[sunnybunny]

My first thought on this was, "Awesome!" And then my second thought was, "Could this guy go to jail for that?"

It's so sad that a guy doing something as innocent as this could be faced with fines or prison because our legal system is so screwed up.

[enneff]

How could this be illegal? He's not redistributing the work.

[mich41]

If dumping the ROM required him to work around something considered "copy protection" by the manufacturer, he could go to jail for DMCA violation.

In the land of the free, at least.

[rmc]

This is a ROM for an arcade game. It's highly unlikely to be much DRM. Additionally he might not be in the USA.

[DanBC]

Anti-circumvention measures are baked into laws in may territories.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention)

While the ROM might not have much DRM some cases suggest that tools for ripping ROMs, and tools that allow playing of modified ROMs on a console, are probably illegal. (See, for example, the MrModChips cases in the UK.)