Guns/emulator comparison not quite valid (Score 1)

Indeed, guns (or any weapon, for that matter) appear to be similar to emulators in that they have both legitimate and illegitimate uses. Because evil is a part of human nature, weapons such as guns are unfortunately necessary for protection against those of hostile intent. Of course, because guns are weapons, they also can and will be used by those same evil people with hostile intent.

Now, game emulators may not take human life (social life, maybe? :-), but as we know, they certainly are illegally used for pirating of console games. However, it could be argued that, like the duality of guns, emulators could have a legitimate purpose, such as allowing those of us with Linux machines who don't have a console to buy console games and play them via the emulator.

And I was just about to make that argument now, until I realized, that would rob console manufacturers of revenue from the consoles themselves, not just the console games. Oops! Scratch that idea. :-(

And yet, assuming that there would be console manufacturers that would be OK with emulators being used to play purchased console games, there is still the problem of ensuring that these emulators are being used legitimately, not for pirating games. Guns may be an unfortunate necessity in this evil world, but emulators are not.

Personally, I'd rather just see more commercial game support for Linux and avoid this whole mess. ;-)