Comment by pbhjpbhj
In all jurisdictions? What are the principal pieces of caselaw?
In all jurisdictions? What are the principal pieces of caselaw?
To my knowledge emulation is illegal in Japan, as is modding consoles.
Edit: I looked into it a bit more. As it is against the law to dump ROMs from games you have legally purchased, as well as acquiring them through other channels, there is no way to emulate games in Japan in a legal manner.
People still make games for old consoles occasionally as hobby projects, and those are usually released freely as ROM files. I'm not familiar with Japanese law, but in most countries that would constitute a fairly solid proof that there are legal uses to which an emulator can be applied and thus that emulation itself isn't inherently illegal.
What about games that come on cd or dvd media? Some emulators can run directly from the disk without creating a rom.
I don’t know of any country where emulation is illegal? Do you?
As the GP pointed out, OEMs use copyright and encryption to protect against unapproved execution. But that doesn’t apply to all systems.
Given countries like the UK and US have the strictest intellectual property and computer misuse laws, and emulation is legal there (bar the aforementioned caveats), I’d be surprised if there was a jurisdiction where emulation was illegal. However if you do know of somewhere then please do share.