Trying to clean this spoken text up a bit: Is it legal to use an emulator? 1a) It's probably legal if the reverse engineering was pure. Are roms legal? 2a) People write homebrew roms and release...
Exemplary
and it is not legally clear whether you the gamer can use the emulator even with software that you physically own and legally purchased and for ROMs it is legal to download and use public domain ROMs only it is illegal to download and use so-called active ROMs and here's where we dispel an enormous myth of emulation it is not legal to play a ROM of an active IP game if you downloaded it even if you own the game itself if you downloaded the ROM or received the ROM from a friend and played it you have broken the law but what is not as clear is whether or not you can make a backup of a game that you already own even that isn't necessarily legal if you own a copy of say the Lord of the Rings The Battle for Middle Earth 2 rise of the witch king and you make your own backup copy of that game and choose play it that might be illegal but it isn't necessarily if you downloaded the game but did not make your own copy you have arguably broken the law
Trying to clean this spoken text up a bit:
Is it legal to use an emulator?
1a) It's probably legal if the reverse engineering was pure.
Are roms legal?
2a) People write homebrew roms and release those under various licences, these are probably legal.
2b) If you own a game and download a rom you're engaging in copyright violation
2c) If you own a game and "format shift" it to a rom you're engaging in copyright violation
Copyright law is complex, and so sometimes format shifting is okay (are you making it accessible to people with disabilities for example?) but in general all of the law is so complicated it's hard to know what you can do until you get a cease & desist.
There are two things that I feel people always miss when they're talking about copyright law. The first is how law works in a common-law jurisdiction, where you have the written law which is then modified by the courts in case law. So sometimes we can have an idea of what the law is, but it's a bit of a grey area until the courts make a ruling. The second is that "The Law" is not a monolithic thing, and that there are civil and criminal bits of law.
In England I can download gigabytes of IP - roms, films, tv, books, etc etc - and it's not a criminal offence. The rights holders can sue for damages (which would be the price of the IP I pirated) but there's not criminal offence so I'm not going to be fined or put in prison.
But if I violate copyright as a business (eg, burning films to DVD and selling those) or if I violate copyright so much it distorts the copyright holder's trade (the industry claims a pirate releasing a film before it's been in cinemas can cause lost sales, I'm not sure what the threshold is) then copyright violation becomes a criminal offence.
Another factor for this lack of clarity is that there are international copyright trade agreements but these get written into national law and all those national laws differ slightly - eg some countries disallow format shifting, other countries put a surcharge on recordable media that they use to pay rights holders organisations.
IP rights holders like this lack of clarity around the law. It means they can make true but misleading comments about "breaking the law" (which most people would interpret as "committing a criminal offence").
So, stuff like this is really muddled:
it is not legal to play a ROM of an active IP game if you downloaded it even if you own the game itself
Playing the ROM using an emulator is probably perfectly legal. The copyright stuff has already happened, so what laws are being broken?
Other than prison time being off the table, is a seven figure civil suit meaningfully different to a criminal one for the average person? I know there are very fundamental differences in the legal...
It means they can make true but misleading comments about "breaking the law" (which most people would interpret as "committing a criminal offence").
Other than prison time being off the table, is a seven figure civil suit meaningfully different to a criminal one for the average person? I know there are very fundamental differences in the legal and process side of things, but I feel like the broad strokes that would matter to a “normal” defendant are roughly the same: lawyers involved, court appearances, lots of expense and uncertainty, the potential for life altering consequences. Businesses throw civil suits around with abandon, but to the person on the street I’d expect going up against Nintendo to feel roughly the same as going up against the state for a white collar crime.
Playing the ROM using an emulator is probably perfectly legal. The copyright stuff has already happened, so what laws are being broken?
Probably none, I’d agree, but then I’d intuitively say the same about format shifting. I can see a debate either way about downloading the ROM of a game you own (that logically should be fine, but I can at least entertain a legal counter argument), but if you dump it yourself I cannot see any way to distinguish that from playing it.
Playing a game - whether on a console or an emulator - copies its data just as much as a ROM dump does, but the law glosses over this on the quite reasonable basis that if it didn’t, nobody would be able to use a computer for anything. If we’re taking a hard line that even a personal copy is copying that would be catastrophic for basically all software, and if we’re taking the reasonable position that incidental personal copies are allowed then I can’t see a logically consistent way to exclude format shifting there.
A careful examination of the often misrepresented legal standing of emulation, and a dive into the recent actions of valve and Nintendo regarding dolphin. Great watch well worth the time for...
A careful examination of the often misrepresented legal standing of emulation, and a dive into the recent actions of valve and Nintendo regarding dolphin.
Great watch well worth the time for anyone interested in this issue.
Trying to clean this spoken text up a bit:
Is it legal to use an emulator?
1a) It's probably legal if the reverse engineering was pure.
Are roms legal?
2a) People write homebrew roms and release those under various licences, these are probably legal.
2b) If you own a game and download a rom you're engaging in copyright violation
2c) If you own a game and "format shift" it to a rom you're engaging in copyright violation
Copyright law is complex, and so sometimes format shifting is okay (are you making it accessible to people with disabilities for example?) but in general all of the law is so complicated it's hard to know what you can do until you get a cease & desist.
There are two things that I feel people always miss when they're talking about copyright law. The first is how law works in a common-law jurisdiction, where you have the written law which is then modified by the courts in case law. So sometimes we can have an idea of what the law is, but it's a bit of a grey area until the courts make a ruling. The second is that "The Law" is not a monolithic thing, and that there are civil and criminal bits of law.
In England I can download gigabytes of IP - roms, films, tv, books, etc etc - and it's not a criminal offence. The rights holders can sue for damages (which would be the price of the IP I pirated) but there's not criminal offence so I'm not going to be fined or put in prison.
But if I violate copyright as a business (eg, burning films to DVD and selling those) or if I violate copyright so much it distorts the copyright holder's trade (the industry claims a pirate releasing a film before it's been in cinemas can cause lost sales, I'm not sure what the threshold is) then copyright violation becomes a criminal offence.
Another factor for this lack of clarity is that there are international copyright trade agreements but these get written into national law and all those national laws differ slightly - eg some countries disallow format shifting, other countries put a surcharge on recordable media that they use to pay rights holders organisations.
IP rights holders like this lack of clarity around the law. It means they can make true but misleading comments about "breaking the law" (which most people would interpret as "committing a criminal offence").
So, stuff like this is really muddled:
Playing the ROM using an emulator is probably perfectly legal. The copyright stuff has already happened, so what laws are being broken?
Other than prison time being off the table, is a seven figure civil suit meaningfully different to a criminal one for the average person? I know there are very fundamental differences in the legal and process side of things, but I feel like the broad strokes that would matter to a “normal” defendant are roughly the same: lawyers involved, court appearances, lots of expense and uncertainty, the potential for life altering consequences. Businesses throw civil suits around with abandon, but to the person on the street I’d expect going up against Nintendo to feel roughly the same as going up against the state for a white collar crime.
Probably none, I’d agree, but then I’d intuitively say the same about format shifting. I can see a debate either way about downloading the ROM of a game you own (that logically should be fine, but I can at least entertain a legal counter argument), but if you dump it yourself I cannot see any way to distinguish that from playing it.
Playing a game - whether on a console or an emulator - copies its data just as much as a ROM dump does, but the law glosses over this on the quite reasonable basis that if it didn’t, nobody would be able to use a computer for anything. If we’re taking a hard line that even a personal copy is copying that would be catastrophic for basically all software, and if we’re taking the reasonable position that incidental personal copies are allowed then I can’t see a logically consistent way to exclude format shifting there.
A careful examination of the often misrepresented legal standing of emulation, and a dive into the recent actions of valve and Nintendo regarding dolphin.
Great watch well worth the time for anyone interested in this issue.