emulators

[matsumo itsu offline]

Are emulators legal or illegal, i've heard both that they are and are not.

[TheLQ offline]

It depends by what your talking about and how they are used. Emulators by themselves are not illegal.

Where it gets fuzzy is how you get there. For example, the playstation 2 emulator i tried said that you must get the bios from your PS2, not online. Online it is illegal because its pirated.

Then you have the issue of pirated games. Some emulators can read from images or their own custom format, files which can be simply given to someone else. This is also illegal.

What could also be illegal is how the code was created. Reverse engineering the code is (afaik) against 99.9% of the EULA's out there, and might be illegal. However EULA's are very hard to enforce legally, and no one really pays attention to them. The company could also claim that you violated there copyright laws by using the same programming logic, however that would get messy.

Honestly, if an emulator hasn't been taken down already, you get the required bios or console data from YOUR console, and you use YOUR bought and paid for games, your not going to get in trouble.

[matsumo itsu offline]

Well like what about the SNES? do they also have those, cause i'm thinking bout buying one, fun part will be is finding it, and the game i'm going to get is the good old classic mario.

[smiller offline]

Well, an emulator just reads ROM files and lets you play them. The ROMS itself are illegal, unless someone made the ROM for non-profit purposes. (There are some pretty good ones out there!) There is a good SNES emulator out there somewhere, I remember playing games on it when I was way younger.

Its said that you have to delete the ROM file after 24 hours if you don't own the actual game. The copyrights for the games are still intact. If you have a Wii you can buy them legally, but it's really expensive.

The way you find the ROMs are also important. It is good to get them in a way that can not be traced.

I can not link you specifically to the sites where all these things can be found. I think it's against phpBB's TOS to talk about them on the forums. (Yes, it applies to all forums!)

[Jazzy Josh offline]

Its said that you have to delete the ROM file after 24 hours if you don't own the actual game. The copyrights for the games are still intact. If you have a Wii you can buy them legally, but it's really expensive.

Deleting the ROMs after 24 hours doesn't make it legal. ROMs are only legal for you to use if you own the actual game. If you buy Wii ISOs then you are contributing to piracy, you can't buy them legally except from the store. Emulators are completely legal, but the ROMs aren't.

[Jeremified offline]

ROMs are only legal for you to use if you won the actual game.

This is one of those dangerous typos where it still makes sense when typed incorrectly.

[TheLQ offline]

Now this is where it gets fuzzy with copyright laws.

I'm a firm believer that if you bought something you have the right to have it whenever format you want, unless the format is a much better quality (IE if you bought a dvd you don't have the right to get the Blue Ray version). So if you actually bought the game, getting the ROMs should be fine.

And even then, if you don't attract attention you will not get in trouble. Companies do not have the resources to go after EVERY single person that pirates their software, its only the big dogs that they go after. So you should be fine.