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Leadified on 01 May 2017
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Bandorr said:
Leadified said:

The problem with that analogy is you're not committing a crime using an emulator, the crime is from software piracy. It would be akin to buying a gun legally but obtaining the ammunition from an illegal source. Or more simply, it's like buying a PC but then illegally downloading all of your games (or programs).

I consider it closer to buying a gun legally.. but then not caring what happens to it afterwards. The emulators are created legally, but could be used when people download illegal ROMs.

I'm not actually sure what effort emulator writers could put in though to try and curb piracy.  Scan for the game in the drive? Game companies would have to pitch in and offer databases of valid serial numbers for emulators to scan or have one entered and checked.

Perhaps any ROMs not created on that computer can't be used?

I can't completely blame emulator writers for not trying to curb piracy, but I also can't say they are in the clear either.

I'd argue that they shouldn't even bother. Even if piracy itself is a problem, the amount of lost sales from people pirating a game for emulation is dwarfed by the amount of people who download the game illegaly on cracked consoles or on PCs. You cannot emulate PS4 games right now, but you can pirate PS4 games. Even for new games like Persona 5 or BotW (which are exceptions to the rule of emulation), it's still a work in progress to get them running and you need a powerful PC, someone who simply wants to pirate the games will just use a cracked console instead, and they do. I don't think emulation itself is that big of a problem that needs intervention.

Enforcing those standards on emulators would completely redefine on how you can use software in any way, by giving companies more right and eroding consumer rights. This would do nothing to curb piracy, any system can be and will be cracked. At the end of the day these measures would only hurt the legal consumer while doing nothing to stop pirates.

Emulators are just a tool, I don't think that the emulator creator bears any liability for the same reason I don't believe a gun manufacturer has liability for how people use a gun. In the end, the benefits from both tools outweigh the negatives that may arise. Especially for software which is so easy to lose forever and it seems that companies are not very good at maintaining databases (see the Eurogamer video on the VC version of Super Mario Bros. which suggests they used a ROM they got off the internet).