Paying For Emulators Is Just Plain Wrong

[PinkSpider]

Im not saying its right but paying someone for warez just seems wrong in my eyes. Buying a program off of someone when it isnt rightly theres :/

Although with emulation this is different, but still I dont agree with it, its just my point of view.

 

[Ernest]

As the man says paying for warez is bad, do u really wanna pay for sumink that has been ripped by someone if u do then u may aswell pay for the official version of wtever it is, i wudn't mind making a donation for emulators to help, but i wudn't want to have to pay to have emulators though.

 

[PinkSpider]

If I had any money on my card I would donate :/

 

[raven]

Hmmm, I have a Playstation emulator with official Playstation games. Others have an official Playstation with pirated games. Why would it be a problem if I would pay the emulator-coder for his hard work and time? It's just like any other piece of software, if it's what I want and there is no decent freeware alternative I will be willing to pay for it.

Just look at the StarROMs idea, okay there are not a lot of roms yet but if you can buy the roms legally and play those on an emulator there is no reason not to pay the guy that programmed the emulator. Examples like this show that asking money for an emulator is not wrong in itself, people just think it's wrong because they know it is going to be used for illegal purposes.

Judging by the same rules it would also be wrong to pay for CD/DVD-writers, VCR's, MP3-players and all other hardware and software that enable you to copy/pirate someone else's work (IMO).

 

[PinkSpider]

Maybe if these pay for emulators where coded not to play warez Or play software that wasent authorised.

 

[declaration]

Antiriad: -

What you are saying is that it is wrong for an author to sell an emu because people are only buying the emu on the back of the games released for it in the first place.

Thats like saying that it is wrong for a company (eg: gamepark, Real) to sell a media player because the only reason people are buying it is to watch something in which GP had no part and is most likely illegal.

If your argument centred around the argument that nobody should charge for software and that everything should be open-source, I would find it easier to agree with you. However, just picking on Emu authors seems slightly unfair to me.

 

[PinkSpider]

I think its the fact that 'emulation' is seen to be pretty dodgy (illegal, although this is a grey area) which is why it is wrong to sell em :/

 

[don]

I think its the fact that 'emulation' is seen to be pretty dodgy (illegal, although this is a grey area) which is why it is wrong to sell em :/

Common, stop it... It's the same thing with mp3 players. A lot of people buy them to play mp3s from internet... But there are people who convert their CDs to mp3 also. Same with emulators. Most people might play pirated roms with it, but there are people who are playing games they actually OWN.
When I'm at my desk, I don't want to get up and fetch my Genesis just to play Jungle Strike or whatever, I just play it on an emulator. What's wrong with it? Right. NOTHING.

 

[PinkSpider]

In all fairness I agree, but In the eyes of the law it is still wrong and in the eyes of the companies who produce the software it is also wrong. Selling emulators may bring this to the attention of the companies and they may want to stop it.

I dunno... Just my opinion :/

Anyway im not saying warez/emulation/mp3 playing is wrong im just saying it isnt in the eyes of the law. (even though many including me do it... I have a hell of alot of warez/roms/mp3s/movies etc; note no one has made money off of these warez, not me nor a dealer)

 

[RomHacker316]

I think that in most cases, you are correct it isnt right to pay for an emu. However, I did pay for Morphgear modules on the PocketPC. I think that in that case, the emulator is constantly being worked on and updated, the author has to alter the source code to work on the large amount of PocketPCs and doesn't have the benefit of DirectX programming(although I heard that this may be available in PocketPC 2005). The author is always on his forum checking with problems people are having, collecting information on bugs and usually releases bug fixes quite quickly. Someone selling an emulator for the zodiac really only has to worry about two models, and technically could just make it for the 32MB one and it would work with the 128MB one. That amount of effort(Morphgear), in my opinion deserves an amount of compensation, not to mention that the SNES and Genesis Modules are free.

 

[don]

In the eye ow WHAT law? Still, there is no global law, trading mp3s is considered legal in canada and denmark as far as I remember. You'll get kicked in the nuts in the US for that. Same with roms.

 

[Antiriad]

declaration, this is my argument :-

An emulator is mimicking hardware thats the copyright of a commercial firm. So for unrelated individuals to sell emulators is as bad as selling illegal copies of the software written for that hardware. Its making money out of the work of others who'll get no return on it.

Therefore only the firms behind that hardware have the right to charge for an emulator that they've created themselves. I dont expect them to release it for free. They have the right to sell emulators and software for it. Unrelated individuals do not.

An MP3 player isnt the same, no one owns "the right to play MP3's". So when a MP3 player is created it isnt ripping anyone off. If for hypothetical purposes we imagine that at one stage MP3's could only have been played by a hardware MP3 player the copyright of which specifically belonged to one firm it would be wrong for an unrelated individual to create a software alternative and try to sell it. They wouldnt have the right.

 

[don]

declaration, this is my argument :-

An emulator is mimicking hardware thats the copyright of a commercial firm. So for unrelated individuals to sell emulators is as bad as selling illegal copies of the software written for that hardware. Its making money out of the work of others who'll get no return on it.

Therefore only the firms behind that hardware have the right to charge for an emulator that they've created themselves. I dont expect them to release it for free. They have the right to sell emulators and software for it. Unrelated individuals do not.

An MP3 player isnt the same, no one owns "the right to play MP3's". So when a MP3 player is created it isnt ripping anyone off. If for hypothetical purposes we imagine that at one stage MP3's could only have been played by a hardware MP3 player the copyright of which specifically belonged to one firm it would be wrong for an unrelated individual to create a software alternative and try to sell it. They wouldnt have the right.

No, I see it the other way round: The Fraunhofer Institut owns the right about mp3 playing. They decided to allow it to private people at no charge, but if you plan to do a professional game with mp3 as in game music, you'll need to pay for that.
On the other side, when looking at emulators, some or even most of them don't include bios or firmware roms. Without those, an emulator is merely a piece of software emulating a few custom chips, a CPU and the way stuff is being held in memory. I can't see any copyright infringement there. Especially not the copyright of this computer company, they mostly don't develop any custom chips anymore.

 

[PinkSpider]

Well then they should lock out the use of the 'real' bios's. I dunno how but there should be a way :/

 

[declaration]

Therefore only the firms behind that hardware have the right to charge for an emulator that they've created themselves. I dont expect them to release it for free. They have the right to sell emulators and software for it. Unrelated individuals do not.

If you think that only the original hardware developers should have the right to sell emulators and software developed for it, you must surely disagree with free emulators. Who would pay for a Snes emu made by Nintendo when they could d/load snes9x or Zsnes for free.

You sound awfully close to thinking that emulation is wrong except when by the original hardware makers, which is a ridiculous position, espescially for a GP32 owner.

 

[Daz_Genetic]

My personal opinion is that I think it's wrong to sell heavily Work in Progress emulators. I feel that if you are paying for something, it should support sound, multiplayer, at least 90% compatibility. etc.

Take Crimson Fire's GBA emu for example. It can't even really play GBA games, yet people have payed full price for it already. They have no idea whether it will be a quality emulator. And unless there is a written contract, they have no coverage if CF decide to no longer work on it.

There also is no real way if the codebase for these emulators originated from GPL'd code which adds a whole other reason why I choose to avoid commercial emulators.

 

[Antiriad]

Im very pro emulation. But if you want to sell them, you should be the firm who has the rights to whats being emulated.

Some people would prefer an official emulator that they would pay for as they would know theyre legal.

Oh and thanks for the Mp3 info Don...I stand corrected!

 

[Rico]

I hate to say I think you're cheap, but ... I think you're cheap.

Is it the fact that you'd simply not pay for it? Because bringing in a fee brings in a choice, you either pay for the goods or don't get the goods. In the GP32 scene the market is not big enough, but multiply the scene by 1,000 or so and would all these free emulators be around? Probably not. Open source-ish hackers would move on to a smaller platform, most programmers would ask for a bit of money to compensate the work they do. Some emulators are commercial with no free alternatives, because the work involved is monumental, and nobody is willing to do it for free. Rlyeh and others ask for donations all the time, and somehow if they work and expect donations, it's alright, but if someone specifically asks for donations before parting with their work, it's wrong. Oh no, they shouldn't be allowed rights over their own software!

As don said, a bunch of chips interfacing is usually not 'owned' by a company. That's why many consoles have bios that are copyrighted or somesuch so that you need the original one to own them. I would have thought, on a moral level, that as long as an emulator contains no roms or bios images, that it really contains nothing to worry a company about, since it is the user, not the emulator author, that is breaking the law.

We pay for a product and a service. People who do the work to replicate this hardware as software spend labour time, and are reimbursed with money. It doesn't matter what that work is; it's work. Now, people sometimes grab Mozilla and OpenOffice, rebrand it and charge for it. They've done very little work for what they charge, but it's legal. Unfortunately selling emulators may or may not be legal, but usually the authors do a lot more work than they charge for. You can either put your money into the unscrupulous bastards that con others, or into the honest developers for making your portable system a little more enjoyable.

 

[Antiriad]

Emulation is legally dodgy enough as it is, charging for it just makes things worse.

Doing things take time and effort whether its right or wrong in the eyes of the law. It doesnt change whether it is or not. Should a thief charge as much as a retailer because it took effort to steal it?

You cant tell me that emulating a system is perfectly legal. Charging or retailing for them denotes credibility - which they cannot claim as their work is replicating that of others.

And not everything someone does should be done for money... if you cant afford to do something - dont do it.

Look, im all for shareware/donationware Ive paid for some before. But none of them were emulators.

 

[jcbnetwork]

I agree with Rico. You guys are just cheap.

If I spent countless hours working on a project of mine and felt that there was a big enough market and demand for it so that I could make a bit of cash on it, why wouldnt I try to?

Some coders do it for recognition, some others do it for cash, thats just how the world goes. Nobody likes to work for free.

Lets all assume something here...

Lets assume we all play ONLY the ROMs that we actually own.

In this scenario, an emulator could be though of as a console, only in software form. If you wanted to play your ACTUAL cartridges, you'd have to plug them in somewhere, you'd have to buy a console. So why is it wrong to BUY an emulator which in effect is acting as a console? An emulator is giving you the convinience of playing YOUR games on a different system.

Besides, most emulators are reverse engineered (so they didnt brake any laws) and when they require something like a BIOS, it is NEVER included. So emulators are pretty much covered at least for now under the law and thats why we get to enjoy such emulators as ZSNES for the PC. Don't you think Nintendo would have sued them by now? What Nintendo doesnt want to lose money on is, on the CURRENT GENERATION HARDWARE. If someone is doing an emulator for GBA, and we can play it on our GP32, Zodiac, PDA... then who would buy a GBA? Who would buy cartridges? They lose money on several levels because of GBA emulators so thats why they go after them.

And your point of ONLY the companies who have the right to the console should write the emulators, this point makes you sound like you are against emulation in general.

And finally, I'd rather pay for an emulator and KNOW that it is being worked on and KNOW that I can go and BITCH and COMPLAIN all I want because its something I paid for. Unlike our situation in which we have to KISS ASS to all the free emulator authors in fear that they will not like our comments and stop working on the emulator.

If GPEngine was a paid emulator... how long do you think it would have taken to add save states to it?