Gph Activities In Dispute?

[zeldarocks]

I have been wondering about this for quite some time, given the sketchy nature of emulation and GPH's implicit approval of legally-questionable practices through marketing devices primarily used for piracy; could the various consoles be placed under an embargo of sorts should Nintendo et al. ever find out about GPH and their activities?

 

[hardyx]

Emulators are not illegal if you have the original game of the ROM you want play. Besides, GPH consoles not come with ROMS nor emulators inside. GPH consoles are hardware that you can put inside what you want or program for the console you own software. The use of the console is your responsability.

 

[someoneElse]

This is why they will not offer any emulators on funGP, nor have an Emulators section in the Caanoo's menu. Though user-customizable menus would have gotten around that (and gotten rid of some of the menu clutter). Can't recall how the Wiz menu was set up.

 

[Dunny]

Emulators are not illegal if you have the original game of the ROM you want play.

This is incorrect, sorry - it's a common myth along with the old "you can play a ROM as long as you delete it after 24 hours". Even though you have a game in physical form, you are not allowed to own a digital copy without the expressed permission from the IP holder. In some countries backups are permissible, but you cannot play from a backup unless the backup takes the same physical form as the original game, and it is played on the original hardware, again unless the IP rights holder states otherwise.

In and of themselves, emulators are legal if they do not contain any IP belonging to the IP rights holder. In a nutshell, if you wrote all the code and created all the assets then you can distribute it as you see fit.

D.

 

[HunterZ]

Nintendo or whoever is never going to take legal action against an individual user for playing a backup of a game they own. There's no rational way they can argue that they're losing money by allowing people to play backups of old games they already own and that Nintendo is no longer selling (in most cases) anyways.

They also won't likely take action against GPH as long as GPH doesn't do to much to promote the fact that you can run emulators on their handhelds. Even then, they probably couldn't/wouldn't take legal action directly against GPH, since GPH relies on 3rd party distributors like ThinkGeek.com to import their handhelds into various markets rather than selling them directly.

GPH could also easily prove in court that their handhelds aren't being marketed primarily as emulator hosts, as their site has an app store, their consoles come with pre-loaded native games, etc.

 

[gruso]

Nintendo or whoever is never going to take legal action against an individual user for playing a backup of a game they own. There's no rational way they can argue that they're losing money by allowing people to play backups of old games they already own and that Nintendo is no longer selling (in most cases) anyways.

Or you could look at it another way: If they did decide to sue you for downloading their ROMs, do you think they'd bother finding out if you owned the carts, or would they care if you told them? Probably not!

Thankfully moot as they're not chasing individuals at all.

 

[torpor]

There are perfectly legal emulators capable of running perfectly legal ROMs. Oricutron is one, Vectrex is the other, and there are others. Both of these emulators can be safely preloaded on anything and bundled with ROMS which the author has specifically given permission to distribute.

There are *no* absolutes here.

 

[skeezix]

_Emualtion_ is 100% perfectly legal _everywhere_.

"Emulation" is nothing more than running a virtual machine, which is one of the cornerstones of computer science. (ie: Heck, look at Java, which is just as much an emualtor as a SNES emu.)

The only real issues ever are patents (not reallty a big deal for emulation except certain machines), DMCA (in the US and some countries, circumvention of encryption can get you into hot water, and some few games are encrypted.), and piracy - BIOS, ROMS, disks, etc.

So _emulation_ is 100% legal and always will be. But if you have to go torrent down a ROM, then _that_ is piracy. If you own the cart, its still piracy -- someone illegally shared the rOM with you, and you went and got it illegally; if you rip your own ROM, thats up to your local laws and I've no time to detail it ehre today

There are many legal methods to obtain ROMs -- ripping yourself, getting them from CDs you bought such as legal sony Atari emualtor discs for PSX etc, the GB Player cards you used to be able to buy, and many other ways.

In _practice_, if you own a cart, and download it online, no one is going to come after you, but its like crossing the street against a red light as a pedestrian; illegal, buit no one gives a crap. Its _uploading_ that is really crossing the line, or _selling_ which is _seriouly_ crossing the line.

jeff

 

[EvilDragon]

Emulators are not illegal if you have the original game of the ROM you want play.

This is incorrect, sorry - it's a common myth along with the old "you can play a ROM as long as you delete it after 24 hours". Even though you have a game in physical form, you are not allowed to own a digital copy without the expressed permission from the IP holder. In some countries backups are permissible, but you cannot play from a backup unless the backup takes the same physical form as the original game, and it is played on the original hardware, again unless the IP rights holder states otherwise.

You should always state where you're from, as in Germany (and I think this is EU rights, so it should be the same for the whole EU), making backup copies is perfectly legal, when the following conditions are met:

1. You are not allowed to override copy protections. So if a CD or game has a copy protection, you are not allowed to copy it (most older cartridges or PSX games do not have a copy protection, only newer ones have).

To emulate it:

2. You are allowed to emulate it on any system as long as the original system is out of production.

So yeah, playing games on an emulator using the Retrode and an emulator is perfectly legal in Germany for consoles like Genesis, SNES, etc.

 

[u9i]

1. You are not allowed to override copy protections. So if a CD or game has a copy protection, you are not allowed to copy it (most older cartridges or PSX games do not have a copy protection, only newer ones have).

Doesn't the EU version of the DMCA conflict with copyright law (fair use rights), so depending on which the court decides should is more important decides your right to backup/copy your game, or does DMCA just trumph it?

I'm just asking as i have no idea.

 

[christo930]

Emulators are not illegal if you have the original game of the ROM you want play.

This is incorrect, sorry - it's a common myth along with the old "you can play a ROM as long as you delete it after 24 hours". Even though you have a game in physical form, you are not allowed to own a digital copy without the expressed permission from the IP holder. In some countries backups are permissible, but you cannot play from a backup unless the backup takes the same physical form as the original game, and it is played on the original hardware, again unless the IP rights holder states otherwise.

In and of themselves, emulators are legal if they do not contain any IP belonging to the IP rights holder. In a nutshell, if you wrote all the code and created all the assets then you can distribute it as you see fit.

D.

I don't think this is entirely true in the US. But the bigger issue of emulators being released for the Gamepark consoles is just as silly as Nintendo going after PC manufacturers because some programmers write emulators for the PC.
Another thing is that emulation opened up new revenues for the game companies. Emulators created interest for older games and now all these companies are releasing compilation of very old software which was worthless before sparcade came along.