Watch the video that I linked, emulation itself is not piracy.

Unless the discussion leads naturally to piracy, I'd say discussing piracy in a thread about emulation should be considered offtopic and treated as such. Considering how badly bringing up piracy in a thread about emulation usually derails the thread, I'd say it should require moderation. I don't mind discussion about piracy in the context of emulation, but most threads about emulation aren't good places for it.

Emulation is not piracy even if you don't own the game. Piracy is the act of making an illegal copy, no matter how that copy ends up being used. Emulation itself is under no circumstances piracy. Emulation and piracy are often (but not always) related, but they're two clearly distinct things. I don't mind discussing piracy in the context of emulation, but claming emulation itself is piracy under any circumstances is just incorrect.

While it certainly seems shady to me in instances where new games are immediately available for emulation, it's true that, legally, emulation is not the same as piracy.

The same in spirit? That's subjective, and I think we all have our own lines; I personally think it is for newer games (thankfully emulation tends to take long enough that it's not much of a problem), but at the same time emulation also preserves and makes available old games that no one is profiting from anymore.

Doesn't seem like discussions of piracy really need to be present in emu threads... I think the BotW videos where they show side-by-side examples of the improved graphics and such will justifiably continue to prompt some "piracy" comparisons, but with Nintendo leaving the Wii U behind I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that none of the current gen systems are particularly close to being emulated now. That ought to reduce the piracy posts.

An excellent point that also proves quite nicely that emulation and piracy aren't the same thing because otherwise all official backwards compatibility is piracy.

Report and ignore them, if they aren't banned then we have an issue with the mod team. It's no different to bringing up Nintendo in a Sony thread or blatantly baiting.

True, emulation isn't piracy, I agree that's a mistake that i said, but emulating pirated software is illegal. That's why 3DS owners get banned from online activities of their game ID isn't unique. It doesn't matter who ripped the software and uploaded it, the act of emulating software that has been pirated is illegal. Emulation itself, not just with games, is fine. Emulating copied software, isn't. And I'm not going to act like I'm high and mighty, I've played copied software many times. Games that could never be released in the US and carts that are too expensive, I'll emulate it. Many game developers have admitted to playing illegal copies of software. Not saying that it's okay or anything but0 I just want to solidify that. 

Speaking of emulation and Persona, oh boy oh boy, thos Persona games on the SNES were ROUGH. The series really changed for the better with the time.

Not all emulation is bad and I'm sure a lot of people on here do actually own copies of whatever they're emulating but let's face it a ton of emulation is piracy and I think it's pretty screwed up for the people developing these emulators go after brand new games like persona and Zelda while knowing that a lot of people that are going to emulate those games have no intention of the ever buying them. There should be some kind of unspoken rule about waiting a year or at least a few months

Is he counting SMT If... as a Persona game?

It warms the heart when I see regular people coming into message boards trying to control other regular people like they're God, the law or even a moderator.

Emulation is piracy. It's illegal and theft. Do it if you want but don't get mad at us because your conscious can't come to terms with that.