDax Wrote:  I'm not a lawyer, but I've always understood it to be illegal unless it's your own disk that you've ripped. In some countries like the USA, though, it's not supposed to be allowed to rip your own disks at all, but as far as I know, there's no legal precedent for it, so it's a gray area, but I don't see why anybody would care if you're not spreading the game on the Internet, and merely using it to play your investments (i.e., games) on phones, PCs, or whatever.

With all that said, even if it may be legal in some places to download ISOs or ROMs if games you already own, we still need to keep this site neutral and on the side of not discussing possibly illegally-downloaded games.

Other opinions are, of course, welcome.

thanks dax!

[coolbho3k]

It could be argued that ripping your own ISO in the USA is even more illegal than downloading it, because by ripping an ISO from any modern game system, you're violating the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause (the same clause that made it illegal to unlock your own cell phone until a few weeks ago when an exception was signed into law). By downloading a game, you're only *receiving* an unauthorized copy of the game: legally, it's similar to reading an unauthorized copy of a book, or sitting in a bar playing a song that it doesn't have the rights to play.

The reason people get sued in civil court for downloading music and movies is because they were also distributing the work as well (using peer-to-peer file sharing services). I don't recall anyone getting sued for merely downloading a work.

The DMCA (and copyright law in general) is pretty fucked up that way.

[ZeroX4]

idk how outside of europe from where im from but here as long as you have (original cd key,disc, or just simple transaction log) to prove that you own original copy now 1 here police or judge would ask you how you get copy of program, game, any other data on ur HDD cause proving that you did pay for it gives you right to have as many copies of it on HDD as you wish well at last as long as it dont violates EULA