ROMs are legal at least here in the USA. Doesn't stop big companies from bullying little sites and becoming copyright trolls. The Internet archive will not be easily bullied to take down legally archived items thankfully.
The trick is you have to create the ROM yourself apparently. Sharing it is bad. I would assume copies made by anybody would be identical, so it would be interesting to see such a case in court against The Internet Archive, not that I want them to get sued, but would love for them to win if they did.
Nintendo is the most aggressive about ROMs than anybody.
Nintendo is the most aggressive about ROMs than anybody
They are, but they’re also the most proactive in making their old games available on new hardware. It wouldn’t be fair to call Super Mario Bros “abandonware” because Nintendo has done a lot to keep the game alive and accessible to new generations.
In many cases yes, but historically the Internet Archive has enjoyed legal exemptions to protect them, see https://archive.org/about/dmca.php for example
"Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access." can be argued to cover many of the video games they currently archive. You could probably argue this applies to classic nintendo ROM dumps and such as well but I doubt anyone wants to have a 10 year long, multi-million USD court battle with a notoriously abusive legal department like Nintendo's.
