| User | Post |
Colin
Posts: 1951/11302 |
VGS was also targeted by Sony, but they lost their case for some reason... Likely the fact that all the code was original code by Connectix. |
Ailure
Posts: 2365/11162 |
There were a legal case in the middle of the 80's about emulators. And it was decided as legal. 
Emulation is legal as long you don't have any copyrighted information.
Which makes me think, IPS files are legal to. As long they don't contain copyrighted stuff... graphics from other games are copyrighted. >.> |
neotransotaku
Posts: 748/4016 |
true but well, like everything in the world, reverse engineering can be abused and there isn't a clear cut answer to say what is the right way or wrong way to use reverse engineering.
however, i believe U.S. government has ruled that emulators are legal but there are monetary implications they have. which is why I think bleem was targeted so much by sony. I haven't heard the ePSXe and the other free PSX emus having trouble from sony... |
Colin
Posts: 1932/11302 |
I'm pretty sure that when Sony was going on their lawsuit spree against PSX emulation, they were talking about reverse engineering.
It might be understandable in certain circumstances, but that doesn't make it right.  |
LocalH
Posts: 9/46 |
Yeah, like others have said, the emulator is fully legal, it's just unauthorized distribution of the BIOS and commercial ISOs. If you own the game and rip it yourself, the ISO is fully legal. If you own the game but download a rip, it's technically illegal, but since the downloaded file is (ideally) the same as what you'd rip, it's practically impossible to discern between a legal and illegal ISO. Also, you can replace 'ISO' with 'CD-R' and it should be more or less the same, legally speaking. |
HyperLamer
Posts: 966/8210 |
Emulation is perfectly legal. It's distribution of copyrighted code that's illegal. There's nothing wrong with a program you made yourself that emulates a Playstation, for example, but the BIOS and games are copyrighted, so it'd be illegal to give out copies of them. |
neotransotaku
Posts: 720/4016 |
Originally posted by Colin
I don't think you're allowed to do some things when programming an emulator... reverse engineering might be one of those things.
if it wasn't for reverse engineering, microsoft wouldn't be on top and this would be a world ruled by apple computers. this was how the first IBM clone was made--through reverse engineering.
anyways, emulators are fine as long as you own the thing physical thing you are emulating and ROMs/ISOs are fine as long as you own a copy of the physical thing |
Colin
Posts: 1897/11302 |
They're legal as long as they're programmed correctly. I don't think you're allowed to do some things when programming an emulator... reverse engineering might be one of those things.
As long as it's your own work, the program itself is 100% legal. |
JJ64
Posts: 229/919 |
Emulators are legal, so if you owned the cartridges or disks, I can't see why it wouldn't be legal. |
Rydain
Posts: 153/738 |
To use the emulator 100% legally, you'd have to own a Playstation console and dump the BIOS off of it yourself. All the games you play would have to be legally acquired. You could use ISO's as long as you ripped them from your own game discs. (Morally speaking, I don't give two shits about downloading a BIOS for a console that I have or ISO's or ROM's of games that I own, but distributing copyrighted material in such a fashion is illegal, whereas dumping them for yourself is format shifting, which is fair use.) |
Emptyeye
Posts: 198/2273 |
Well, since emulators are perfectly legal and all, it would only be illegal if you didn't use the real discs. Although I think the PS BIOS is copyrighted material... |
FreeDOS
Posts: 506/1657 |
It's legal as long as you buy the commercial games yourself. (Homebrew free ISOs are fine, of course.) |
DarkSlaya
Posts: 218/4249 |
I consider it legal as long as you own everything you emulation (the platform/games).
|
Reid
Posts: 125/558 |
I have brought up this question before. But now that I am going to be playing some of my PS1 games on the computer to get some nifty wallpaper for my desktop I thought I should ask your guys take on it. I am going to be using the real discs to play some of my favorite games....And I do own both a Ps1 and a PS2. |
