How legal is this?

As I was saying in the title, how legal is rom hacking? I am thinking about making a rom hack, and I would like to make sure it is completely legal. Also I own the game I would like to hack.

If you own it and bought the game yourself it should be legal, as long as you don't try to distribute it in a gameboy cartridge or something like that.

If you get the ROM image from your own cardridge it should be legal.
Nintendo hasn't really done anything against romhacking yet. The actualy problem is the piracy of all the games, so if you don't download or upload ROMs you shouldn't get in trouble.

Truality said:

However owning a ROM is not legal, not even if you own the game. Downloading is considered illegal. If you're that desperate for legality, find a way to dump your game cartridge.

But this is the internet we're talking about, so give it a shrug.

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Welcome to Earth, where not every country is subject to the same laws.

You're hacking games owned by Nintendo. Of course it's illegal.

It's as legal as you make it.

I don't think Nintendo really cares that much.

As long as you're not trying to sell it over a public and easy-to-find location such as a well-known website, they probably won't care in the majority of cases. They still reserve the right to tell you to knock it off as soon as they catch wind of something they don't want happening at all, though.

I guess they hold the Copyright = the right to copy. So if you copy their games you would hurt their copyright and by that they could accuse you. But in general nobody gives a freak as long you don't make money. Because THEY want this money. So as said, the greater problem is piratery.

Hm, I bought Ruby by myself, and I did "not" download it additionally to play it on my PC, so I think that is alright.

ROM Hacking isn't illegal, but it is to download the ROM, regardless of whether you have the cartridge or not.

Downloading roms is illegal. This is what it says on nintendo.com:

There is a good deal of misinformation on the Internet regarding the backup/archival copy exception. It is not a "second copy" rule and is often mistakenly cited for the proposition that if you have one lawful copy of a copyrighted work, you are entitled to have a second copy of the copyrighted work even if that second copy is an infringing copy. The backup/archival copy exception is a very narrow limitation relating to a copy being made by the rightful owner of an authentic game to ensure he or she has one in the event of damage or destruction of the authentic. Therefore, whether you have an authentic game or not, or whether you have possession of a Nintendo ROM for a limited amount of time, i.e. 24 hours, it is illegal to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet.

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ROM hacking, on the other hand, is perfectly legal. Nintendo couldn't care less about hacks...unless you're selling them. For perfect legality, your rom must come from your own game cartridge.

It is illegal, yes. But then again, people have been doing it for at least the past five years. Not to mention the Mario hackers, etc. etc. I'm sure, if you don't sell it commercially, Nintendo will probably let it slide. But don't worry, I've been hacking for three years and I'm fine :3

Normally downloading copyrighted content is not legal, and I'm sure if Nintendo noticed about ROM Hacking... then I'm sure they'd take action against it. But since these things are hardly even noticeable for them (since they mainly have to work on their software and the stuff in their server in the headquarters either in the United States, Japan, Europe, Australia or any other country), it's not likely they'd notice ROM Hacking anytime soon, unless someone mentions it towards Nintendo. Knowing what most gaming companies are like with expecting their profits (which would be why I'd be sticking to Free Software most of the time and editing the payed software, because who needs to pay for something that can be distributed for free?).

There's no real need to worry about ROM Hacking or even downloading ROMs (or any kind of software). 'Cause it's all about sharing things with others, right? I always download ROMs and ISOs 24/7, it's all about researching and finding new things on certain ROMs or ISOs to then figure out how to edit them and look into them with a hex editor like HxD. Like I'm considering on creating fan-made titles for the Fire Emblem games that wern't released outside of Japan, so that way it can give those games that feel of it being as close to how the English editing team do it. Hacking new ROMs and ISOs always feels like a brand new adventure that will help shape the world wide web and it's free speech. :)

As long as you own the game and game console yourself, it's perfectly legal, as long as you don't put all that data in a cartridge and start selling it in anyway for your own profit.

The hacking itself isn't illegal.
As for the ROMs, well...the Internet's going to have them forever and always.
So long as nobody links them etc. etc. it remains a grey area.
Just don't worry about it.

You should be fine unless you're uploading the actual ROM. I don't think the patches themselves are illegal, since it's just changes you made and not the actual game.

However, you should probably be careful if SOPA passes. I'm not completely sure about this, but it might get you in trouble.

SkyStar said:

As I was saying in the title, how legal is rom hacking? I am thinking about making a rom hack, and I would like to make sure it is completely legal. Also I own the game I would like to hack.

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Well, regardless of you owning the game or not, downloading ROMs is illegal. What isn't illegal though, is making a backup of your ROM from your cart onto the computer. But both of the previous methods will give you the exact same file. So, it's your call there...

After you have the ROM, you can do with it as you please, this is fully legal, but when you distribute your hack, don't include anything from the original ROM, or else it is illegal, you would do this by sending a binary patch file... IPS seems to be the preferred method around here.

to be completely honest, I don't think anyone would do anything about you ROM Hacking. Especially if you don't "ruin" the experience for other players. That is a quote from Microsoft with XBOX LIVE. They say that you can hack all you want, just keep it off the internet.

I bet the same applies for this Pokemon game. Just don't spam it on the internet and you should be fine. ;)