In the past few weeks of my second semester here at UCLA School of Law, I've noticed a new trend. Where last semester, the main classroom distractions for those of us with laptops might have been checking e-mail and surfing the web, now a new beast has reared its ugly head: playing classic video games using emulators. Emulators are programs that allow one machine to function like another. For example, if you download one emulator, you will be able to have the functional equivalent of a Nintendo Entertainment System on your computer. Another will allow you to have the Atari 2600 on your PC. These and other system emulators are readily available on the internet. However, having the system is only half the battle. You also need to have the games in order to run the system. The PC versions of classic games like "Q-Bert" are available as ROMS (read only memory), which can also be downloaded from a variety of different sights.
My first thought was that none of this could be legal. This is not true. For starters, the emulators themselves are legal, in most situations. This became apparent in Sony's lawsuit against Bleem and Connectix, the makers of the Virtual Game Station, which allows Sony's Playstation to be emulated on different hardware. The Court found that these emulators were the individual work of the programmers, and thus did not violate the law. However, the rules on ROMs are a little stickier. Generally, you may legally download any game which you have purchased a copy of. It is also probably safe to download a game which is so old that it is off the market and no one could reasonable expect you to purchase a copy. Except for those two exceptions, most of ROMs out there are illegal. At least that will limit the selection of games one can choose to distract his or herself during lecture.
