I have no idea how Roms or emulators work and i'm a little concerned about getting in trouble if this is considered a copyright piracy issue. Since this isn't considered downloading but rather streaming i thought it my be ok on my part.

Can anyone clarify this for me? I just don't want to get in trouble.

For the sake of this subject lets do Canadian laws, if not USA copyright law is almost an identical substitute.

It's not illegal. I think David wrote something about it. I think that since there's no actual downloading, it's fine.

Thats what I was thinking, since the site hosts the game I can't really get in trouble because I did not actually download the game. I'm still uncertain and I was hoping for some clarity.

No it is not illegal since we are not fully able to download them (if at all). They are premade backups of games allowing us to enjoy the games on the hosts site. No way would you get in trouble for it if it was illegal you would have to be taking part in either th hosting or the providing of the ROM's

Coolbeans, thank you for your help. I am glad I can enjoy your games without fear of legal concern. Thank you again

No problem. My resource is my dad he works for the gov. as a radioactive waste manager so he found out if roms were illegal for me a long time ago and i remember that they are not because of the fact your not downloading them and im pretty sure that the host cant get into much trouble other than the site being either shut down or "reviewed".

Illegal, yes they are but I doubt anyone here is going to get in trouble for it. Technically all games are copyrighted so that means it would be illegal to use someone elses copyrighted work without their permission. If you don't believe me just take a look at ESA's guidelines they have all the info you need.

Just because a site has stuff that you cannot download does not make it legal, many movie and music sites dont have downloading yet they have been in legal battles over copyrights. Though usually, it seems to only happen when the site gets really really big.

The key point here is any copyrighted work is illegal to use without owners consent... but this is the web... copyright infringements is everywhere you look Youtube would be a good example of using copyrighted material, your not downloading stuff but that doesn't mean its legal. They banned me for using copyrighted materials But yeah your safe, the only person who would probably get in trouble is the distributor and since your not downloading anything at all your probably that much safer

Well another thing is if this is hosted in another country (like the host purchased a host service from say Russia) theres not too much America could do due to the fact that it is not in their legal right to shut down a site. Not saying this site is hosted form another country.

General rule of thumb is if it's over five years old they don't really give a hoot. So you're fine on here

-All the games in the Retro Game Room are no longer being sold or distributed and it is assumed that they are all a form of Abandonware.

-Vizzed owns a physical copy of many of the digital copied games in the Retro Game Room, especially potential copyright violations.

-When playing the games on Vizzed, you are 'borrowing' a digital copy of each game and will not have the ability to download the game to your machine.

Source: About Us page

Davideo7 :
For what it's worth, a LOT of the classic Nintendo games are on the Wii Shop Channel. Technically Nintendo is still distributing a lot of these games and making money from them.

I suppose it falls into a loophole since you are technically "borrowing" the game but on a larger scale. Anyways I figure i'm relatively safe since there is no download involved and most of these games are obselete and no longer being distributed.

I'm gonna close this if you feel comfortable with the answer you got.

And to anyone who reads this thread... if you don't feel comfortable with the situation here then simply don't play the games. No one is forcing you to.