Just Don t Do It: Software Piracy

Just Don't Do It: Software Piracy

PSP games cost a bundle. They come on those UMDs that some folks have criticized for being too flimsy and vulnerable to breakage, dust, and fingerprints.

Allow me to editorialize for a moment: Those are no reasons whatsoever to use your PSP to steal copyrighted software. Copyrights exist for a reason. Lots of peoplemany of whom are not paid all that much money and depend upon the royalties from legitimate salesput lots of work into creating games, movies, music, books, and other creative works.

When you download something that you know is a commercial piece of media, you are breaking the law. It doesn't matter whether you distribute it, resell it, or just use it for your own personal gratification; you have not purchased the right to have that product. You are a pirate.

Pirates have a plethora of excuses to justify their thefts (Table 12.1). All those excuses are bunk.

Table 12.1. Excuses for Stealing and Why They're Wrong

Excuse	The Truth
Everyone does it.	Lots of people rob convenience stores; does that make it an OK way to get money?
Greedy corporate publishers get most of the profits, and I don't want to support them.	Publishers may make a bundle, but that doesn't mean that the developers who work hard on products don't earn their shareof which pirates regularly rob them. Those lost royalties add up.
It's not really stealing; I'm not taking anything.	Swiping software and music from the Net is no different from stealing CDs and UMDs from a store, except that you don't leave the house to do it.
If I like the [game/music/whatever], I buy it; if not, I delete it.	Play demos, read reviews, and do some research to make informed buying decisions without stealing.
It's not like I run a server and give it to everyone.	Your lost sale results in an artist's or programmer's lost royalty, whether you distribute your stolen content or not.

For an excellent FAQ about piracy and copyright legalities, hit this page at GameFAQs:

www.gamefaqs.com/features/help/entry.html?cat=24

The Legality of Emulators

An emulator is a hardware device, or a program running on a hardware device, that acts like (or emulates) a different computing system or platform. Quite a bit of homebrew surrounds turning the PSP into an emulator for various, usually older consoles and handhelds, such as the Nintendo Game Boy.

Emulatorsmeaning the homebrew programs themselves that make the PSP act like another devicetechnically are not illegal as long as they don't contain copyrighted code (such as code swiped directly from the firmware of one of the devices they emulate). To get the most out of an emulator, however, you need games or programs to run on it. Games and programs for use on emulators usually come in the form of files referred to as ROMs.

Gray Area: Abandonware

Abandonware is a term for games and software that are so old, they're no longer commercially available in any form whatsoever. You might want to buy such software, you might try to buy it, you might contact the publisher directly and scour eBay for it, but it's just not for sale.

The Legality of ROMs

ROM stands for read-only memory. ROMs as programs to be run from emulators get their name because they are pulled from nonwriteable devices, such as game cartridges and discs.

ROMs themselves, provided that they contain original, copyrighted game code, are illegal to download and trade. Just like current programs for today's PCs and consoles, ROMs are taboo unless they're original creations intended to be distributed as freeware.

Entire Web sites are dedicated to distributing abandonware (Figure 12.4). The legality of this practice is fuzzy. Although many software publishers that own the rights to abandoned titles ignore the trafficking of such titles, it's still technically illegal to obtain abandonware for free.

Figure 12.4. Home of the Underdogs (www.the-underdogs.info) is one of the premier abandonware sites on the Web.

Lots of ROMs for emulators contain abandonware titlesgames for game consoles that themselves haven't been around for years or even decades. Even games from old stand-up arcade machines are finding their way onto the Internet and into emulator-friendly ROMs.

Some people think of abandonware as pirated titles without the guilt. Because you can't pay for the products even if you want to, because publishers don't really care one way or the other if you download them (otherwise, they'd shut down abandonware Web sites quickly), and because you're not depriving a starving artist of a few bucks in royalties, why not take 'em?

You can decide for yourself whether you care to collect illegal, or legally uncertain, software for your PSP. I'm not going to tell you how to do it or where to find it. (If I did, and my publisher got sued over it, it might happily send a few low-flying planes over my house to strafe me into tiny pieces.)