Legality of ripping ISOs from Wii disk [closed]

I own a Wii Console as well as peripheral parts such as the Wiimote, the Nunchuck and even the Wii board as well as some games in form of physical in store bought disks.

I would like to play those games on my PC using an emulator (dolphin, I suppose) without downloading ROMs from the internet which is obviously illegal.

So I would like to somehow play the games using my already owned disks. I read about programs called rawdump to extract the ISO from the Disk using a special drive.

I also read about CleanRip to extract ISOs using your Wii and the disks directly over a SD Card or USB-Stick.

But I am concerned about legality. This seems to be a grey area. Just the fact that it is called CleanRIP implies its not intended and could potentially violate copyright laws.

What approach should I take? Or does it straight up not matter? Or can I play the games without extracting the ISOs at all? Like just plugging in my Wii or the optical drive and have my pc directly read it off of the disk?

Thank you in advance I hope the question was clear.

nintendo-wii emulation

Best Answer

I am also not a lawyer, but my understanding is that, in the US, this has been a hotly contested legal topic for years.

While the "right to backup" is often considered fair use, under the DMCA it's illegal to break copyright protection (DRM) for any reason. Since Wii discs have DRM, it's not possible to back them up without breaking the law.

I believe EU laws are much more lenient.

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Is pirating Wii games legal?

If you want to play classic games on a modern PC, downloading emulators and ROMs (files ripped from cartridges or discs) is a popular solution, offered by sites such as LoveROMs or LoveRETRO.

Is it illegal to rip your own games?

Emulators are legal to download and use, however, sharing copyrighted ROMs online is illegal. There is no legal precedent for ripping and downloading ROMs for games you own, though an argument could be made for fair use.

Can you burn Wii isos to a disc?

This is preferable to burning Wii backups to disc, mainly because burned discs do not work in newer Wii consoles. If you do want to burn Wii games, you'll need the image files and an ISO burning program. You'll need a modded Wii with a USB Loader program to play the burned discs.

Can Wii games be copied?

There are now computer programs that can effectively copy Wii games. By using a specialized game copying program you can burn a Wii game whenever you want. Once you install this type of software the computer understands the game disc and is able to make copies of it.

CleanRip Tutorial(2021) - Dumping Wii Game to ISO files and Combining them into one

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