Legal Question / Comment Regarding Game Emulators

Hello,


I am new here and I've been acquainting myself with the rules and I noticed in the video game section that there was a thread labelled "Attn: Concerning ROMs and Emulators" and I had a question as well as a comment on this thread. I understand roms are illegal but is the discussion of the legal use of video game emulators also prohibited? If so this leads to my comment which is emulators are legal projects so why consider them illegal? A certain gamecube/wii emulator even has an entire page on their site dedicated to the laws and the legal use of emulators. I don't understand why this is a problem, I love emulators and I have legally ripped all my games. Heck PS2 games work straight off the cd-rom with some emulators.

Shouldn't we reexamine this rule and create rules that prohibit illegal discussion but promotes the legal use of software?


The following legal topics are prohibited under the current rules,


The emulators themselves
How to legally rip games
Virtualconsole Emulated Games
PSN Emulated Games
Playing any backwards compatible game on a new console (This is done through emulation)


This seems asinine to me, all of those topics are legal. I mean no disrespect and I am not trying to create an issue here but perhaps the mod team can reevaluate what aspect of emulators are illegal. Which is clearly only the roms because there are many many legal uses of emulators, game companies themselves use them. The rule is the equivalent of saying we can't talk about steam games because some people pirate them... wtf?


Piracy is illegal not the emulators,