people refer to as software piracy. This is copyright infringement in most countries and is unlikely to be fair use or fair dealing if the work remains commercially available. In some countries the laws may allow the selling of a version modified for use by blind people, students, for non educational product or similar. Differences in legislation may also make the copyright void in some jurisdictions, but not the others.

Although the question has not been addressed in court, some journalists have questioned whether such a license is enforceable if a minor completes the licensing dialogue, since minors are not allowed to enter into contracts in some jurisdictions and any contracts they do sign are legally void unless confirmed. However, many jurisdictions do recognize rental and sales contracts to minors made in the regular course of business as being valid, otherwise children's parents could ask for money back after the children play video games in arcades.

One argument for the unauthorized or illegal distribution of console game ROMs is to cite that the Nintendo company no longer produces many of their older titles and does not provide repairs or technical support for their old systems as was promised to customers in their lifetime guarantees. Proponents of this view argue that because of this the number of working systems and cartridges in the world will steadily decrease until there are very few left if steps are not taken to preserve the games by making as many electronic copies as possible. Some proponents of this view also often cite Nintendo's censorship policies as being morally repugnant and claim that buying used cartridges isn't legally paying for the games anyway.

Software pirates who engage in this practice have also illegally modified the ROMs to produce Japanese to English translations of games that were never translated by the company and have also produced alternate translations that are arguably better than the company's official version. Also, there is a process called ROM hacking in which a completely new game is produced by changing the text, graphics and, or rules of an existing commercial game.


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