Is this legal

[White_Shades]

Are emulators legal or not?


Are they free?

[FrostyTheSnowman]

Alot of people feel like they are/should be illegal, but they ARE legal as long as you own the original system, and games you plan on playing.

And yes, they are usually free.

[Hard core Rikki]

emulators are definitely LEGAL. frosty has a point on the rest too, since it isnt viewed well if emulators were sold for money.

[revenger334]

They are very legal indeed, but if you try to sell the product or try to play games that you don't have or you don't have the system. The worst part is if you lie about it and you get caugt

[Cypherswipe]

Emulators are perfectly legal (doesn't matter whether or not you own the system). ROMs of commercial games have debateable legallity. Some argue that they're legal as long as you own the game, some argue that they're legal for 24hrs if you don't own the game, some argue that they're completely illegal unless you dump them yourself, and still others argue that they're completely illegal, period. BIOS files are illegal unless you at least own the system (and most would say unless you dump them yourself).
Emulators are legal even if you don't own the system because A ) they're merely an immitation of the hardware, not an exact copy of it and B ) because you can use them to play public domain roms and/or to develope games yourself.

[JKKDARK]

I dont think that it is the right section..

[FrostyTheSnowman]

I dont think that it is the right section..

Nitpicker... :p

He's asking about emulators, and this IS an emulator's section, so techincally it's ok...

[Hard core Rikki]

In Handheld emulation? Ideas ? jkkdark has a point.

"are emulators legal". That's not even worth a thread btw, much less an ongoing one.
Dude asked. Got his answer. Point.