| StarOcean said: I always hear people say, "As long as you own the original version, it's legal." But is that truly the case? |
You're permitted to make a copy of your own software, but cannot distribute it. Thus, if you know how to make said copy you can then use it with any built-from-the-ground-up emulators that did not utilize any of the original hardware's source code.
Merely owning the original version doesn't actually make it legal; rather, you have to utilize that specific copy's ROM. For instance, owning a game but then downloading someone else's ROM of it to play on an emulator is still illegal.
While I'm sure it varies, this seems fairly consistent in most western countries.
It's a little hard to think of a comparison... Basically, it's akin to owning some album on CD. Just because you have that phsyical copy of a song, it does not then make it OK to go online and download the song from some other source. It's fine, however, to load it onto your PC from the CD, make a copy of it, and play it there. The comparison is a little flawed, but that's essentially how it works.
