Emulators For Video Games Are Illegal

My opponent says very little of substance in the previous round, besides that he didn't understand most of my arguments. I'll try to simplify them a bit to make them easier to understand. (1) Escaping punishment is different from something being legal Have you ever broken a traffic law and *not* gotten a ticket? [e.g. turned left without signaling, rolling through a stop sign, driving even though you forgot your license at home]. Traffic laws are hard to enforce. There are a lot of violators and very few policemen in comparison to lawbreakers. The same is true of Copyright Law. There are a lot of violators who download illegal movies, tv shows, music, and software, but very few people willing to enforce the copyrights against them. So a lot of copyright infringement goes unpunished. However, the lack of punishment does not mean the foregoing punishment is "legal." It's just that most people who break the law happen to get away with it. My opponent demands that I explain exactly *why* there aren't a lot of lawsuits against Emulator Developers. I *already* did: difficulty of finding their true identities, them being judgment-proof (not having enough money to pay any court judgment), the high cost of the attorneys fees of prosecuting copyright violators, etc.... There *have* been lawsuits, however, or threatened lawsuits. There was one N64 emulator called UltraHLE. The emulator developers pulled their product off the internet after Nintendo threatened them with a copyright infringement lawsuit. [1] Nintendo recently sued a developer of a Nintendo DS emulator in Japanese court (for copyright infringement) and won. [2] However, suing individual gamers who emulate is a bad strategy. As the music and movie industry saw, such lawsuits just piss their customers off, while doing nothing to ebb the flow of illegal downloads. As James Conley, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management (at Northwestern University), explains, "[Video game companies] can follow in the footsteps of the music and film industries and use litigation to stifle and shut down the innovation that is emulation. This approach will be quite costly, and it will neither endear them to their customers nor ultimately stop emulator proliferation. In the opinion of longtime industry critic Timothy White, this will only delay the inevitable. Alternatively, they can take seriously the customer demands that fuel emulator popularity and chart a different course. Rather than making legal action the sole response, they can adopt a more nuanced, sophisticated approach in which they co-opt the market by entering the business of emulation themselves. By listening to their customers and thinking creatively about their business models, game console manufacturers and software publishers can protect their markets, their brand equity, their intellectual property, and . . . consumer good will." [4] Basically, just because emulation is illegal does not mean that vigorous litigation against people who emulate is a good *business* strategy. It's better to tap into that market by offering ports of old games on phones, for example, rather than simply suing anyone who downloads an emulator of your video game system. Brand loyalty is important in the gaming industry. You don't want to piss off your customers by suing them. (2) Other countries First of all, I assumed my opponent meant in the United States, since he did reference in Round 1 his own *flawed* understanding of US Copyright Law. I think it's fair to limit this debate to the United States. If you saw a topic on DDO that said "murder is not illegal" and your opponent seemed to be discussing US law, it would be safe to assume that your opponent would not later say, "haaa, there is no murder law in Southern Sudan!! I win!!!" Second, more than 160 countries agree on basic copyright principles because at the Berne Convention, they all signed a treaty to honor basic copyright protections for copyright holders. [3] While the intricacies of local law are sometimes enough to deter a major US or Japanese company from suing some small emulation developer in the Netherlands, for example, copyright protection still transcends national borders. [3] So pretty much no matter where my opponent travels to, downloading ROMs and emulators would be illegal. My opponent drops my other points. I extend them by implication, but need not reiterate them here. [1] http://www.theregister.co.uk... [2] http://www.dailytech.com... [3] http://www.rightsdirect.com... [4] http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu...