Legality of ripping ISOs from Wii disk [closed]

Solution 1:

I am not a lawyer. But it is the general understanding across the internet that your approach of "I'll rip the game myself rather than downloading it" is valid, and is in fact the preferred way to emulate games without running into legal problems. As you noted, downloading ROMs from the internet is the illegal part - it is perfectly fine to rip the game, store the files on your personal computer, and do whatever you want with them (such as using an emulator to access them) as long are you aren't redistributing them.

This Wikipedia article seems to agree with me, at least in the context of USA law.

Solution 2:

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.