Is emulating acceptable?

[SvennoJ]

AsGryffynn said:

SvennoJ said:

Alright to emulate, sure. Alright to pirate, no. Alright to download if released into the public domain or as freeware, yes. There's abandonware, which is basically a nice way of saying pirate away as the copyright owner is no longer able to or won't do anything about it. Morally it's alright, legally it's not.

For really old games it's a good thing anyway. I doubt many of my old 3.5" disks still work, 5.25" floppies are definitely unreadable now, cassette tapes with msx and c64 games are done for. Yet people weren't obsessed with copying books and movies out of for fear of them getting lost. Why is there no faith in creators of software to look after their stuff that we have to make lots of pirated copies :)

I was indeed referring to abandonware, which most games from the fifth generation and below are. Legally it's also alright, as though there are laws in place to protect the piracy of content, use of a product which is no longer in production falls under fair use. 

Afaik fair use has more to do with using part of copyrighted material (referencing) for your own work, for example let's play videos. I'm not aware on how that's different for material that's out of print. Legally it's 70 years or so after the product was made before it enters public domain.

Morally abandonware is considered fair to use. Legally, downloading abandonware is still considered piracy, yet no one will sue.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/what-is-abandonware-and-is-it-legal/