Wouldn't it qualify as theft of services?

Fixed.

You contradict point 1 and 2 with your third point. Because if the price is too high and the games are not adqueate, then there shouldn't be a demand that exceeds supply. This is like day 1 Business 101.

You don't make a compelling argument.

Buying a digital software also grants you the license to use it. By emulating it, while nothing is physically taken, you are still committing theft of intellectual property by using something which has not been licensed to you for personal use. How would you feel if someone submitted your school essay as his, without your permission? Better yet, how would you feel if someone used your code which you developed for 5000 hours with a huge cost in terms of money and time, without your permission?

Emulation is only acceptable if the developer is no longer around to profit from the product, or if the product in question is impossible to buy legally anymore. Anything else is just a cheap excuse to moralize an illegal activity. You can pretend no one is losing anything, but this is not about the physical properties of a game software. This is about intellectual properties and use licensing.

This whole copyright thing is a bit of a red herring. Piracy is a proven negative for the industry, and it's illegal. You can't suggest that something costs too much because it can be acquired illegally for free.  ALL videogames, movies, and music can be acquired illegally for free. You're not entitled to free stuff just because you have an internet connection.


And to chase the red herring:
The issue with the copyright argument are that people are conflating the meanings of stealing and robbery. While all robbery is stealing, not all stealing is robbery. Robbery is taking a physical object, thus removing it from another person's possession without authorization. Stealing is a wider term; and it includes plagiarism and copyright infringement. Stealing is essentially when a person takes something that doesn't belong to them; this includes making unauthorized copies of someone else's ideas, works, or data.

Generally, the content creation industry is where people create content to duplicate and sell, it's not a physical object, but virtual goods can often take much more work to produce and create a far higher demand than many physical objects. A content creator has the sole right to decide how their work is used, they can sell that right to another, or copy and distribute those copies (it's how the whole media industry functions). A person duplicating the work without authorization is stealing because: A. They're taking the right of the content creator/owner to reproduce the work. B. Taking a copy of data without authorization.

You suggest not buying but it's already sold out. Nintendo creates artificial shortages and they know scalpers buy a shit ton of their products. It's terrible what Nintendo is doing, at $80 I'd probably impulse buy one during the holidays, but I'm not into F5ing Amazon all day or getting screwed over by scalpers. They really have no excuse not to make enough units after the amiibos and nes classic.

I have a cfw ps3 with snes emu anyway.

Yes, it's technically wrong. Nothing is being taken. Just because the phrase "take" has been used in place of "copy" in modern vernacular does not mean you're actually taking something from the original owner. Let me put it to you this way, no one is getting charged with attempted murder because someone "burned" someone with an insult.

It's not theft of intellectual property, it's misuse of intellectual property. It's using IP in a way which you have no legal right to. For example. If I buy a legal copy of a blu-ray, digitize it, and then sell it to my friends for $5, I have no taken anything from anybody, but I am certainly breaking copyright law, because I made and sold copies of a file I had no right to copy and sell.

And why are you acting as if I think this is legal or moral? I never said copyright infringment was acceptable or legal. It isn't acceptable or legal, and I say this as someone who has been negatively impacted by copyright infringement.  I only claimed it wasn't theft/stealing. Because it isn't. That doesn't make it okay.

How do you explain identity theft?

The thief is not actually taking someone's identity away from them, just copying their data and using it for their own purposes without permission.

Identity theft has nothing to do with copyright. Besides, in many places, it is known as "identity fraud" for a reason.

Could it be considered "theft of services"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_services?wprov=sfla1