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But equally there have been cases involving copyright infringement or piracy or emulation where the person doing it has sought the defence of saying, Look, we werent doing it for commercial gain, and that hasnt been enough.

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A NES emulator a magic, digital aether-box that lets you play Mario on a thing that isnt a NES was approved on Xbox One.

Mario. On Xbox. What a time to be alive.

The thing is, emulators are sort of tricky, legally speaking.

People with teams of lawyers, burbling geysers that shoot money and who own the intellectual property rights to Goldeneye.

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So, where exactly are you, legally, if you download an emulator What if you make one And what if you make one and try to sell it (tl;dr: dont) We spoke to videogame lawyer Jas Purewal, of digital entertainment and technology legal firm Purewal Partners LLP, to find out how much trouble you could be in.

Classics for the masses Youve developed and distributed an emulator and now theres a van parked across the street that hasnt moved all week.

How badly is a console manufacturer about to screw you If youve really annoyed them, fairly badly.

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The issue is that while you might see your emulator as bringing much-loved videogame classics to the masses, the company whose software youre copying might plausibly take a different view.

The argument that a videogame device manufacturer or a videogames developer can make against emulation is quite simple: emulation constitutes IP infringement, specifically infringement of copyright law and potentially of trademark law principles, says Purewal.

IP law is not set up to recognise emulation, and consequently almost any type of emulation runs the risk of infringing IP law in some way, shape or form.

In fact, it gets worse for emulators, because specific laws were passed in the 1990s and 2000s which were specifically designed to stop different types of piracy.

These were called technological protection measures or TPMs.

So many countries have TPMs as part of their IP law.

And so, the basic IP law position, plus the specific legal changes introduced to combat piracy, all mean that the basic legal position is against emulators..how much trouble OK, but emulators are everywhere, right They cant get you into that much trouble Well, it depends on how much of an example a hardware developer or publisher decides to make out of you.

Going after people who distribute emulators is a bit of a double-edged sword for big companies.

On the other hand, depending on where you live, you could - feasibly - end up in prison.

So in the very worst case scenario - and this is semi-academic, most of the time - there could be criminal sanctions for the commercial distribution of an emulator.

But most of the time it doesnt get that far, and the legal response tends to be takedown notices against websites distributing emulators.

If those takedown notices arent complied with, then sometimes the manufacturer or developer or publisher decides to make an example of that business and take it as far as a lawsuit.

If the lawsuit is successful, it could result in criminal damages as well as a court order to take the emulator down.

From a legal perspective, it could - in theory - go further into criminal matters.

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Mo money, mo problems But it was distributed for free you cry.

Its not like anyone was making any money off of it Is that true Yes.

Good. Because while arguing that your emulator was essentially a hobby project isnt - legally speaking - enough to let you off the hook, selling an emulator is much, much worse.

In practice, its always going to be regarded as an aggravating factor if theres a commercial gain element to the distribution, says Purewal.

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