Is a rom site illegal?

I am curious if a rom gaming site is illegal? One that allows you to play the roms from actual classic games, like the full game Mario on NES, etc.

Thanks for any light you can shed.

 

I'm pretty sure it is. Even when it comes to MAME, you have to actually own the arcade system to own the MAME version, or something weird like that.

 

Yes it is. still copytighted thought maby some are now not anymore copyrighted

 

SOme are out of copyright or whatever, but with the resurgence of classic games on the PS3 store etc roms are seen as even more illegal than they were 3 years ago.

 

If the game is past copyrite, then no, it is not illegal, otherwise yes, it would be illegal.

 

Unless you are 16 years old, you should not be asking this question. The answer is pretty straight forward: Illegal. It is as illegal as any w@rez site hosting w@rez directly on the site. If you are indexing ROMs from news groups, etc., then it is a different matter. If you are hosting the stuff though, it's downright illegal.

 

Clearly illegal of course, to think if you are the owner of such games and somebody stole it how do you react? Considerably some games are old enough like snes, nes, some mame roms but some still retains copyright on it. I've seen some sites distributing roms for free but they remove some roms if a company who owns it contacted them for copyright infringement.

 

ROMs are illegal. So a ROM site is illegal. I'm pretty sure.