Are Emulators legal or ilegal?

[Dalek Caan]

A few days ago a friend of mine was using emulators on his PC to play some of the old Pokemon games. He then told me that through some magical force he could get Monster Hunter to work on my computer using a site called PSCX2. I wanted to know before I decided if I wanted him to do it if Emulators are legal. Would it be considered piracy?

 

[oplinger]

Emulators are legal. The programs themselves. BIOS files aren't so legal to own, unless you ripped it yourself. and ROMs/game ISO rips are illegal, unless you own the game.

Be advised the ROM/ISO thing is also kind of a grey area, some say you need to delete it in 24 hours but legal even if you don't own it in the mean time, and other say it's legal to have if you own the game.

 

[Cridhe]

Emulators are legal, but downloading the bios files to get the PS2 emulator to work would be illegal.

Downloading "roms" is illegal, but no downloading the emulator itself isn't illegal.

 

[Dalek Caan]

Emulators are legal. The programs themselves. BIOS files aren't so legal to own, unless you ripped it yourself. and ROMs/game ISO rips are illegal, unless you own the game.

Be advised the ROM/ISO thing is also kind of a grey area, some say you need to delete it in 24 hours but legal even if you don't own it in the mean time, and other say it's legal to have if you own the game.

Emulators are legal, but downloading the bios files to get the PS2 emulator to work would be illegal.

Downloading "roms" is illegal, but no downloading the emulator itself isn't illegal.

Then I think I will say no and just look for a copy of the game itself and try and find a old PS2. Thanks.

 

[Tanakh]

through some magical force he could get Monster Hunter to work on my computer using a site called PSCX2.

The above posts are right, and for your current predicament, yeah, if he gets Monster Hunter working in your computer with PSCX2 it is illegal and piracy.

Unless he would extract the BIOS from your PS2 and get the image from your Monster Hunter. Edit: BTW, that is not hard to do, http://forums.ngemu.com/showthread.php?t=84994 shows you the way.

 

[somonels]

Legal.
It is legal to create ISOs from your own disks/cartridges for backup purposes, downloading of any kind is illegal (copywright infringement).

No piracy here.

 

[Blow_Pop]

Emulators are legal, the roms not so much. I only have one on my computer but that's a different topic altogether and I barely touch it. Too behind with my other games to play

 

[Wintermoot]

only if you own the original soft/hardware.
let,s say you have FFVII and a PS1/PSX and they where to break down you are then allowed to use a emulator/CD image of the system and game since you already payed for them.

 

[thePyro_13]

Their're all legal, the ROMs and bios are perfectly legal as well, so long as you made the roms or bios image using your real legit console/games. Or have sufficient evidence(real games/console) to convince them that's how you got the files.

The PS2 emulators seem able to play PS2 disks right out of your drive, how awesome is that!

/Australian knowledge, accuracy may differ in other, less awesome, countries.

 

[Tanakh]

Emulators are legal

Emulators are legal because reverse engineering is legal, WORKING emulators however aren't because they also include the BIOS to interact with the actual games, and the BIOS is a copyrighted piece of software.

As a rule of thumb, if the emulator is just software that does crap it's legal, if it actually runs a game and you didn't extracted the BIOS from your own hardware, it's not.

 

[Tanakh]

let,s say you have FFVII and a PS1/PSX and they where to break down you are then allowed to use a emulator/CD image of the system and game since you already payed for them.

Not at all, under the law that would be the same as if you never had them and just pirated both.

 

[Blow_Pop]

Emulators are legal

Emulators are legal because reverse engineering is legal, WORKING emulators however aren't because they also include the BIOS to interact with the actual games, and the BIOS is a copyrighted piece of software.

As a rule of thumb, if the emulator is just software that does crap it's legal, if it actually runs a game and you didn't extracted the BIOS from your own hardware, it's not.

Which is why that is exactly what I did.

 

[Wintermoot]

Emulators are legal

Emulators are legal because reverse engineering is legal, WORKING emulators however aren't because they also include the BIOS to interact with the actual games, and the BIOS is a copyrighted piece of software.

As a rule of thumb, if the emulator is just software that does crap it's legal, if it actually runs a game and you didn't extracted the BIOS from your own hardware, it's not.

what if you were to make your own BIOS and make it run legal discs?

 

[Tanakh]

what if you were to make your own BIOS and make it run legal discs?

Then you are on the clear! Unless the games actually specify that they can't be copied for backup reasons, as someone posted earlier back in the day some games only let you have backups for a limited amount of time, but i think that was back in the 90s as far as i recall.

Sadly to make your own BIOS you will either need to dump it from a working console or be a very pro low level programmer.

 

[Tanakh]

Which is why that is exactly what I did.

Nice! I must admit being less scrupulous back in the day.

 

[Blow_Pop]

Which is why that is exactly what I did.

Nice! I must admit being less scrupulous back in the day.

Despite what you may get out of my profile photo or avi photo, I'm not just a pretty face with boobs. Or an insanely evil person either. I have brains and know how to use them. And am actually learning how to build my own computer.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

They are ok. Depends on the games. I have one to play old C64 games like Creatures 1&2 and Turrican. All for Syndicate. You cant even buy them games anymore so it ok.

 

[Spoon E11]

technically its legal if you own the games. A copyright act says you have the right to a digital copy on your computer if you own the game, provided you don't distribute it and its for personal use.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Everything is legal more or less. Some say it is illegal if you don't own a console which is true in some cases and downloaded ROMs of newer old games are illegal. As far as I know stuff from like the SNES era is fair game to anyone.