App Turns Your Phone Into an Illegal Portable PlayStation

[Fallen-Angel Risen-Demon]

snip

Think about it!
It could be PS1 today PS3 tomorow.
Openly supporting piracy is openly supporting CRIME!
They deserve whatever sueing comes to them!
You break the law, you pay the price!
These people are going to learn that the hard way.
What do you mean it doesn't ruin gaming?
Should not the people who spent time and money on making a game get what they earned?
Theses people are glorified criminals.
And I will defend that belief to the end.
Bring your greatest argument!

 

[fix-the-spade]

As ever, close minded protectionism is defeated by enterprising pirates. Yay pirates (sort of).

No doubt Sony are about to chuck millions at stopping this (as Nintendo have done with DS flash cards). What they should be doing is making their own version and setting up a proper download store, they could make a ton of cash.

But they won't of course, bloody morons.

 

[vansau]

The app's existence seems to float in a nebulous legal area where the application itself isn't illegal, but the files it runs are. While the emulator allows users to play games without a secondary device (nor does it require a person to jailbreak their phone), the ROM files necessary to play these games violate copyright law. That means that there's no getting around the fact that you have to commit piracy in order to play PSOne games on your Android.

...then why is the Escapist advertising such a feature? I mean, granted, it's nifty I'm sure, but whenever someone promotes piracy in a regular post they get slapped with a probation at least for promoting illegal activity. Why is this any different?

You can promote an illegal activity and not get probated, it's called being careful. And it's not entirely illegal, the actual program - the emulator - is NOT illegal by any means, and it's sold legally from a site that would have removed it if anyone threatened with a lawsuit.

Plus piracy and intellectual ownership laws in general are pretty hot issues in any computer or gaming-related nerd crowds, and that can hardly be ignored. Only through people changes can come.

I'd also like it noted that we're not promoting or endorsing piracy. Nor was it a step-by-step guide [http://tinycartridge.com/post/820769976/kotakus-guide-for-backing-up-ds-games] on how to pirate a game. It was an article talking about how this app exists.

 

[The Youth Counselor]

Amazing programming but it opens a lot of doors for the handheld console and console market.

I forsee a future, where consoles follow in the mistakes and successes of the music and PC gaming industry. Consumers will be fed up with buying expensive new peripherals for just a few games, and especially when the features already work on their Smart Phones. They will also be fed up with tracking down rare and regionally absent titles like Professor Layton.

These emulator apps for their phones will become more and more popular. Nintendo and Sony wanting total control of the market and for people to buy their machines may threaten the app makers with a lawsuit, and due to the Streisand effect, their popularity increases.

Eventually, they'll wise up and realize they're spending too much money on lawsuits and producing and manufacturing handhelds and begin to release phone apps of their own and a digital distribution store for their games.

 

[zidine100]

... emulation is not illegal, and making your own disk images of ps1 games is increadably easy(Aka roms, for you piarate people) Shall i point you out to a guide (im under the assumption that this uses disk images and is infact not giving the games out themselves).

and this type of software is not of dubious legallity as this articalle states, look at the case of bleem vs sony (sure sony destroyed bleem by taking them to court (legal fees) but bleem won the court case) (not in depth here, but really not in the mood to look stuff up (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Sony_lawsuit)

oh and might i say, ripping your own games and bios are not illegal, before someone metions it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROM_image)

id like to quote this from wikipedia while im here.

As computers and global computer networks continued to advance and emulator developers grew more skilled in their work, the length of time between the commercial release of a console and its successful emulation began to shrink. Fifth generation consoles such as the Nintendo 64, the Sony PlayStation and sixth generation handhelds, such as the Game Boy Advance, saw significant progress toward emulation during their production. This has led to a more concerted effort by console manufacturers to crack down on unofficial emulation. Both country specific copyright and patent law and international copyright law under the Berne Convention protect copying and reproducing of subject matter with copyright protection.[1]

Under United States law, obtaining a dumped copy of the original machine's BIOS is legal under the ruling Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc., 964 F.2d 965 (9th Cir. 1992) as fair use as long as the user obtained a legally purchased copy of the machine. However, several emulators for platforms such as Game Boy Advance are capable of running without a BIOS file, using high-level emulation to simulate BIOS subroutines at a slight cost in emulation accuracy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console_emulator#Legal_issues

its also stated that it is legal to create your own bios for use in emulation (but thats on a whole different articale on a whole different website which would take me alot of time to find..... so take my word for it, or prove me wrong)

 

[Buizel91]

Imagin playing digimon on your iphone...

 

[knight of zendikar]

Three issues with your post:

#1: Pirated disk-based media are NOT reffered to as "roms", but as "isos".

#2: One may, depending on what country you reside in, legally make your own isos.

#3: Depending on whether (or not*): it may the app:
a) Comes with a ripped PSX BIOS
or b) Requires you to provide your own BIOS
It may be illegal in and of itself, or merely using it without ripping your own PSX BIOS may be illegal.


*It may use some sort of new emulation which doesn't require any PSX BIOS, in which case it is PERFECTLY legal.

The Way emulators on the droid work is you must download the bios file and roms so the app itself is leagal they haved had gameboy and nes ones out for quite awhile.

 

[MrFluffy-X]

cool...but there is no way you can get 100% on crash on a phone...

 

[Nimbus]

Three issues with your post:

#1: Pirated disk-based media are NOT reffered to as "roms", but as "isos".

#2: One may, depending on what country you reside in, legally make your own isos.

#3: Depending on whether (or not*): it may the app:
a) Comes with a ripped PSX BIOS
or b) Requires you to provide your own BIOS
It may be illegal in and of itself, or merely using it without ripping your own PSX BIOS may be illegal.


*It may use some sort of new emulation which doesn't require any PSX BIOS, in which case it is PERFECTLY legal.

The Way emulators on the droid work is you must download the bios file and roms so the app itself is leagal they haved had gameboy and nes ones out for quite awhile.

OR, rip your own BIOS and ISOs youself, completely legally, don't forget

 

[Dan B]

The ROM's aren't illegal as far as I am aware. Downloading a ROM of a game you own is legal, as far as I'm aware. Thing is, it's pretty hard to make people only download what they own.

If you own a game and then download it, I don't see how that is piracy.

UK Law and probably most others says that when you purchase a software you also purchase a license for personal use, therefore it isn't illegal for you to download a game you own, it is however illegal for them to distribute these files without permission, so you could be caught out by laws regarding purchasing/gaining products by illegal means

 

[twaddle]

so basically as long as you have bought the game. evenif the game is broken or was stolen, as long as yopu bought it it's is legal?

 

[Jumplion]

You can promote an illegal activity and not get probated, it's called being careful. And it's not entirely illegal, the actual program - the emulator - is NOT illegal by any means, and it's sold legally from a site that would have removed it if anyone threatened with a lawsuit.

Plus piracy and intellectual ownership laws in general are pretty hot issues in any computer or gaming-related nerd crowds, and that can hardly be ignored. Only through people changes can come.

Still, the actual files needed to play the games are illegal, as stated on the article, and the article states anyway "You have to pirate the games to use it", so it is technically promoting illegal activity. I don't think advertising this particular app is really going to change anything with piracy and intellectual ownership laws.

I'm not saying it's not a nifty app, or that it's 100% wrong or whatever, it's just odd that The Escapist is promoting an app that requires illegal activity first just to use it, you know?

 

[SenseOfTumour]

so, instead of stomping all over this with an army of lawyers, why don't Sony and Apple go to them with an open chequebook and buy the rights to it, then shovel a huge back catalogue of long lost PS1 games onto the iPhone thru iTunes?

I imagine quite a few people would pay $10 for a working, tweaked, and updated version of the emulator if it was legal and came with the support of a range of games over the coming months.

 

[Escapefromwhatever]

True, it's piracy, but if you want to be able to play games on your phone (besides games made for it, which hardly ever leave the realm of mini-game), it's also necessary. If Nintendo, Sega, and Sony wisened up and offered their own emulators with legal downloadable games, though, they'd be swimming in profits. Don't believe me? Check the most popular paid game apps on the Android market and you'll find, fairly high on the list, emulators for the SNES, NES, GBA, and Genesis, as well as a ROM finder. Also, dude in the vid needs a game gripper badly-

 

[PhunkyPhazon]

Meh, I view pirating PS1 games the same way I do any game that came out before the year 2000. So long as whatever game you want to play isn't up for re-sale on a download service, then whoop-de-do. Developers aren't making money off of them anyways.

 

[Wicky_42]

That means that there's no getting around the fact that you have to commit piracy in order to play PSOne games on your Android.

Well, unless you own a copy of the game you DL the ROM for - after all, in that case you have a license to use that software and no-one else is using that license. I'd say that that's a fairly safe legal ground to be on. well, it should be an arguable point at least...

 

[oktalist]

Wow, hopefully the developers of the app don't get sued back into the Stone Age.

Hopefully they don't?
Don't you mean hopefully they do?
Piracy=bad.
Piracy ruins gaming.
I paid hard cash for my PS3 version of FFVII and so should everyone else nomatter what platform they are using!

The developers of the app are not pirates.

To use it lawfully, you must own a legitimately purchased copy of a PSone game and rip the ISO yourself.

Piracy has been "ruining gaming" for the past 20 years and it ain't ruined yet. The cassette tape was supposedly ruining music. The video tape was ruining TV. It is simply not the case. The industry can absorb the impact of a selfish minority, while these innovations make life better for everyone else.

 

[aaron552]

#3: Depending on whether (or not*): it may the app:
a) Comes with a ripped PSX BIOS
or b) Requires you to provide your own BIOS
It may be illegal in and of itself, or merely using it without ripping your own PSX BIOS may be illegal.

*It may use some sort of new emulation which doesn't require any PSX BIOS, in which case it is PERFECTLY legal.

If it doesn't require a PSX BIOS, then of course it's legal. If you do need a BIOS ROM and it's any similar to pcsx2 (a PS2 emulator for PC) then unless you rip the BIOS from a console you own, it's definitely illegal.

 

[Arawn.Chernobog]

Further PSP pirating? What else is new?

It's not like Sony even cares any-more, the portable Play-Station is pretty much dead and buried.

 

[Therumancer]

As long as they have the hard copies of the games they download it's fine but yeah this is awful and probably won't last long, I give it a month

Quite. it will soon be made illegal or something.

I don't think so to be honest. The reason being that people have attempted to go after people who have been making PC emulators for various console games in the past, and it's never worked which is why you see tons of these things out there.

In this paticular case they have doubtlessly paid up the liscences on the various PSone titles and such because they are being sold for other formats, so most arguements about Abandonware are not going to work, however that won't change the legal status of the emulator.

A more likely outcome is going to be Sony pressuring the App store to take it down, or simply offering them money to do so.

I haven't been following Abandonware or Emulation seriously for a while, but I can't see this being made illegal very easily given the weight of precedent already out there.