Legality of Custom Gameboots Produced with Sony's Leaked Tools

**yaustar** · July 30th, 2006, 23:45

Originally Posted by NoQuarter

Do you consider using emulators and old roms piracy though?

Legally, yes it is against the law. Morally, it sits on the line as long as the games 'pirated' cannot be brought or obtained in a way that developers get income from.

**NoQuarter** · July 31st, 2006, 01:19

I agreee with you on that.Ibought my psp for commercial games but have been in heaven since I found out about the emu's.I used to not care about piracy but now that has all changed,I'd hate to see my beloved system die because people don't want to pay for their games.Whats so great about custom gameboots that people would want to steal $2000 software for it and possibly cause problems for such a great site like dcemu?Can't they just get their gameboots from the same place they got the umd tools?

**F9zDark** · July 31st, 2006, 01:46

As some may recall, I was a proponent of legal ISOs, which is the purchaser of a game making a backup copy under the stipulations of the Fair Use law.

Many people have apparently gotten pissed off with this thread and have voiced their concerns. Well that is fine, and I defend your right to do so. But if you don't like the rules that the powers that be instilled here, then leave.

I cannot name any sites that Sony has personally shut down, but I know of a site where a business moved in and not only got the site shut down, but took over the owner's PAID FOR webhosting. Funny thing is, the the business that did that, went under, and the original owner was able to reclaim his domain and webhost.

This act was done out of pure malice (the business 'claimed they had a reason, the site made a joke 'store front' and this business liked that name and decided to take it for themselves, without ever having thought it of themselves).

The point of this story? If a mid-sized business, could at whim, decide to shut down a site without a truthful claim, then what could Sony do? Sony doesn't like homebrew on the PSP. Period. They have also suffered major losses in their game division. Which they have probably attributed to PSP homebrew/piracy. Why buy games when you can have tons of fun playing emulators and homebrew games?

How much longer until Sony becomes desperate and decides to wage a large scale war against homebrew on the PSP? With everything that has worked against them this past year, I am truly surprised that they haven't done more to stop homebrew as it is...

**NoQuarter** · July 31st, 2006, 02:15

Well said f9zdark,I don't think any of us want the legal wrath of sony to end the homebrew scene.Until the business models of corporations like sony change we need to play by the rules.

**jwilds73** · July 31st, 2006, 02:45

Originally Posted by yaustar

Legally, yes it is against the law. Morally, it sits on the line as long as the games 'pirated' cannot be brought or obtained in a way that developers get income from.

Well that isn't completely true. While you can not go to the local video game store and purchase a new copy of Metal Slug and it's followup releases for the Neo Geo. You can still purchase the PS2 collection and the soon to be released PSP collection. If you instead pirated these games from previous system releases like the Neo Geo and haven't purchased the rereleased versions your keeping money out of their pockets. Same apply's to tons of "collection's" such as Street Fighter series etc. These companies are still releasing this products in other format's which we could purchase.

**yaustar** · July 31st, 2006, 03:26

Reread my post:

Morally, it sits on the line as long as the games 'pirated' cannot be brought or obtained in a way that developers get income from.

In your case with Metal Slug etc, the games can still be brought in a way that the developers still get income therefore it is morally wrong hence the "as long" part.

**pkmaximum** · July 31st, 2006, 06:59

In Poland their are no copy right laws, If I even get caught I'll book it straight to there =P

Dam United States and their dam laws!!!

**mcvader** · July 31st, 2006, 08:55

I don't see how in the hell sony could be losing money! They've won the console wars for the last two generations by a mile, if sony are losing that much money nintendo (not to mention microsoft) must owe billions! but to say that piracy isn't hurting the psp is nonsence, look what happened to sega, the psp is so easy to use illegaly that most people with a psp would be aware of image loaders and the like, I wouldn't be suprised if the % of people using the psp illegaly would be A LOT higher than 0.03%. as far as these illegal gameboots go i couldn't care less about them and wouldn't bother downloading them if they were legal.

**DimensionT** · August 1st, 2006, 00:39

I completely agree that there shouldn't be any talk of ISOs in the forums (let those pirate *******s go somewhere else), and I feel the same about illegal gameboots... But the firm stance angainst Dev Hook and such seems some what hypocritical to me.

Seriously now, what's the difference between linking to Dev Hook and linking to new versions of the Supercard software for the DS? Both allow you to pirate games with the same amount of ease. Dev Hook actualy seems more legal to me, as it lets you play new games off the UMD on older firmware. Supercard software on the other hand, has no use other then making commercial ROMs work (aside from some homebrew GBA games that need patching).