Downloading games you own is still illegal, but far more morally defensable.

Fun fact - Nintendo did sue Blockbuster over renting NES games. They lost.

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I just argued with the notion that owning an emulator should automatically be considered "stealing"

You can consider it whatever the fuck you want. It is stealing. It's not something open to interpretation. It's the fucking black and white law, and yes, it does cover downloading stuff you already own or stuff that's not available to purchase anymore.

You, me, and the rest of the entire world may not care. But let's not delude ourselves into thinking we're legally in the right here.

You don't need to get all defensive and such, I'm not calling you a bad person (and if I was, I'd have to delete a few files myself). Just because it's illegal doesn't mean it's wrong. But it pisses me off when people try to justify it by calling it something it's not.

Super Mega Nested Quote Time!

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fuck that. if i cant find an old atari game im feening to play, why should i not download it? why should i feel guilty about it? where else would i find it?

Buy a Flashback. Or a collection of Atari games. They're still out there.

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That's fine, but I can still say it's fucking stupid

Absolutely you can.

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and can intellectually argue that it's not really "stealing", no matter what the law says.

No, you can't. You can argue it's not wrong, or shouldn't be illegal, or whatever. But it's very hard to argue it's not theft when it so very clearly is.

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The law may not have any gray area, but we're not discussing the law here.

I am. And you are, too, since you're trying to interpret the law. And the argument you're trying has been tried in court several times. "The work is no longer commercially available" is not a legal excuse for piracy of copyrighted material.

"I don't consider it stealing, so it's not" is about as bullshit an argument as "I don't consider it murder, so it's not if I kill Fred" or "I don't consider this cocaine, so it's not using drugs if I snort it".

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I don't know how you can say any justification is shallow and lame when it's literally the diffence between potentially damaging the current video game market through piracy and something completely harmless that doesn't hurt Nintendo in the least.

I didn't say any justification is shallow and lame. I said justifying the fact you're breaking the law by claiming it's not really stealing is shallow and lame. I justify my roms they same way. But I'm not deluded enough to think I'm not breaking the law in doing so.

And as Rydog said, it's not your place to decide what commercial value someone else's work has or doesn't have.

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There has never been a NES game released on the VC that was based on movie and TV licenses, so we will probably never get to purchase classic games like Friday the 13th, Bugs Bunnies Birthday Blowout, Rambo...

TMNT. It did cost a bit more because they had to reacquire the license though.

pandajuice wrote:

a bunch of stuff

Okay, fine, we'll leave the legal stuff out of it (for the most part. Honestly, completely seperating me from a legal argument is pretty damn impossible. I live for this shit).

I think where we're failing to understand each other is on a conceptual level. You think "theft", you think "taking something physical and tangible from someone for myself, thus depriving it of their use". I think "taking something that doesn't belong to you without permission."

Under your (apparent) school of thought, downloading a ROM isn't theft, under mine it is.

It's very difficult, if not impossible, to apply that to intellectual property. Since it can easily be shared out, the concept of ownership is different...so the owner of the IP pretty much gets to control how the property is used and distributed. When you use and distribute it in a way they don't approve, you're stealing it from them. That's how I feel.

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If there were no laws and this was complete anarchy, would you still consider downloading a SNES ROM as theft?

I honestly can't answer that. I grew up in a place wit intellectual property laws, so I find such things to be stealing. Growing up in a different society would give me different values.

Let me ask you a few questions:

If someone downloads a copy of a record, is that stealing?

If someone photocopies an entire book and gives away the copies, is that stealing?

If someone takes a painting, makes copies of it, and distributes them, is that stealing?

If you invent something, and someone else makes an exact copy of your invention, is that stealing?

If a brand-new burger place decided to call itself "McDonalds", are they stealing?

These questions are all related to the one you asked me...you're taking someone else's work and using it yourself, without permission.