So....when is emulation legal (United States)?

So....when is skyrim legal (United States)?

Yes, it's legal as long as you actually own a copy of the game

Skyrim is never legal in the US, but really - as long as you're not distributing you'll be fine. Companies have better things to do than prosecute you if you're just playing them

Sometimes I skyrimPotatoes :3

Sort of - skyrm is legal, but possessing ROMs are not.

Skyrim is never legal in the US

Thanks for skyrim!

Apparently not illegal. The general rule with grey area stuff is that you don't want to be the one distributing. No one is going to care if you download a song, but if they can prove you're the reason that 100,000 other people downloaded it, then maybe you'd get an unpleasant letter in the mail. Another factor is how available the game is. Is it a PS2 title that you could go down to the store, pick up for $10 and then play without issue? Or is it some import only title on a lesser known console that didn't make it to the US?

That's the best I can do spending a couple minutes digging/ not checking actual legal resources but I think the short answer is that you'll be okay. Profit drives a lot of decisions and I don't think there's going to be any lost profit from someone wanting to play a game that came out 10-15 years ago.

Emulation is always legal if the software that you are running in your emulator is in the public domain, has been made publicly available by the copyright holder or has otherwise been obtained legally for the purpose of emulation.

Emulation of commercial, copyrighted software is legal in the US if it is directly transferred from original media that is in your possession and you do not transfer ownership of the original media to another person. Which can be a bit of a problem for cartridges and cassettes but is a piece of piss if it's from a CD based computer or console. Not that the law cares.

It's legal as long as you don't tell anyone :v

Emulation is legal.

Copying a ROM (or any software) and using it in an emulator may not be.

Emulation itself is perfectly legit. However, there are two considerations:

1) you must legally own (the right to use) the software (e.g. NES cartridge)
2) you may need to own the original hardware (e.g. early mac computers)
3) How you get your legally owned software into a useable state may or may not be legal

• downloading a copy from the internet through a torrent is definitely not good
• ripping a rom may violate the DMCA which prohibits circumventing copyright protections

So, um, the answer is "just don't get caught"?

You can legally create an emulator for anything, as long as you're using your own code. Emulators that relies in code owned by someone else (like say the company that made the console being emulated) is not legal. This is why you see things like emulators supplied without a BIOS, because the creators of the emulator would get into trouble if they supplied the BIOS. Emulators that are able to get by without any proprietary code are entirely legal.

ROMs, now here we are getting into tricky territory. I don't know if it's legal to download games if you already own them (some say yes, some say no). Morally, I don't have any issue with it, but legally I can't say. Remember that if you're using a torrent to get your games, then it becomes illegal, as you also share it with whoever else is downloading it. And that's spreading copyrighted material. Is it legal to dump a rom yourself? Again, tricky question. Some might argue that you're trying to bypass the copy protection of the game by playing it on another system, and if they could make a case for it, you would be in trouble in the US. In Europe it's not as cut & dry, and you're generally allowed to bypass copy protection for personal use only.

Also, remember that emulation is not limited to consoles. Dosbox is an emulator, and is entirely legal to use.

Also, when you move into disc-based systems, things get a bit easier. Downloading a PS1 emulator that is not reliant on any PS1 bios but has its own code, and putting your legally owned PS1 game into the disc tray of your computer is fine.