The Ethics of Emulation

[elvis]

Let me clarify, Emulation as a method of pirating games you don't own is illegal.

And again, whether you emulate or not doesn't make a difference. Copying an unlicensed ROM is copyright infringement in most countries, and that's the illegal part. Even sitting on your desktop idle without an emulator even installed on a computer within a hundred miles is copyright infringement, because that happened AT THE TIME OF THE FILE COPY.

Emulation is not "a method of pirating" anything. MAME doesn't download ROMs all by itself, nor does any other emulator.

It might sound unnecessarily pedantic, but the more people use these sorts of phrases incorrectly, the easier it is for do-gooder politicians to find reasons to do stupid things like whitewashing all hardware hackers as criminals, making the arresting people for having homebrew hardware a high priority media event, convincing big media corps funding political campaigns, and the more we all lose control of the hardware and software we legally purchase.

Choose your language carefully and correctly. The more you do, the more people around you will too. And the more they do, the more people in general will be educated to know the difference between minor technical semantics, and political BS.

There are enough people out there already trying to convince the world that you should never completely own anything electronic ever again. See what Disney tried to do 5 years back with limited-use DVDs whose data would erase itself after a certain amount of reads. Or what Sony tried to do with the PS3, introducing a write-once sector at the front of BluRay discs to make that disc (be it a movie or a game) tied to the hardware, unable to run on any other PS3 ever again (the intent was to stop second hand game sales, which Sony have also said is "theft" - we've all seen more of that "second hand sales are evil" fight recently in the US). Look also at the law suits the cable companies in the US have taken out against Tivo, where they claim ad skipping is "stealing" because it removes their advertising based revenue stream. Here in Australia, cable and satellite TV companies tried to insist that broadcast flags be added to all media to force recording devices to disable fast-forwarding through ads (until they realised it would make ad-skipping easier by flagging where it was in a stream, and gave up on the idea).

Luckily all of these "initiatives" were squashed by the power of common sense, where average people saw how stupid they were and said something about it. However if we all keep using poorly chosen and villainous words like "stealing", "piracy", and linking them words like "emulation", then next time Disney, Sony or whomever try their stupid ideas out, they might just stick because some politician or judge takes the wrong definition of a word to be fact.

Use the right language, and educate those around you (and those who read your posts) here. Don't take shortcuts in your language, because ultimately it's you who will lose out.

I am pro emulation, and anti copyright infringement. My dream world is one where I can use MAME (or any choice of emulator), and pay license fees on a ROM by ROM basis for the games they support. That keeps emulation alive, and means that the people who created the content get rightfully paid for their hard work. Why? Because Virtual Console sucks - it doesn't give any of the freedoms that MAME and others do in their setup, configuration or usage. The games companies have seen that there's value in selling old games, but so far we've all been forced to use them in a totally rubbish way, through limited implementations. I'd love to have the best of both worlds, but it won't happen as long as we keep labelling it "stealing" on public forums.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

I see location as a big part of the emulation issue.

Places where games are freaking expensive like Europe, Australia, South America is where it seems to thrive more prolifically than others. In America, Canada, Japan and most of the UK emulation is frowned upon in a general consensus because the hardware and 90% of all games are dirt cheap, plentiful and readily available.

[Ivo]

I see location as a big part of the emulation issue.

Places where games are freaking expensive like Europe, Australia, South America is where it seems to thrive more prolifically than others. In America, Canada, Japan and most of the UK emulation is frowned upon in a general consensus because the hardware and 90% of all games are dirt cheap, plentiful and readily available.

The UK pays about as much as Europe does for new consoles, I think.

Ivo.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

I see location as a big part of the emulation issue.

Places where games are freaking expensive like Europe, Australia, South America is where it seems to thrive more prolifically than others. In America, Canada, Japan and most of the UK emulation is frowned upon in a general consensus because the hardware and 90% of all games are dirt cheap, plentiful and readily available.

The UK pays about as much as Europe does for new consoles, I think.

Ivo.

I mean availability of retro and other factors (Taxes on new games and systems along with other government/regional differences) such as how Master System games are comparatively cheaper in Europe than the US and NES is pricier in Europe but cheap in the US.

[elvis]

I see location as a big part of the emulation issue.

Places where games are freaking expensive like Europe, Australia, South America is where it seems to thrive more prolifically than others. In America, Canada, Japan and most of the UK emulation is frowned upon in a general consensus because the hardware and 90% of all games are dirt cheap, plentiful and readily available.

I'd have to agree with that observation.

Here in Australia even relatively common games from the 8-bit era still carry a hefty price tag compared to the US. Given that buying these 25 years on from a 2nd (or 3rd or 4th...) hand seller does nothing to line the pockets of the original creator, there's little incentive for anyone other than die-hard collectors to buy them that way.

It's almost a little depressing to read the RacketBoy main articles where "best games under $10" are documented for a given console, and then I hit up eBay Australia and find them all going for $35+ (and are generally in very bad condition, missing/damaged cases/manuals/boxes, etc), and once again, not a cent of that goes back to the people who made the game in the first place.

As such the copyright infringement associated with downloading ROMs becomes a "victimless crime" in the minds of most people.

[DCsegaDH]

I own most of the games that I emulate on Dreamcast and Genesis. I don't think its bad, like most of you said the system is already dead so I don't have a problem with it, anyway some of the companies are not around anymore.

I don't have Xbox Live my Xbox 360, if my Xbox breaks that will be a lot of money lost if I did buy a lot of games on it. I think emulation is a great way to preserve games and a lot people spend a lot of their free time dumping these games so we can play them. I like using emulators, but still enjoy having the original copy of the game also. Current consoles should not be emulated, I just emulate dead consoles most are 16-bit anyway.

[GSZX1337]

tldr

If you're going to nitpick what I say;

when stupid politicians and law makers start to arrest people for importing homebrew hardware

You need to be in a position to do it. Police arrest people, not stupid Politicians.

[Ivo]

Given that buying these 25 years on from a 2nd (or 3rd or 4th...) hand seller does nothing to line the pockets of the original creator (...)

I have addressed this before, but I don't think this is a correct assumption to take that pirating old stuff that is only being sold 2nd hand is a victimless crime. The industry doesn't directly get revenue that way, but the 2nd hand seller is in many cases a person that is (still) into games - by getting some extra income from the sales, the seller may funnel back some of that into the industry (not necessarily into the *original* creator of the game sold, but I don't see why that is so relevant - if money would flow back into the industry from old games sales it is not victimless IMO to pirate).

Although, as I and others pointed out, it is certainly NOT STEALING.

Ivo.

[elvis]

You need to be in a position to do it. Police arrest people, not stupid Politicians.

Police are the blunt instruments that enforce the laws made and influenced by politicians. Think of them in this particular case as merely the hammer being forced down by the hand of the law makers.

I have addressed this before, but I don't think this is a correct assumption to take that pirating old stuff that is only being sold 2nd hand is a victimless crime. The industry doesn't directly get revenue that way, but the 2nd hand seller is in many cases a person that is (still) into games - by getting some extra income from the sales, the seller may funnel back some of that into the industry (not necessarily into the *original* creator of the game sold, but I don't see why that is so relevant - if money would flow back into the industry from old games sales it is not victimless IMO to pirate).

I've heard this argument before, and to a point I think it's valid. But it raises two questions:

1) At what point does the argument fall flat? Say it's valid for second hand games, then what about third, fourth or fifth hand? At what point are we funding greedy collectors and not the games industry?

2) It makes the assumption that the seller is going to invest that money back into more games. How are we to be sure that this is the case? Are we just hoping for a potential outcome? And as you yourself mentioned, the money doesn't always go to the same company. Take the extreme thought experiment where company A sells a game new. The buyer then sells it second hand to another person, and uses the money to buy another game from company B. Company A then goes broke because they didn't make their sales target. The industry as a whole may benefit more, but the direct effect on company A is no different than if the second person copied the game illegally.

And this is where I still believe more companies should look at regular re-prints and digital distribution of old games, sooner rather than later. Sony started the "platinum" idea back in the PS1 days where games past a certain age saw a limited re-release for a cheaper shelf price. I think if the games biz wants to survive, it's going to need to look at acknowledging sales past the immediate release date seriously. After all the games industry is very young. Compare it to music and books which have been dealing with the issues of copyright for a lot longer, and have also embraced the concept of reduced price redistribution many decades later.

And again, Virtual Console and similar ideas are a step in the right direction, but ultimately flawed. A few tweaks, and they'll be heading towards a better and fairer end for all.

[Ivo]

1) At what point does the argument fall flat? Say it's valid for second hand games, then what about third, fourth or fifth hand? At what point are we funding greedy collectors and not the games industry?

2) It makes the assumption that the seller is going to invest that money back into more games. (...)

1) IMO it never falls flat. Regardless of being nth-hand sale, the vast majority of games on the used market WERE purchased 1st hand by someone. That person selling the game recoups some of the cost of this direct support of the industry, any iteration of that is just transferring the recouped cost to someone else. Therefore you can see it if you prefer as a way of spreading the initial DIRECT support of the company that made/published the game by an n-number of people with possibly different contributions.

Some of these guys may even "profit" if they bought lower than they sold, that does not change that the direct support of the company happened.
The vast, vast majority of games do not sell used for prices higher than their retail prices. I think we tend to consider a used game price as high if it is half or more of the retail price! I don't think "greedy collectors" or speculators are of any issue here.

2) Some % of the money made by selling games used is going back to buying new games. I don't know how to estimate it, but it is certainly larger than 0% and that is enough to not make it a victimless crime. For all I know the % may be very low, like less than 10%. Of course we can figure how special examples of anything - I could "twist" your example of company A and B and say that A does go out of business but B goes and hires some of the employees.



Anyway, I certainly agree that the games industry themselves should look into prolonging the shelf-life (with adjusted prices) in a large scale way - the movie industry (and to some extent the music and books as well?) is ahead in that regard, practically any movie follows a similar "life-cycle" with sales tapering off and effective prices lowering. But of course there are relevant differences so it is not just a question of using the same "life-cycle" for games.

Ivo.