Comment on The emulator that lets you play NES games in 3D has left early access on Steam
mycodesucks@lemmy.world 23 hours agoNot to be a stickler, but this does not make copying illegal - it makes circumvention of drm methods illegal. You can make drm’d copies as you like as long as you don’t circumvent the drm method. If your game isn’t encrypted, and the emulator doesn’t implement the drm, you haven’t circumvented drm - you are playing your legal copy on a device that does not implement the drm. It’s distinct from removing the drm from a device that implements it.
PlasticExistence@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
The law is all about those technicalities.
I don’t agree with any of that noise around the DMCA for the record. I feel like we effectively lost our right to archival copies.
On a PC, what you said about copying the DRM along with the data is largely true. It is possible sometimes to copy the DRM and reproduce the image with the DRM intact. It also might not be depending upon the copy protection mechanism. Commercial video DVDs used to employ tricks with the storage sector that made it almost impossible to properly copy by a standard computer disc drive. You could get around this with additional program like AnyDVD, but that was only available for sale outside the USA because of the fact that it allowed you to bypass DRM.
And like you said, the content can be encrypted. Decrypting it is, IIRC, considered bypassing DRM - at least in the USA.
Again, I don’t agree that this is how things should be, but the legality of emulation is complicated depending upon what we’re talking about emulating.
mycodesucks@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
I also don’t like how things are legally speaking with DMCA, but the main takeaway is - the creation and distribution of an emulator, without DRM protections, is unequivocally protected and legal. ROM backup is certainly in most cases not, but if you are making your own copies for your own use, even while illegally breaking encryption, it would be difficult to prove and prosecute on an individual basis.
The right we must continually remind people is NOT even REMOTELY in question is the right to create and distribute emulators. This is by far the more important one, because people cannot reasonably develop their own emulators - it requires an open, collaborative community to ensure future preservation, and it’s a constant battle to keep people from actively trying to cede this right because they have nebulous loyalties to soulless companies that return no such feelings.