Jandar
jandar0@gmail.com
http://www.snakeyes.org/
11/15/98


      As of late, I have encountered many questions on the topic of Warez vs. Emulation. The desire to spread my opinion on said topic has led me here. A large variety of such opinions flood the emulation community with questions of legality and illegality. This very unstable topic can be approached in two distinct ways, and each will yield different results, thus I will attempt to cover both sides of the issue.
      Lacking a more encompassing description, warez can be defined, in its most basic form, as software piracy. This, in turn, can be broken into many more specific categories in which I am not as well versed. The purpose of warez is to gain access to software without having to pay the price at the store. There are those who would give hours of download time to save the twenty-dollar cost of getting the software off the store shelf down the street. From the spawning of warez, very little has changed: sites filled with broken links and porn banners, or large private FTPs. Either way, warez is undeniably an underground effort.
      Emulation, being put in as simple terms as possible, is using a computer program to 'emulate' or imitate one system with another. Emulation is not nearly as 'underground' as the previously mentioned warez scene, but with each passing day is driven farther by lawsuit-crazed associations and corporations. While the emulators themselves are legal, the distribution of ROMs, or games to be played with these emulators, is entirely illegal and greatly frowned upon by many organizations. Therefore, by definition, emulation is a form of software piracy, which in turn creates a link to warez. However, differences can be striking.
      When approached from a legal standpoint, emulation is illegal, harmful, and inexcusable. The letter of the law makes the distribution of ROMs illegal with very few exceptions; what good is an emulator without a ROM? However, when I speak of emulation, I focus on strictly the ethical standpoint, which returns a striking difference from the eyes of legality.
      When the government signed bills to laws regarding copyright infringement, their purpose was obvious. In order to protect the rights of businesses, it was necessary to prohibit their works from being distributed by unauthorized individuals. Historically, this has been of very little concern to most people. However, with dawning of the computer age, copyright infringement adopted an entirely new meaning. Suddenly, some things could be copied with virtually zero detriment, and it became a major threat to copyright law. Keeping in mind the purpose behind the copyright laws (to keep companies from losing money by protecting their works), lets take a look at the ethical view of emulation, which can also quickly be divided into categories.
      Some emulators are used to play recent games, which can still be purchased at a store. This form of emulation is not very popular in my eyes, and I generally don't associate myself with it. This is the less pure form of emulation, something that has sprung up very recently. This houses emulators for such systems as the Nintendo 64, the Playstation, many recent arcade games, and the likes.
      However, emulation in its purest form, spawned from the generation of Nintendoites, is something for which I will always express my eternal and undying support. The purpose of Pure Emulation is clear; playing those wonderful and enjoyable games whose existence in the world of retail stores has regressed to the world of garage sales and online auctions. In this day, I consider this to include the games of the NES, and other systems of the time. A chalk line divides the emulation community between Pure Emulation and current emulation; a chalk line so easily washed away in the eyes of outside observers. As time progresses, so does this classification, and will soon include the SNES, if it does not already. The waves of Pure Emulation sweep forward across the plain as time continues unending, and unhindered. The division between Pure Emulation and Warez, however, is not nearly so vague as a line of chalk. Mountainous differences separate Warez piracy from the honest illegalities of Pure Emulation.
      Do those involved directly with Warez express worries regarding legality? Of course they do not, for it is not a concern to their people. In the emulation community, however, I have been dragged deeply into several large discussions of a simple question: "Is Emulation legal?" The answer, of course, is no. Large money-hungry corporations, desperate to suck the last juices of life from a long dead snake of creation and legalities strike out at the most visible of offenders: Pure Emulation.
      Another question, however, cries desperately to come to light: "Is Pure Emulation ethical?" This is, perhaps, the most controversial topic I had yet discussed. While there are those who would argue the contrary, my personal response to this question is an unyielding "yes". For example, let us look upon the example of Nintendo and the NES system. For several years now, at the least, Nintendo has made zero profits from the sale of the NES and its games. Simultaneously, the games have managed to vanish from the face of the earth in most cases. Without the hand of Pure Emulation, the NES would be a dead system. However, with Pure Emulation and the support it provides, the younger generation can learn to play the greatest games of all time, and those of us who grew up on them can relive them once more.
      For many of us, the World of Nintendo died the day our NES system fell to the wayside. We, the children born and raised in a dawning age of video gaming, have put countless dollars toward such games and systems, and Pure Emulation is a way to keep these days from dying within our souls. The goal of Warez is to get games without having to pay; the goal of Pure Emulation is to play games of dead systems that we have long since paid for with some of the greatest years of our lives.
      We created the Age of Video Games, and we long to keep it alive. Pure Emulation is perhaps the greatest arm of video gaming our world has ever known. It is the only branch of gaming not driven strictly by sales and profit margins. Emulation is gaming for the sake of the games that we so long cherished, not gaming for the sake of the almighty dollar. Pure Emulation is gaming.

     Jandar
     11/15/98