...if you are OK with pirating games. Its a bit odd that for the number of times this article talks about how cheap and easy it is to get this setup going, they kind of handwave away the fact that even old games are still copyrighted with "Add additional ROMs and game images to taste."
Additionally, just because a title isn't easily available for purchase, or available through your desired channels, that doesn't magically invalidate copyright.
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.
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.
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.
At least, that is how it is in the Netherlands.
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.
I think most people understand that legal/illegal is only loosely correlated with right/wrong.
Take the SNES for an example. 721 titles released in the USA, 1442 (with considerable overlap) in Japan. The VC only has 63 titles.
N64? 296 titles USA, 21 on VC.
NES? 679 USA, 92 VC.
Genesis? 729 USA, 73 VC.
So unless you want to leave roughly 90% of each system's library untouched, "piracy" is the only choice. I'd give just about anything to play Tetrisphere again (it's one of those games that doesn't emulate quite right) in a sane way, but Nintendo doesn't want to sell it to me.
Similar things happen with older TV, too, especially with music licensing. Failure to license for online/dvd distribution was common until pretty recently—I think Skins (UK) has that problem, for example. Only way to watch it as it originally aired is piracy.
[1] There was a "remake" released but it was an entirely different game. Basically a bad Call of Duty clone. Nothing at all like the original, and nothing like the excellent HD re-release of its successor Perfect Dark on the Xbox360.
I've argued a lot in the past that copyright should only last 15 years. But at the very least there should be a fee to extend copyright longer than that. It shouldn't be infinite by default.
Less flippant answer: In the vast majority of cases, the content literally cannot be purchased. Downloading ROMs does about as much harm as violating the speed limit to keep up with traffic flow. Some megacorp's lawyers might prefer I didn't do that, but see the flippant answer above for the response.
It's not gonna benefit the authors because they aren't making them anymore. Unless you somehow bought it directly from the authors or stores are still buying stock, there's no way for the money to go to the author. Carts are all pretty much second hand now.