Mr. X2DM: When people rant on about things they have no idea about, they naturally look like idiots. On that note, I would say that you are probably wasting your breath with some of these folks mudlord, some idiots never learn and will continue to be idiots, the whole fallacy that emulation is illegal is a grave misconception by the general public and uninformed individuals who don't bother to research what they are ranting.
For those who would like a crash course, you can refer to this:
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/journals/njtip/v2/n2/3/
Emulation is based upon reverse engineering which is covered under fair use laws, it does not involve "stealing" code. The emulator and code that was used to develop the emulator is the original creation of the developer(s) who invested their time to create these emulators.
Emulation is only considered a gray area because of the ability to play backup copies of commercial games, had emulators been able to only execute homebrew code, they would completely be in the clear legally.
In the link above, please read up on the Sony Vs, Bleem & Connectix cases. Both Connectix and Bleem were commercial emulators, Sony ended up bringing a lawsuit against them and lost miserably. Sony kept countersuing, and lost every time. Connectix and Bleem eventually went under, not because they lost, but because they could not afford the legal fees that were being incurred because Sony kept countersuing.
The U.S. Supreme court deemed emulation a gray area, technically legal or neutral., whatever you prefer. As mentioned emulation is only illegal because it is able to execute backup copies of commercial games.
The EULA isn't a legally binding document, at least not until a specific EULA is contested in court and ruled in favor of the rights holder. Despite the ruling by the Supreme Court that has ruled in favor of emulation, Nintendo has stated in their EULA for ages that emulation is illegal and continues to do so to this day. You would think with emulation being legal that Nintendo wouldn't keep such fud in their EULA, but it is exactly that, fud used as a scare tactic to keep the general populace from considering emulation.
If GoG used emulation to redistribute console or handheld games, they would need to abide by the emulators license, unless they plan to code their own emulator rather than use an existing emulator. This isn't like dealing with scene cracks, there is a difference. Scene cracks use copyrighted code, thus infringes on the intellectual property rights of the the developers/publishers, bypassing drm protection schemes has technically been deemed illegal according to the DMCA. Emulation is achieved through reverse engineering and a lot of coding, emulation doesn't use copyrighted code, and isn't infringing anyone's intellectual property. So unless GoG plans on coding an emulator, they would need to abide by the license of an existing emulator. Emu-devs have legal recourse if it is found that their code is being used illegally.
By using an existing emulator GoG would also be relying on the developers to fix any issues with compatibility, stability, graphics, sound and performance. The only viable option I can see GoG going with is obtaining proper documentation for the hardware that is being emulated and create their own emulator or they can convince Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sega etc.. to code an emulator for them which I doubt would ever happen. :P
I'm not an idiot, you just didn't understand my post. The second paragraph was talking about Mudlord's thoughts on GOG using emulators to run commercial games.
The third paragraph was about "stealing code", AKA copying roms and isos of commercial video games and uploading them onto the internet so the pirates can play them without having to pay anything. This is what most people think of when they think of emulators. Nobody cares about emulators running homebrew.
And I have to laugh at the idea of you making emulators "for the love of video games" when you previously mentioned that you are doing it for money. Yeah, updating old video games to run on modern systems for a paycheck is piracy unless you have the video game companies approval.
