One of the YT comments is about how he is not releasing the "ROM dump". Any idea of why he isn't doing this?
>I, myself, am not going to release these ROMs. This isn't the first project where I've dumped a commercial object for some other purpose and been asked to share (see: shairport, for one), and after much thought I conclude - now, as then - that it's not the right thing for me to do in any project. There are legal and professional risks which I'm just not comfortable taking. That's not negotiable.
>But that's not to say I won't help you dump it yourself. I'll have a dump feature in the cart, and I'm sure someone will rapidly archive all the available systems.
By analogy, if the original comment had been "I will not give you a copy of the copyrighted harry potter book, but I can teach you how to use a scanner if you'd like, and I'm sure someone else will scan it" would you say that teaching someone to use a scanner is illegal?
It's actually typically legal to make a backup of a copyrighted item you own for personal use if the original is damaged.
He's teaching people to do something that's typically legal, avoiding infringing copyright by redistributing himself, and commenting that it's quite likely others won't be so scrupulous; I don't see how anyone could reasonably fault him.
I hadn't thought of the 'for personal use' defense, though.
He does claim legal and professional risks as his reasons in the assemblergames forum thread[0] though.
[0] http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/saturn-cd-block-rom-dump...