Mutilator
Member
If it was going to be illegal anywhere it would be the UK, as we seem to obey every regulation etc. the EU throws at us.
Is It Legal?
- Thread starter lhn555
- Start date
Kangal
Member
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2010
- Messages
- 245
I dont belive emulation will ever ever get illegal because its uses are vast. Example, Android or WP7 can be emulated on your desktop and this is not a enthusiast's effort, Google and Microsoft release this in their own will so that developers can begin developing.
And emulating games is not going anywhere, at best it will be illegal to download ROMs and distribute ROMs. Since technically if you own the hard copy, you are entitled to back that up and run it on a hardware of your choosing, they cannot sue anyone for this (at least without getting a bad backlash).
Well usually an emulator can never emulate the OS/game as efficient as the original hardware (with exceptions like 300% speed in GBA), so naturally most people would prefer that (unless the other hardware provides a different service like portability/better controls etc)
@TuxKing
I think Android didn't expect to actually be this popular when launched with the HTC Dream. If they realized this, Google would probably have taken many steps to make sure it was near-perfect at launch and preventative measures against their speed and fragmentation issues. MeeGo has seen Android's mistakes and I hope it will learn from them, but I fear MeeGo will only survive as niche. I just wish I could travel back in time (to 2006) with the whole MeeGo project and the current Android project on a (or several) hard-drives and the combination to a BIG lottery.
1) Get money from lottery
2) Invade J'Rubin's HQ, and tell them how to begin the first Android (UX, hardware etc)
3) Get Google to collaborate with Nokia and HTC
4) Android is a full-fledged Linux distro that requires development on Qt (faster, supports multi-architectures) that is open-source with a user-interface as good as MIUI (iOS4/WebOS/WP7 etc) but UX is deeply customizable exactly on all related devices.
5) To retail any Android phones on a carrier it requires the Google (badge, Market, apps and royalty paid to the project by the OEM)... ie similar deal to what it is now
6) Great times for developers, for OEMs (Samsung, Motorola, HTC, cheap kirfs), for users (they make hardware upgrades with each phone not software) ... not so great times for crApple.
And emulating games is not going anywhere, at best it will be illegal to download ROMs and distribute ROMs. Since technically if you own the hard copy, you are entitled to back that up and run it on a hardware of your choosing, they cannot sue anyone for this (at least without getting a bad backlash).
Well usually an emulator can never emulate the OS/game as efficient as the original hardware (with exceptions like 300% speed in GBA), so naturally most people would prefer that (unless the other hardware provides a different service like portability/better controls etc)
@TuxKing
I think Android didn't expect to actually be this popular when launched with the HTC Dream. If they realized this, Google would probably have taken many steps to make sure it was near-perfect at launch and preventative measures against their speed and fragmentation issues. MeeGo has seen Android's mistakes and I hope it will learn from them, but I fear MeeGo will only survive as niche. I just wish I could travel back in time (to 2006) with the whole MeeGo project and the current Android project on a (or several) hard-drives and the combination to a BIG lottery.
1) Get money from lottery
2) Invade J'Rubin's HQ, and tell them how to begin the first Android (UX, hardware etc)
3) Get Google to collaborate with Nokia and HTC
4) Android is a full-fledged Linux distro that requires development on Qt (faster, supports multi-architectures) that is open-source with a user-interface as good as MIUI (iOS4/WebOS/WP7 etc) but UX is deeply customizable exactly on all related devices.
5) To retail any Android phones on a carrier it requires the Google (badge, Market, apps and royalty paid to the project by the OEM)... ie similar deal to what it is now
6) Great times for developers, for OEMs (Samsung, Motorola, HTC, cheap kirfs), for users (they make hardware upgrades with each phone not software) ... not so great times for crApple.
Magic Sam
Forever Homebrew
Hi,
I've found two interesting readings:
What Nintendo thinks about emulation
Circumvention of copyright protection system in the U.S code
I Hope it helps
Bye, Magic Sam
I've found two interesting readings:
What Nintendo thinks about emulation
Circumvention of copyright protection system in the U.S code
I Hope it helps
Bye, Magic Sam
ledow
Member
Emulation isn't illegal and it can't really be made illegal.
The Wii has an emulator - how do you think most of those completely-legitimately-licensed C64, Megadrive (Genesis), SNES (Famicom), etc. Virtual Console games work on it?
Atari license their old arcade games with the original ROM's in an emulation package that you can buy on Steam today.
Williams also did the same many years ago (I know, because I have the disk somewhere).
Steam, and GOG.com, also have dozens of titles that are purchased as emulated packages using DOSBox.
You can pick up little £10 consoles that play the original Space Invaders or even 20+ Megadrive games, completely legally licensed, from any big store in the UK.
Some consoles are emulators too - for instance, the SuperGameboy contained chips that "emulated" the original Gameboy but worked on the Super Nintendo. The Playstation 2 had emulation code that ran Playstation 1 games, no matter who made the games (but their emulation wasn't perfect so some things didn't run).
RM used to sell a PC to schools in the UK that emulated the BBC Micro so they could move their old software across.
Amstrad officially allow the use of ZX Spectrum ROM's for emulating that particular machine.
Emulation is an inherent part of computing, even the old mainframes used to perform emulation in their tasks. And it's even been ruled in some countries that if a company deliberately makes it so that you have to infringe copyright/trademarks in order to emulate a title that you legally own, that copyright/trademark is basically void for that interoperability/emulation purpose because some companies tried to make it so that to emulate a device you had to infringe their copyright. It didn't stand up, and people were able to copy whatever was required for interoperability / emulation. This has happened with printer cartridges (that would only be accepted by the printer if they contained a copyrighted set of data), games consoles, large software suites, etc. A similar example: The Nintendo Gameboy had a Nintendo logo that was stored on every game. If the checksum of that graphic didn't match the checksum of the official Nintendo trademarked logo, the Gameboy would not boot the game. This is why sometimes the Gameboy would give you a black rectangle instead of the scrolling Nintendo "ping" each time it was booted up - because for some reason the checksum didn't match that time.).
The only possible thing that emulation can catch on is a software patent (assuming that the emulator hasn't been ripped off from someone else, etc.). Most places in the world don't consider those legal or binding even if they are registered. But a tiny freeware utility can step on a software patent, as well as a million and one other pieces of software. Emulators have a long history, back to the very early days of computers. They have been ruled not illegal many, many, many times.
ROM's, however, are nothing more than programs that run on a different processor to your PC. Copying them if you don't officially have a license to use that software is exactly the same as copying Microsoft Office without a license. Some ROM sites put about rubbish about there being a "24-hour rule". It's a lie, there isn't a country in the world that has such rules. Treat ROM's like you would licensed software - if you found a link to hundreds of full versions of Office, Windows, etc. on a site that wasn't Microsoft's and wasn't asking for payment, that's just the same to download as a ROM that you don't have a license for.
The question of other licenses (e.g. if you bought a copy of the Atari game from Steam or own the original arcade cabinet, can you use those ROM's outside the program, or use other ROM's from the Internet for the same game, or even use those ROM's outside of the original device at all etc.) is much, much more dubious and there is no real definitive answer. It's likely that nobody would care if you could produce *some* sort of license but that is in no way legal advice. StarROMs used to sell officially licensed Atari arcade games online but they apparently went out of business. Some arcade / console game manufacturers have relicensed some/all of their ROM's to "freeware for non-commercial use". There's half a dozen of so legal MAME ROM's like that, a few hundred ZX Spectrum games, etc.
Emulation is completely 100% legal, provided that the code itself wasn't made by copyright infringement (e.g. stealing the console manufacturer's devkits, stealing someone else's code, etc.). MAME has never had any legal problems whatsoever, because the manufacturers of the many thousands of machines it emulates know that emulation is legal. The same for MESS and all those console manufacturers. You can even sell emulators that you've made yourself for profit: Nintendo do it with their Virtual Console titles, and I own several completely legitimate paid-for emulators that use licensed technology (Spectaculator and Gerton Lunter's Z80, that between them contain licenses for the ROM code in the Currah Microspeech, the ZX Spectrum ROM's, Romantic Robot's Multiface ROM, Disciple disk interface etc.).
Emulation is fine. A ROM, though, is just like any other game. If you didn't pay for it, and the license says it's copyrighted, and it's not been relicensed as freeware or otherwise, then you can't legally play it. It doesn't matter if it's "just for 24 hours", if the manufacturer went bust 20 years ago, or because you own a similar game on another device.
The Wii has an emulator - how do you think most of those completely-legitimately-licensed C64, Megadrive (Genesis), SNES (Famicom), etc. Virtual Console games work on it?
Atari license their old arcade games with the original ROM's in an emulation package that you can buy on Steam today.
Williams also did the same many years ago (I know, because I have the disk somewhere).
Steam, and GOG.com, also have dozens of titles that are purchased as emulated packages using DOSBox.
You can pick up little £10 consoles that play the original Space Invaders or even 20+ Megadrive games, completely legally licensed, from any big store in the UK.
Some consoles are emulators too - for instance, the SuperGameboy contained chips that "emulated" the original Gameboy but worked on the Super Nintendo. The Playstation 2 had emulation code that ran Playstation 1 games, no matter who made the games (but their emulation wasn't perfect so some things didn't run).
RM used to sell a PC to schools in the UK that emulated the BBC Micro so they could move their old software across.
Amstrad officially allow the use of ZX Spectrum ROM's for emulating that particular machine.
Emulation is an inherent part of computing, even the old mainframes used to perform emulation in their tasks. And it's even been ruled in some countries that if a company deliberately makes it so that you have to infringe copyright/trademarks in order to emulate a title that you legally own, that copyright/trademark is basically void for that interoperability/emulation purpose because some companies tried to make it so that to emulate a device you had to infringe their copyright. It didn't stand up, and people were able to copy whatever was required for interoperability / emulation. This has happened with printer cartridges (that would only be accepted by the printer if they contained a copyrighted set of data), games consoles, large software suites, etc. A similar example: The Nintendo Gameboy had a Nintendo logo that was stored on every game. If the checksum of that graphic didn't match the checksum of the official Nintendo trademarked logo, the Gameboy would not boot the game. This is why sometimes the Gameboy would give you a black rectangle instead of the scrolling Nintendo "ping" each time it was booted up - because for some reason the checksum didn't match that time.).
The only possible thing that emulation can catch on is a software patent (assuming that the emulator hasn't been ripped off from someone else, etc.). Most places in the world don't consider those legal or binding even if they are registered. But a tiny freeware utility can step on a software patent, as well as a million and one other pieces of software. Emulators have a long history, back to the very early days of computers. They have been ruled not illegal many, many, many times.
ROM's, however, are nothing more than programs that run on a different processor to your PC. Copying them if you don't officially have a license to use that software is exactly the same as copying Microsoft Office without a license. Some ROM sites put about rubbish about there being a "24-hour rule". It's a lie, there isn't a country in the world that has such rules. Treat ROM's like you would licensed software - if you found a link to hundreds of full versions of Office, Windows, etc. on a site that wasn't Microsoft's and wasn't asking for payment, that's just the same to download as a ROM that you don't have a license for.
The question of other licenses (e.g. if you bought a copy of the Atari game from Steam or own the original arcade cabinet, can you use those ROM's outside the program, or use other ROM's from the Internet for the same game, or even use those ROM's outside of the original device at all etc.) is much, much more dubious and there is no real definitive answer. It's likely that nobody would care if you could produce *some* sort of license but that is in no way legal advice. StarROMs used to sell officially licensed Atari arcade games online but they apparently went out of business. Some arcade / console game manufacturers have relicensed some/all of their ROM's to "freeware for non-commercial use". There's half a dozen of so legal MAME ROM's like that, a few hundred ZX Spectrum games, etc.
Emulation is completely 100% legal, provided that the code itself wasn't made by copyright infringement (e.g. stealing the console manufacturer's devkits, stealing someone else's code, etc.). MAME has never had any legal problems whatsoever, because the manufacturers of the many thousands of machines it emulates know that emulation is legal. The same for MESS and all those console manufacturers. You can even sell emulators that you've made yourself for profit: Nintendo do it with their Virtual Console titles, and I own several completely legitimate paid-for emulators that use licensed technology (Spectaculator and Gerton Lunter's Z80, that between them contain licenses for the ROM code in the Currah Microspeech, the ZX Spectrum ROM's, Romantic Robot's Multiface ROM, Disciple disk interface etc.).
Emulation is fine. A ROM, though, is just like any other game. If you didn't pay for it, and the license says it's copyrighted, and it's not been relicensed as freeware or otherwise, then you can't legally play it. It doesn't matter if it's "just for 24 hours", if the manufacturer went bust 20 years ago, or because you own a similar game on another device.
Loon
Member
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2006
- Messages
- 357
Custom Processing Unlimite said:
I agree that should be true but sadly it is not.
Just look at the legal status of NDS flashcarts in the UK / USA. I know in the UK it is not illegal to own one but it is now illegal to import / sell them.
@ Magic Sam : Just had a read of what Nintendo thinks about emulation, if that's what they think it does make me wonder why they make the copyright protection on their devices so easy to circumvent.
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Chaser
Member
I prefer to use the actual hardware for games but emulation is a useful resource for playing titles you own on another platform or whilst on the go. I think the legality has been well covered by those in the know above and that really, its just a case of piracy if you are using things you dont own. Thats a personal choice and as long as you are responsible for your own actions and prepared to take any potential consequences standing up, thats your own look out. I thoroughly disagree with Pirating games for systems still sold commercially though, as thats just a knife in the chest to the current game developers, even if we all might be better off without the middlemen and the mark up.
I suspect Nintendo et al make it easy because it helps shift hardware units.
I agree that that is slightly uncalled for.
Theres an offtopic reason for that. Its Unlawful under under common law and is in fact treason but no-one will ever get anywhere against it, even on very solid grounds. See here http://centurean2.wordpress.com/2010/10/16/council-tax-rebellion-and-a-day-in-court/
Edit: The cut of the jib...
"So much for the events at Court. The significance of this case to us all is the reason why a local authority, or any other revenue gathering body, no longer has lawful authority to tax us. It is because The Crown, and all officials who act in the name of the Crown, have breached the contract with the people of these islands to rule us according to our laws and customs".
(Dons Tin Foil Hat smilee)
I suspect Nintendo et al make it easy because it helps shift hardware units.
Gruso said:
I agree that that is slightly uncalled for.
Mutilator said:
Theres an offtopic reason for that. Its Unlawful under under common law and is in fact treason but no-one will ever get anywhere against it, even on very solid grounds. See here http://centurean2.wordpress.com/2010/10/16/council-tax-rebellion-and-a-day-in-court/
Edit: The cut of the jib...
"So much for the events at Court. The significance of this case to us all is the reason why a local authority, or any other revenue gathering body, no longer has lawful authority to tax us. It is because The Crown, and all officials who act in the name of the Crown, have breached the contract with the people of these islands to rule us according to our laws and customs".
(Dons Tin Foil Hat smilee)
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TuxDot
Still Fresh
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2010
- Messages
- 51
I would agree with you for the most part, though I'm biased towards GTK and wish that they could have somehow made a nice UI with that (referring to MeeGo and imaginary super-Linux mobile distro).Kangal said:
And RPMs. Hmph. <_<
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WizardStan
Mega GP Mania
- Joined
- May 24, 2008
- Messages
- 16,731
Magic Sam said:
Just... no, no no Nintendo.
I'm sorry Nintendo, but you can't say in one part of the article that the archival law allows a rightful owner to make a backup of the game they own, and then turn around and say such things are illegal because they allow you to distribute copies. A photocopier allows you to make illegal copies of some works and distribute them as well. Part of me wants to point their lawyers to the Retrode and ask what they think they can do about it.
But then I know exactly what they'll do about it: they'll send a cease and desist letter, even if it is completely unfounded, which Matt will no doubt feel the need to comply with simply because he doesn't have the funds to fight it.
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skeezix
Internal Development
Mr Loon said:
Also note.. it doesn't matter what Nintendo thinks about emulation; no need to even read the link. What they want you to think is in their interests, not what is legal or ethical
Companies love you to thin it is unethical to make back ups of somethign you bought, that they no longer support. The DMCA even goes on so far as to say that if somethign is encrypted, but no longer supported, you have the right to transform it in such a way as to make it usable again, since it is not up to a company to hamstring you. ITs a complicated mess, but as I said.. piracy is illegal, the emulation concept is fully legal. jeff
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sebt3
homebrew player (P. & C.)
Magic Sam said:
So why do they *sell* emulators with a ROM attached to it ? (Wii VC are emulators + roms pack...)
I guess emulator are only unlegal for the others but just not for them...
Lovely
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johncross85
Startled By Midgets
Tux.King said:
If the US declared war on the UK then historically the UK would probably have to support the US and send some troops over here. It's this kind of complicated modern warfare that makes me think we don't need those two shiny new aircraft carriers. Granted, an aircraft carrier is probably a faster way to move troops in and around the UK than our public transport system.
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skeezix said:Mr Loon said:
Also note.. it doesn't matter what Nintendo thinks about emulation; no need to even read the link. What they want you to think is in their interests, not what is legal or ethical
jeff
The problem is that people are not usually making backup copies of something they bought. They are downloading the ROMS off the internet which I think Nintendo is correct in saying is illegal even if you own the original game.
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skeezix
Internal Development
Thats piracy, thats not emulation, as I said; the distinction is very clear, but everyone seems to jumble them up.
And the definition of piracyvaries by country, enormously. (Consider music .. in Canada, the govt decided we're all criminals so taxes us on CDRs, blank hard drives, you name it; actually a levy. Anyway, as a result, we're legally allowed to copy mp3s in various ways, and the government has a FAQ on it. So it is not piracy to copy music .. but its still unethical in my books.) So we must carefully divide things -- emulation, versus piracy, versus ethics. IF you jumble them up, you can't make sense or legals out of it.
Downloading a ROM is not generally a legal way to obtain it, even if you have the original cart (for example); ripping your cart generally _is_ (but not always, depending on country, encryption, etc.) Ethics are entirely another thing.
But there are many many legal ways to obtain roms .. purchase them, rip them them bargain bin licensed emu things like PS1 emu packages, rip them from carts, rip them from those trading cards Nintendo publishes by scanning the barcodes in, etc etc etc etc .. it may sound tedious, but some of us (like me have hundreds of arcade machine internals, and piles and piles of floppies and carts, in big boxes in the basement, so we're covered (And yes, I can make pics if you want
jeff
And the definition of piracyvaries by country, enormously. (Consider music .. in Canada, the govt decided we're all criminals so taxes us on CDRs, blank hard drives, you name it; actually a levy. Anyway, as a result, we're legally allowed to copy mp3s in various ways, and the government has a FAQ on it. So it is not piracy to copy music .. but its still unethical in my books.) So we must carefully divide things -- emulation, versus piracy, versus ethics. IF you jumble them up, you can't make sense or legals out of it.
Downloading a ROM is not generally a legal way to obtain it, even if you have the original cart (for example); ripping your cart generally _is_ (but not always, depending on country, encryption, etc.) Ethics are entirely another thing.
But there are many many legal ways to obtain roms .. purchase them, rip them them bargain bin licensed emu things like PS1 emu packages, rip them from carts, rip them from those trading cards Nintendo publishes by scanning the barcodes in, etc etc etc etc .. it may sound tedious, but some of us (like me
have hundreds of arcade machine internals, and piles and piles of floppies and carts, in big boxes in the basement, so we're covered (And yes, I can make pics if you want jeff
Prometheus
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2008
- Messages
- 9,472
I wouldn't mind seeing pictures. :lol:
gp2.eXe
Ultra Mega GP32X Mania Hardcore
Yeah, pix. Some people will be able to see what legal things actually look like.
Exophase
Nothing good will ever come of Exophase.
Prometheus said:I'm guessing you've never actually experienced some of these games on the real thing? It's very much worth it, I assure you, for those of us unafraid of silly little labels.
I've played games on "the real thing" plenty of times and I have no idea what would be intrinsically better or "very much worth it." When asked purists will either claim that the emulation experience always entails glitches and incompatibilities regardless of the platform and the game, or more often they'll retort "it just is" without wanting to defend it. I think the real advantage is mostly psychological when the game actually does play about the same (which is an awful lot of the time), while emulators actually do offer a lot of tangible advantages..
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sebt3
homebrew player (P. & C.)
Like non-integer scalling ? (kidding)Exophase said:
Save-states, Hi-res pack, filters (H2Q...), fast-forward...
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