Apple’s courageous headphone jack removal, the PS4 Pro’s Blu-ray player (or lack thereof), is it legal to play retro game ROMs on emulators, plus we answer your question: Have you ever seen a ghost?
Plus we interview Vince Gilligan, Creator, Writer and Director of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and he tells us what spin-off he’d like to make next.
Watch the expanded show in video or subscribe to the audio feed via iTunes and Pocket Casts.
Host Rae Johnston is joined by Kotaku Australia’s Alex Walker, Lifehacker Australia’s Spandas Lui and Gizmodo Australia’s Hayley Williams.
As always, a big thanks to The X Studio.
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5 responses to “Kotaku’s Static Podcast: Is It Legal To Play Retro Video Games On An Emulator?”
Wait there’s a new season? When I clicked on last week’s one it started playing something from Season 3. Now I gotta go get ep1 😛
Loving the utter disdain coming from Spandas this ep.
I can’t remember the last time I pulled something from the shelf to watch. Though that’s because it would have been a long, long, LONG time ago. I have a whole pile of DVDs that I’ve been given over the years and pretty much all of them remain unwatched. It’s just too much effort to watch stuff, be it physical media or streamed. If I see something’s on TV that I want to watch, I’ll watch that. It’s easy, just turn on the TV and it’s there. Otherwise it’s too much out of the way 😛
My Mum and Aunt had a similar kind of ghost story to Rae’s, in clearing up stuff at Nanna’s place after she passed and hearing the creaking of someone walking upstairs when there was no one there. Actually there was another one where one of their friends had a dream where Nonno appeared to them and was kind of smiling or something, I think saying something about Nanna coming to join him? And that was before they’d been called and informed about her.
I don’t know why this question keeps coming up about roms and emulators.
Emulators themselves are not illegal. Roms are definitely 100% illegal if you don’t own the original game, unless the creators have released it as public domain/open source…and no, it doesn’t matter if the game is no longer in production or can’t be obtained by legal means. It’s a legal grey area even if you do own the original game and may come down to how you actually obtained the rom.
Are you sure?
It’s been a while since I last looked at this but from memory it doesn’t matter if one owns the game or not; ROMs/ISOs by their very existence are illegal because they are unauthorised copies of the originals.
If there has been a court case since then that changes things then I’ll admit to being wrong.
Yes. Doesn’t matter if you can’t legally buy the game anymore or if it’s no longer in production or even if the original creators are no longer around. They are still illegal.
This is correct…that’s pretty much what I said, I said they are 100% illegal if you don’t own it, although I said it’s a “grey area” if you own the game – kinda implying that that’s also not okay. Anything that is an unauthorised copy is illegal. Some games in their EULA state you can make one copy for backup purposes however, so it’s a case by case thing – this is why owning the game is a grey area.