[Wildcatk23]

An emulator is a program like any other, and falls under the same rules and guidelines that affect all software. The intended usage of an emulator does not affect its legality in anyway.

The usage of an emulator is also completely legal, and any reverse engineering of a system's BIOS to make emulation possible is also legal. The case of Sony vs. Connectix concluded the following:

"Connectix's reverse engineering of the Sony BIOS extracted from a Sony PlayStation console purchased by Connectix engineers is protected as a fair use."

There are some gray areas regarding this however. Some emulators require a copy of the system's BIOS to operate, and distributing a BIOS file is in fact illegal unless the copyright holder authorizes the distribution, or if the copyright becomes nullified.(Which can happen because of other events not discussed here.)

ROMs unto themselves are also perfectly legal to own, copy, and distribute. These rules do NOT apply to copyrighted material however, and it just so happens that most ROMs are made from data that is still under copyright.


Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Are_emulators_...z1JRxYzeJt