A friendly reminder regarding discussion of Emulators

[Aspergers Girl]

These are illegal so advertising them etc isn't allowed here.

Having worked for a gaming company in the past I know how much work, time, blood sweat and tears go into making games and the people who put in this work deserve to be credited by it.

Cheers

Fi.

[FrankSinatra]

the emulators themselves are not illegal, it's the rom files that are illegal

[Aspergers Girl]

Even so, emulators promote roms.

I heard roms aren't illegal if you actually own the console though? May be wrong.

[TheException]

In most cases ROMs are not illegal if you own the game, as it is considered a backup.

Emulators themselves aren't illegal in and of themselves, and are perfectly fine if you're playing ROMs of games you own.

[zenemu]

I can probably shed a little light on this issue, as I developed an emulator some years ago.

The games themselves do tend to still be subject to copyright, but as is always reasonable - it is legal to own a backup of that game, in this case in a rom format.

On a lot of older systems - mainly 8-bit computers, games are largely abandonware and therefore legal to play.

MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a bit of a sticking point as it can run reasonable new and very old titles, and obviously, very few people actually own arcade machines. However - many older software developers have given express consent for games to be freely played as long as they are unmodified. A good example is Taito Corp, who developed space invaders. Obviously Space Invaders has been infringed upon, copied and emulated so many times that copyright doesn't really apply.

In many cases the copyright of games was issued to the publisher or company who designed the game rather than the individual programmer(s), and many these software houses and publishers have long since folded.

Also as older games are no longer physically manufactured and are readily available on the second hand market via ebay - it is simply not practical to enforce copyright.

The legal issues come from emulators for modern machines - like the DS, Xbox, PS, PS2 ect. Unless you physically own these games (in which case you are unlikely to want to play them in an emulator), then yes, you would certainly be breaking copyright law.

In summary - please don't link to rom sites from here and if you want to use an emulator - use a reputable rom site that will tell you the copyright status.