Last weekend, a group of us from Armchair Arcade decided to get together and voice our thoughts on a subject near and dear to most game theorists--the ethics and legalities of emulation. Emulation is vitally important for game historians because so much of the original hardware and software media is becoming unavailable. Emulation teams have worked hard to "dump" the read-only memory from tapes, disks, and cartridges onto the net for use in reverse-engineered emulation programs for use on modern PCs (and even modern consoles). Though these ROM libraries and such have great historical value, there are many folks who'd like to see them shut down--but only after they've demonstrated which "classics" have profit potential. It's a trend that's becoming increasingly familiar for game historians--a certain old game or classic system, long abandoned by commercial interests, starts to attract a community of enthusiasts and veterans. This community starts building resources--information, at first, and then emulators and "roms" that allow them to play these games in a simulated environment. When the popularity reaches a certain "critical theshold," as if by magic some team of lawyers discovers that their mega-corporation owns the "rights" to these "properties," sends a cease-and-desist, makes a crappy proprietary emulation program with a high price and then brings back a monopoly. It's a VERY parasitical practice and pretty much alienates all of these gamers from the "system." Keep in mind that it's VERY RARELY the creator of these "properties" that ends up with the rights...

Anyway, give it a listen if you want. It's very rough, but we're working on it!! :-)