[intopieces]

>A lot of these older classics that you'd probably want to emulate are actually available in some form or other.

And emulation is the reason those titles are available. Those titles are being emulated on other systems. Without the games having been pirated to begin with, the people sitting on the IP would have left them to rot. Piracy is a demonstration of demand. Do you think the iTunes Music Store would have come about without Napster?

>Additionally, just because a title isn't easily available for purchase, or available through your desired channels, that doesn't magically invalidate copyright.

"Information wants to be free." It doesn't invalidate the copyright, but it certainly lowers the 'perceived harm' in the mind of the end-user.

And the copyright holders, thankfully, don't seem to be very attentive. Coolroms and EmuParadise are still around, I was grabbing ROMs from there over 10 years ago.

[_frog]

I definitely agree that console emulation is a Good Thing from the standpoint of preserving the history of the medium. Hell, I've been working on my own Game Boy emulator in my spare time out of a mixture of technical curiosity and preservationism.

I also agree that a large, driving force behind the development of these emulators is the wider public's desire to easily play old games for free.

That said, it doesn't mean I condone the illegal redistribution of old games to play on these emulators. The fact that it's easy and largely overlooked by rights holders doesn't change the ethical equation for me.

[Ntrails]

> The fact that it's easy and largely overlooked by rights holders doesn't change the ethical equation for me

Which is fine, but ethics are essentially a personal thing. For example, I've pirated things I own on non digital medium. Or heck, even things I own on DvD because frankly double clicking 5 times is way more convenient than digging out the disc and sitting through unskippable shitty intro warnings etc.

In neither of those cases am I within the law, but I'm ethically comfortable with it. Similarly, I wouldn't feel bad using an emulator despite them necessitating the pirating of games.

[rahkiin]

AFAIK you can make copies of your owned disks or rip them, legally, as long as you don't distribute. So ripping a cd to listen to it is fine. Now instead of ripping it, youngot yourself a copy online. You have already paid for the material. (As long as you don't sell your physical media, that is).

At least, that is how it is in the Netherlands.

[intopieces]

I condone the illegal redistribution of old games. In fact, I consider it a moral imperative. Social archiving is the only reason some things still exist.

Literature, music, video games -- all are artifacts of our cultural heritage. That lawmakers have decided to exceed the original copyright terms in the interest of whatever holding company batch-acquired the dead IP is unfortunate, but I don't derive any moral judgement from that.