Emulation = Prison? NOT promoting piracy just wondering.

[Stg]

I actually make ISOs of physical disks I own because while I own the physical copy, the disk can become scratched which makes it unplayable. Also, given the fact I still have a NES/SNES/N64/PSX/et al hooked up, it's quite a pain in the ass if I get a random itch to play an older game that I don't keep out - one that is still locked away in storage with the majority of my collection. So with an emulator, I can just download the ROM and play it on my PC or even toss it on my home theater PC and play it like I normally would, except instead of holding the native console controller, I'm using a PS3 or 360 controller.

 

[ThePreyApproaches]

If they're analogue triggers, they're not actually buttons, but rather treated like an analogue stick, or sticks. Even if emulators do recognise them, sometimes pressing both will cancel them out.

But it recognizes the sticks but not the triggers!

 

[sageoftruth]

I think that if:
1) A game is no longer commercialy available (and by that I mean the only way to buy a copy is from a guy in ebay who sells in 200%+ the original price.
2) The game or the console it's on is not supported in your region.

Any of them justifies emulation. If you can't buy it from a store it's the publisher's fault for not renewing in face of demand. Games are art, so there is a justification for seeking it when it's not available.

I agree. As some people mentioned above, it depends on the country, but I've been able to legally download manga for free simply because it wasn't for sale in my country. As you said, if there's no other way to get it, knock yourself out.

 

[Rozalia1]

I've never done it before, nor has it crossed my mind to until recently where I sort of thought about it to reach out to extremely rare (and pricey) games I'll never play without going through an insane hurdle. All my friends discourage me though, saying it'll get me in prison or worse...

Just making sure before I think of doing anything dangerous or stupid is all, since people here are experts.

Emulators themselves aren't illegal but downloading ROMs/ISOs over the internet and playing them is. Some say you owning the game means you can download off the net no problem but that isn't exactly true. You can download a game you've personally digitised, making it available to others is illegal of course.
Some emulators also require a BIOS and its also illegal to play an emulator without a BIOS extracted from your owned console.

As for enforcement there is very little risk like most of these things... however occasionally they do decide to make examples of people so its not impossible.

Don't really know the legality of Emulation, just that every site i've been to specifies that the emulator is only meant to be used if you purchased the game first.
In my case, i've been playing games and downloading roms for games I never purchased for years; playing Persona 4 now.

Come on now that is basically saying "I pirate and have been doing so for years". If the escapist doesn't give a warning out for that than it really will be a free for all.

I think that if:
1) A game is no longer commercialy available (and by that I mean the only way to buy a copy is from a guy in ebay who sells in 200%+ the original price.
2) The game or the console it's on is not supported in your region.

Any of them justifies emulation. If you can't buy it from a store it's the publisher's fault for not renewing in face of demand. Games are art, so there is a justification for seeking it when it's not available.

None of those legally justify you. A company has no obligation to make the product available to you, nor is actually impossible for you to acquire it.
A lot of Japanese games aren't made available to me today, I can still play them legally very easily at no extra cost to myself.

I dont consider software emulation to be piracy so long as you own a copy of the software you wish to emulate.

I also dont consider it to be piracy when a game cannot be purchased anywhere. They cant lose money on something if theyre not selling it anyway.

If that happens to include the massive swathe of PS1, PS2, Xbox and N64 games that we are probably never going to see again, then by all means, go nuts.

What you consider is quite irrelevant, it is what is that matters.

 

[Rozalia1]

I'm pretty sure the creators can't sue you for using content that they don't even sell in your country, but I don't knnow the legal ramifications.

Also, while you can say that you can import it, assuming you speak the native language, I live in Israel, importing cost gets insane pretty fast. For ps2 games I had to hack the console just to play the original games from the USA (damn NTSC/PAL) and not everyone are wealthy enough to buy a game (60 bucks), import it (20-30 bucks) and have a modified console (one time 100 bucks, potentially risky and illegal).

Depends where exactly we're talking about.

Outside old consoles and the 3DS you can always digitally download them if you don't want to import physically (though Vita requires another memory card).

 

[loa]

It's a gray area. Another service problem that will never be addressed through official channels because everyone is too scared/complacent to have an actual discussion about it.
You can't even really talk about it here.

 

[llubtoille]

It's civil, not criminal so no chance for a prison sentence, however you could be sued and have to pay remuneration to the copyright holder.

 

[Dandark]

I don't think it's illegal to emulate at all. I still have my old PS2 but it's kept in my sisters room, I don't want to play it in there so I have an emulator on my PC. I just put my old discs in and play.

Now downloading the games for free may be technically illegal but I think it's seen as more of a grey area. Most publishers don't care about you downloading old games from the PS1/2 era and some of these games are not even available to purchase anymore. If you want to be on the safe side though I'd recommend using your own old discs or if you don't own older games you can sometimes buy the "HD" remakes on newer systems for some of the more popular old games.

 

[VincentX3]

I like how no one mentions the whole point (For most people in my opinion) of playing games on an emulator is to be able to play them in true HD (or even 4K)

Also being able to download texture mods for games is always satisfying.
Then there's filters just to enhance the image that extra bit more.


I've been playing on Emulators since my early teens and the difference is pretty massive. The fact that I can run any PS2/Wii/GameCube (Everything but current gen and PS3\360) on my PC with a click of a button, sharing the same controller without having to do anything else is a big commodity.

Maybe it's just me (Which I dought) but being able to do all this on the go plus the options that the emulators provide is pretty much the whole point.

Here's a thread that I visit at times on NeoGaf that basically just shares pictures.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=963952

Examples:

The Last Story

Megaman X Command Mission

NDS Game Before & After

You get the point.

If you own the games and have the hardware to emulate them, then do so. The benefits are massive.

 

[NPC009]

In a way emulation is a neccesary evil when it comes to the preservation of games. Sure, there are a ton of retrogames available in the PSN Store and eShop, but there are many more games - good games! - that are not commercially available anymore and may never be again. Developers dissolve, creators die, source code gets lost... Emulation may be the only way to save those games for future gamers.

As for games that commercially available: don't be a dick and buy the game. If it's illegal in your country to pirate it, you're probably well enough off to buy it. Or, you know, just play something else.

And yes, region locks suck, but you know what? Patience is a pretty useful virtue in this case. 15 years ago, Ogre Battle 64 was one of those games taunting me from across the ocean. If you had told me back then I would be able to legally download and play the game for the equivalent of ?12 two console generations later, I would have laughed at you.

 

[kilenem]

I then people who pirate and odn't buy anything at all suck but you shouldn't go to jail for it. I steal from them I go to jail but if they don't pay taxes nothing happens them fuck that.

 

[Robert Marrs]

One thing to consider with emulation is the at this point the devs and publishers get nothing regardless. If you buy a ps2 and some ps2 games sony gets nothing its all 3rd party at this point. I've yet to see any of them complain about emulation or roms and the chances of you getting in trouble for downloading and using them is probably 0% unless you live in a country with worse copyright laws than the USA. I think its safe to say you can use any emulator out there without worry of legal problems.

As far as pirating more recent games the chances of you getting in trouble for it are still very slim. Its the uploaders and the server dudes they go for not the millions of downloaders.

 

[Robert Marrs]

If they're analogue triggers, they're not actually buttons, but rather treated like an analogue stick, or sticks. Even if emulators do recognise them, sometimes pressing both will cancel them out.

But it recognizes the sticks but not the triggers!

You just have to use a different controller plug in. I had this problem with some. Depends on the controller but for my xbox 360 controller I use the xinput plugin and the triggers work fine.

 

[Rozalia1]

I like how no one mentions the whole point (For most people in my opinion) of playing games on an emulator is to be able to play them in true HD (or even 4K)

Ah yes. "Free" games isn't the reason, people just want to enhance the games they legally hold.
Just like how all those pirates downloading games are just demoing the game... they're all perfect upstanding folk like that.

One thing to consider with emulation is the at this point the devs and publishers get nothing regardless. If you buy a ps2 and some ps2 games sony gets nothing its all 3rd party at this point. I've yet to see any of them complain about emulation or roms and the chances of you getting in trouble for downloading and using them is probably 0% unless you live in a country with worse copyright laws than the USA. I think its safe to say you can use any emulator out there without worry of legal problems.

As far as pirating more recent games the chances of you getting in trouble for it are still very slim. Its the uploaders and the server dudes they go for not the millions of downloaders.

Actually Nintendo is infamously anti-emulation (that they don't sell). A lot of things regarding emulation legality is due to them... well a lot of things of that nature are due to them from that period where they were the all powerful overlord.

 

[Rayce Archer]

As an old-school emu-geek, allow me to explain the full legality of emulation! This will be long.

Possessing ROMs

Emulated arcade and console games are stored as images of the cartridge or disc on which they were stored. These are called ROMs or ISOs (for discs). Arcade games can be made up of multiple roms stored in separate chip clusters but this is uncommon in older home consoles.

It is legal to own Roms in the following ways, without question:
-You have legally purchased the physical media containing the rom, be it a cartridge or a whole arcade cabinet
-You have been legally sold the rom by its license-holder

Fair Use tells us that it is legal to own roms of any kind if there is no other reasonable way to preserve the media within. For instance, if tomorrow every copy of Nightmare in the Dark is smashed and it is pulled from any online channels through which it can be bought, then you can legally download it since otherwise it would be gone forever. In this respect, the modern fad for virtual consoles (themselves just emulators) makes emulation thorny. For instance, you could for some time have made the argument that since no new Sega Genesis are being made, or copies of Sonic 2 printed, that having a sonic 2 rom was okay. Now that it exists on wii and Steam in the ultimate collections, it's not. A simpler way of looking at this is that if you have no way in hell of buying a game, and neither does any other normal person, having a rom is probably fine.

Playing ROMs

There are two sticky wickets in actually playing roms: BIOS files, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the DMCA).

A BIOS is a file that in the original platform on which the game ran, managed the platform hardware. A BIOS in emulation is an easy way to cheat hardware compatibility, because that bios tells the emulated system how to behave. Without a BIOS, you must reverse engineer how the hardware behaved. The following classic consoles require bios files to emulate:
-Neo Geo
-Sega CD and 32x (although there is also a fan-made Sega CD bios)
-Some other arcade boards
-the PSX arcade platform, but oddly NOT the Playstation

Almost all consoles newer than the Playstation will require a BIOS for emulation. The only legal way to own a bios is either through fair use, as above, or the ownership of a physical console (or bios rom card from said console). Most BIOSs include provisions for distribution that require them to be running on original hardware. Fair use can be considered to trump this, HOWEVER...

The DMCA makes it unlawful to decrypt or otherwise violate any copy-protected or encoded media except as prescribed by the owner. This supercedes Fair use in many cases. So if you're playing a NES rom, technically you are bypassing the rom's copy protection to do so, meaning you may be in violation of DMCA. This also applies to using a BIOS, but NOT to reverse-engineered emulated hardware because that is developed from scratch.

Prosecution and Enforcement of the Rights of Developers

Emulation is notoriously hard to regulate, and historically developers have shown little interest in doing so. You as a gamer are almost totally unlikely to be the target of legal action.

Many emulation sites have been in existence for years, some for over a decade, and typically any dispute between distributors and site owners is settled agreeably with cease-and-desist letters or informal requests. By keeping things gentlemanly, the community and developers can coexist without fans suffering. It's a stark contrast to the music or film industry. Of course, NEW titles are defended with much greater zeal as they are still in the market and their emulation is seen to represent lost profits.

There are no laws explicitly barring emulation. The DMCA is not a law, but a set of guidelines for legally actionable behavior. If you are suspected of emulation, then developers and their legal representatives have the following rights in pursuing you:
-They can request access to your ISPs records of your activity, provided at the ISP's discretion
-They can request a court order to examine the contents of your hard drives and other storage if there is compelling reason to believe you are infringing on their rights
-They can take legal action against you for a financial settlement

It would be possible, but almost impossibly hard, to press real criminal charges for emulation, and in most cases a civil interaction with the developer and acquiescence to their (reasonable) requests for cessation should avoid any nasty court experiences. There is even evidence that some developers are emulation-friendly; the ROM for Star Fox 2 was leaked when the game was permanently canceled, developers included emulation instructions on many Dreamcast games, and Sonic Dev Yuji Naka is a notorious fan of emulation, as seen here http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/a-quest-to-find-the-secret-origins-of-lost-video-game-levels/373925/

What the Fuck Does This Actually Mean?

Simply this. First, the greatest legal risk is attached to the following games:
-Anything out now
-Anything currently rereleased in a form identical to its original release
-Anything no longer current but which you could reasonably be expected to obtain (such as PS2 games)

The following are safer to emulate but you may be bound by the constraints of software licensure except where protected by Fair Use, and DMCA may apply:
-Any commercial game old enough that it cannot be found in its original form, or ported in a like fashion to a new platform
-Any game requiring a bios to play

The following games are 100% safe to play:
-Games originally released without any legal restriction (freeware or public domain) so long as your method of playing does not violate DMCA
-Games produced illegally and thus lacking in defensibility (bootlegs/unlicensed games)
-Games old enough for fair use that do not require decryption or copy protection circumvention to run
-Games for which there is no current publisher or right-holder (abandonware)

 

[NPC009]

It is legal to own Roms in the following ways, without question:
-You have legally purchased the physical media containing the rom, be it a cartridge or a whole arcade cabinet
-You have been legally sold the rom by its license-holder

Really depends on where you live. If I recall correctly, in the EU it depends on the manner obtained if it's legal or not. Ripped your own copy and kept it to yourself for personal use only? Fine. Downloaded/copied it from elsewhere? Illegal.

 

[renegade7]

Emulation of a hardware device itself is completely legal. The DMCA is actually on your side here, because it allows for reverse-engineering for the purpose of achieving cross-compatibility of software between platforms, such as getting a GBA game to play on your Windows PC. It's no different than if you were to wire up something that allowed your computer to boot off the cartridge.

Acquiring the data files (ROMs, BIOS images, etc) is another matter entirely. Legally, you are allowed to flash a ROM from a console, cartridge, or disc as long as you do not distribute it, but that's it.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Eh. Unlikely. But in general, when you talk emulation you get into ambiguous territory.

Often you're looking at stuff that falls into the 'abandonware' category. This is a moral grey area. (not a legal one. just as illegal as any other kind of copyright infringement, it's jusf less likely anyone can be bothered to enforce the rules against it)


then there's the technical aspect. Emulation isn't illegal. Quite the opposite in fact. Emulators have some degree of legal protection for their existence.

The key point here though is emulators are legal. Playing a game on an emulator is still a form of piracy though, regardless of the legality of emulators themselves.

And this makes sense, because what is often forgotten is that many things are emulators usec in legal ways.
To a degree, dosbox emulates some (mostly sound) old pc hardware, and software needed to get old games working on newer computers.

The Nintendo virtual console runs off emulation.

many game compilations taken from older systems and run on newer ones... Probably using emulation to do it...

It is commonplace when running old games on newer systems to involve some degree of emulation to make it possible.

But as to what you probably mean, it's a grey area. As I said, it is in the same territory as abandonware. Illegal, but not heavily enforced, and arguably in a moral grey area. (so long as the owner isn't actively distributing it, anyway. Many old Nintendo games are being actively distributed by Nintendo, so that doesn't really count as 'abandoned' for instance)

part of the moral debate around abandoned older games comes down to an argument about preserving old games as something with cultural/artistic/historical value, vs the rights of the copyright holder to have absolute control over their works, including the ability to make them impossible to get.

This is an actual moral grey area, because there are actual valid arguments on both sides. (it also brings up broader questions as to the intent behind copyright laws. By the formulation of older versions of the laws, tolerating abandonware would make sense, although shorter copyright periods would make it less of an issue in the first place. Newer perspectives can reach other conclusions, especially in treating a work as the property of it's creator, and thus theirs to do with as they see fit.)