You could have done a lil research, then you wouldn't be calling yourself ignorant

And yes, it's 100% illegal for you, since you don't own the arcade machines, if you did, then it would be perfectly legal to download the MK rom set or dump it yourself.

It is legal if you own an actual copy of the game, or if you erase the game of your computer 24 hours after downloading it.

Thanks for the polite and honest replies, I posted a similar question somewhere else and got flamed.

Anyway, would it be illegal for either one of you to supply a link to where I could Download MK Arcade roms if I had intentions of deleting them? I miss the older games.

I think there's a forum FAQ somewhere....but even if there was any, posting the link would still be highly objectionable here (while not really illegal).

Okay, I greatly appreciate the help you gave me. Thanks.

And software backup laws in the past specified the software remaining in the same format, so if you own the arcade and download, the format would be different so chances are it'd still be illegal. But, I haven't consulted a lawyer recently to double check that.

Hehe, you people... Don't tell me you didn't piss your pants the first time you saw MK 2 playin arcade perfect on your PC...
Peace

I was kinda orgasmic about it

Actually that 24 hour "law" was made-up by a website and it seems like it turned fashion. EDIT: Since I only got home now I can elaborate on this a bit more. There is no "you must delete in 24 hours" law in regards to electronic piracy. It was made up by a website to make it seem a bit more legal than it really was to distribute ROM images, so that people would still download them and use their emulators with no concerns (as if people have any concerns regarding this anyway...). Apparently many websites liked the idea and virtually all websites that distribute ROMs nowadays post the message "you must download in 24 hours if you don't own the original". Some of them it's probably because they have no idea that law doesn't exist, others do it purposefully. If you think about it it really doesn't make any sense. ROM images are usually from commercial games and not from any shareware products, hence it's not "try before you buy''. If you download a ROM image and you don't own the original then it is illegal for you to be in posession of that image, but it's also illegal for the website that distributed it, or whatever source you used to get it. The only legal way of obtaining a ROM image is to dump it yourself. The "24 hour" rule is like saying it's ok to have 3kg of heroine if you dispose of it within 24 hours. Does it make any sense?

It's just plain and simple, not legal, ever. The first commandment of the law is "Thou shall not have cocain." For eletronic piracy it's "Thou shall not download roms."

Matt

well mk2kungbroken, i know you play mame online. so if you didn't dump the rom images yourself, aren't you illeagal? i know you probably could care less, but you seemed AGAINST it with your reply.

Trust me he is not against it, its practically a reason for living.

i'm all for it

Hahaha.

Who me? Download roms? You must be thinking of some other MK2KungBroken.

Matt

Playing arcade ports on MAME probably isn't as illegal as saying you're going to make an arcade perfect port of a game and getting the final version of MATII instead.

Emu away.

Well, since most of you seem to be fairly experienced with MAME and ROMS, Let me ask you a hypothetical question...>.>

Let's pretend that I have ROMs of MK1,2, and 3, and we'll say I tried to play them on MAME, and they work great, except they seem slower than they should be, and the sound often repeats itself (For example, when I Hypothetically shoot a projectile, it makes the sound effect for it twice). Any idea how one would go about fixing this problem, assuming they had the ROMs..?

..........That was fun.

If you don't play the games online, it should be just fine

1- Get a faster machine.

2- Use Fastmame instead.

3- Open/edit the file mame.ini (I'm assuming have already created one), goto "### Mame CORE sound options ###", and change the "resamplefilter" value to 0.

Mame.ini file? How do I go about creating it? And where can I get Fastmame?

Sorry about all the questions, but I'm pretty ignorant about it all, I just learned what MAME was a few days ago.

http://www.geoshock.com/

If you're gonna use fastmame, then the ini file will be fastmame.ini. In order to create it, goto command line, move to the directory where the fastmame executable is stored and type fastmame -createconfig

Presto.

Yes, the "Law" about 24 hour,s use of Roms Legal is bullshit.

Downloading Roms is illegal even if you have the Original game.

I think it,s not 100% Legal to have the Rom even if you have the Original Hardware, because a Software "copy" of a Hardware (Jamma Board, Cartdrige whatever) is not Legal as a pure software backup.

The only true Legal roms are the Roms in Classic compilations like Midway Arcade Treasure, Namco Museum ect. or Official MAME Arcade Cabinets that have buyed a very expensive Lizens.

But I dont think that anyone how download some old roms like MK games will get trouble.

The only real endangered people are creater/hoster of big rom sites, or someone who host a server with tons if Roms ect.
Or maybe people that sale Rom CD,s on ebay ect.

I was watching CNN Headline News and one of the Video Game Expert was talking about MAME.He said MAME is legal but some games aren't legal.Games that are still making money are illegal to download.So it's okay to download and play older games.

I guess they count like Abandonware, where technically nobody owns them any more? I'm not sure if any of that stuff is legal either. Games just being old and not making money any more doesn't necessarily mean they are free, for instance Nintendo will still jump on people for old NES games even though they don't really sell them any more (as can be seen in the recent washington case banning the import of bootlegged NES games in Power Player units).

I think there's only like 3 "legal" roms, and they are all on mame's official website. They list them as such. They are very old, tiny games:

Gridlee © 1983

Poly-Play © 1985

Robby Roto © 1981 (happens to be a Midway game)

I don't know if any other games have made it to the list, but I'm sure they would have updated.

Matt