What emulators are illegal?

What types of emulators are illegal by U.S.A laws and California laws?

none of them, probably

This post has been edited by Elyk on May 25 2008, 10:22 PM

Emulators are not illegal at all.


ROMs are illegal.



As for which ROMs are illegal, basically, all of them. The "can have them for 24 hours" concept is bull****, it doesn't matter what way you slice it or how you attempt to find loopholes, they're still illegal.

Commercial ROM's, that is.

They're not necessarily illegal in as much as they are not particularly legally supported. They can count as theft I suppose, but the main pull is that the company who holds the copyright will press charges, which is why you should generally not publicly distribute them.

Obviously, if that company no longer exists, then the commercial ROM, although still not legally supported, probably will not get you in as much trouble anymore. Just to be safe, most establishments don't let you distribute or acquire commercial ROM's of any kind through their services.



Homebrew ROM software is of course entirely legal under the license of its creator and altogether unrelated.




An emulator is code designed from scratch that serves the same purpose as an original material, that is used solely as reference.

As long as no piece of the original software is actually used in the emulator, there is no legal barrier preventing the distribution of that emulator. (The company who makes the software will be very upset with you and may press charges just as with ROM's.)

In short, true emulators are entirely fair game. Emulators that use any piece of commercial software and distribute it for free or to private profit are illegal for the same reason commercial ROM's are.

Sorry to bump such an old topic, but I thought I'd get this out of the way <<

-All MAME derivatives that break the guidelines for derivatives.
-Stolen/cracked copies of emulators you have to pay for (which is stupid, as I can only think of one, and it technically is the full version, but w/e)

Draco, I think the "dead company games get you into less trouble" deal only works with arcade games and games on consoles made by dead companies. Could be wrong though, as it all gets you into deep crap anyway

That's pretty much what I said.



Also why are MAME derivatives specifically illegal? MAME isn't a legal grey area on its own?

These are the license terms of MAME:

I didn't seem to see this subject mentioned anywhere.


Yes. MAME derivitives become illegal when they break a certain set of rules the team has established. They're pretty basic and understandable, for a set of emulator rules. If I remember, the list is in the main readme in the "docs" folder of pretty much every MAME. It has to do mainly with adding things that shouldn't be there (drivers for recent games, stuff that isn't the source code you give out, etc), which brings me to my second point:

Gray area: For some reason MAME's "fine", mainly because of the irregularity of arcades to begin with; they phase out every 3 or 4 years or so, and afterwards the original makers make very little off of them. ROMs are still illegal, but less so because of this; arcade makers make their own games and aren't butchered by any head company. This means that newer games can't be supported "safely". I'm not sure whether this is something in place by the MAME authors, or an actual law, but it makes a bit of sense.

This post has been edited by LGB on Jul 1 2008, 05:30 PM

Well darn, double posted somehow.

This post has been edited by LGB on Jul 1 2008, 05:29 PM

so it's pretty much a GPL-ish license with a non-commercial clause?

distributing any modified emulator or plugin that's GPL'd (like zsnes, for example) without accompanying source code is against the licensing terms (and therefore the copyright) just as much. (note: the n64 video plugin Glide64 Napalm, while it is an excellent plugin, is currently in violation of these terms and is therefore in breach of the original author's copyright.)

but most ordinary users don't have to worry about this.

This.

Homebrew ROMs are legal, however.

my post immediately after his already said that ... :<

But it was a yoshiman post and it's cool to agree with yoshiman

Roms are illegal, meaning the police/etc can bust your house anytime, and if they find commercial licensed roms, then you will probably owe some cash and possible jail time.

however, i have been downloading roms for about 6 years now aint jack happened yet

This post has been edited by kirbyhi5 on Jul 1 2008, 06:52 PM

this is because for the most part it isn't worth it to check every consumer of rom's

they only bother to bust the distributors, since they can't fix any harm done any other way

Not in America they can't.

aren't BIOSes illegal

yes

Uh, what kinds of BIOS are we talking about? The ones you download to run your computer, or the ones ripped out of game consoles that help you emulate them?

sigh

I can't stress this enough

the files themselves are not illegal.
your means of obtaining them might be.
and unless you own the copyright, it is almost definitely illegal to share them.
but ROM files themselves, including BIOS ROMs, and optical disc images (ISOs), are legal to have.

among the legal means of obtaining them is buying the consoles/cartridges/discs themselves and making your own copies for personal use (as a backup, perhaps).



in layman's terms, it's not what you have, but how you got it and what you do with it. for instance,
+ it's legal to purchase a gun.
+ it's legal to possess a gun.
+ it's legal to protect yourself with the gun, use it for hunting, etc.
- it's not legal to steal a gun.*
- it's not legal to murder someone with the gun unless it's in self defense.
likewise,
+ it's legal to make your own ROM backup.
+ it's legal to possess a ROM file.
+ it's legal to use your ROM file in conjunction with an emulator.
- it's not legal to copy the ROM from someone else who doesn't own the copyright.
- it's not legal to share the ROM with other people unless you have express written permission from the copyright holder.

* not that unauthorized copying is the same as stealing, but the analogy is there.



but as has been stated numerous times before (and this is the answer to the original post), emulators are indeed legal to make and use.