Well of course they are. Nobody cares, though. The only problem I have with roms and emus is people who say they own the games when they only downloaded the rom. That pisses me off...a lot, cause everything on my game collection page are the games I actually own and nothing else.
Honestly, I use roms as a method of trying the game before I buy it to see if it's good enough or not. After all, I would have never been able to play Gunstar Heroes if it weren't for roms. I'm still trying to buy it to this day.