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Comment by Narishma | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't that case only apply in the USA?

Who cares? This person is telling a story about their lack of access to cool new tech, and what projects like this one have provided them.

Split hairs all you want but giving less privileged people access to funsies that eventually turn to deeper technical interest and (I assume) a higher earning career is the overarching message and I’m all the way about that. The weird dissection of an uplifting & cool comment like OPs is classic HN & definitely unnecessary.

Edit: And their reply resonates with me. Not fronting like I couldn’t have those things, but I dug deep into retro gaming (via emulation) in my early teens and my career can be traced back to that original interest & deep diving.

I just fail to see how a court decision in the US would have any effect on another country. It's not like OP's situation and access to emulators would have been any different if the decision went Sony's way.

> It's not like OP's situation and access to emulators would have been any different if the decision went Sony's way.

I would respectfully disagree - although it's hard to speculate on alternative histories.

The United States has an outsized impact on the software industry - even for the largest economy in the world (American big-tech dominates the largest companies by market cap).

Preventing or impeding the development of emulation software in the US would definitely impact the rest of the world, simply because fewer people and companies can legally contribute to open-source Emulation software.

People and companies in the US have contributed a whole lot of hours to emulator development, such that it's plausible emulation would not be nearly as good as it is if such development were illegal in the US. Moreover, less effort may have been put into emulator development or emulation-based-product development by foreign companies, if they were legally unable to sell their products in the US, which is a large and rich market. Further, US copyright policy has a tendency to influence international copyright regimes, over the longer term.

The actual mechanism seems pretty straightforward (the US is a big open country, if things can happen here somebody will do it and it’ll spread across the world without many speedbumps).

Their phrasing was a bit awkward though, when they say “Luckily emulation has always been legal…” one would assume they are talking about the jurisdiction they live in, by default at least.

so straightforward that it makes you realize how comically bad some people here in the comment section are at understanding even broad strokes kinda implications about their and others actions.

You legitimately can’t comprehend how a court ruling in the US would affect anything or anyone outside the US? For real?

Well - it depends on the topic really. And, not the fact a law exists in the US. A judgement in the US has no bearing on law in other countries, except where it is used to then set a presidency as others had said.

US law is actually different enough from some other countries that what is legal in the US is outright illegal, and vice versa. If you want some low hanging fruit - anything to do with guns, gender identity, abortion, liable/slander and "free" speech - many countries disagree and actively oppose the US stand point, on both sides of the US position. Another good example is anything granted in the US constitution is not a "God given right" outside of the US (which probably intersects with guns and free speech, maybe other things). US passing a law is not going to change that.

DMCA does not affect other countries - we have our own laws - some of which were put in place in line with the ideas that caused the DMCA, but some of which predate it. Also - "fair use" is a wholly US concept, and might not apply, depending on where you are located.

You just gotta look at DMCA or Copyright

Lol, I've got very bad news for you about where copyright came from.

Haha, didn't see that one coming ofc, stand corrected https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright

> I just fail to see how a court decision in the US would have any effect on another country.

By way of return, I fail to see how you fail to see precisely that.

At a guess, it at least doesn’t discourage developers from working on the emulators in the first place.

As demonstrated by copyright, US legislatures generally define global law when it comes to tech and entertainment

Not really. US copyright law is based around protecting the rights to use a "work", but European copyright law tends to protect the originator. It might seem similar, but in practice it is not.

"Fair use" as an example, does not exist in the way defied in the US in the UK. We have "fair dealing" and it is a lot more specific. There are defined use-case exceptions to copyright, it is not "do what you like, claim 'fair use' and take it down when you get a DMCA notice".

Not really.

The general standard length of protection (life plus 70 years) is from Germany for example.

The US is a significant market and emulators being allowed there helps emulators in general?

If USA doesn't care about emulation, it means those specific copyright tentacles won't poke my government, hence my country (Mexico) also won't care. Even if USA cares, sometimes my country still won't care if it means spending a lot of money on policying the Internet.

Sometimes, the love-hate relationship between Mexico and USA has its advantages.

International copyright law is somewhat harmonized through international treaties. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) actually implements what the US is obligated to when it joined the World Intellectual Property Organization.

It may be a US law but the result is greater availability of emulated tech. As a regular user, the legality of the emulator is secondary to the likelihood of the emulator existing.

Yes, but it doesn't need to apply anywhere else for people everywhere to be able to access the software. It only needs one place where it can be openly worked on.

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