Breaks my heart

[Cloudane]

Mm, it is a very grey area.

My personal opinion is that there are so many loopholes and conflicting laws that a good lawyer working for either side could probably lead a case to either conclusion - or failing that, drag it on for so long that both parties die of old age before it's resolved anyway

However the (in)famous Sony vs. Connectix case is often regarded as the legalisation of emulation - at least up until recently

Edit: Ah, now here's the clincher, caught out by my own source haha. Having read that second link further, it does say that emulation is only legal if it doesn't rely on a ROM dump - the developer can reverse engineer using a ROM dump to his heart's content, so long as the final product doesn't require it (according to this one source anyway)

The DMCA is another matter entirely and may well turn things around. As far as I can make out from here: Chilling Effects Clearinghouse: Reverse Engineering it is illegal if protection measures have to be circumvented in order to get the working BIOS to work from.

As far as I'm aware, the old PSX BIOS isn't protected in any such way, and regardless it was released long before the DMCA was even dreamt up. (Well, in my case the EU Copyright Directive).

It's true, of course, that if there is a clause in the EULA telling you not to rip the BIOS, then... well, you can't rip the BIOS, it's a breach of contract. I don't believe such a clause was in the PSX EULA even if it's in the PS2 or PS3 one.... but I don't have any proof of that so make of it what you will...