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As with pretty much all 3rd-party emulators, the creators know full well what it's going to be used for.

Be that as it may, the US legal system has still ruled that emulator software is in and of itself legal.

Only the copying of game software, as well as BIOS software with some exceptions, is illegal under US copyright law.

The two cases that have explicitly stated this were seen by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, specifically:
Sony Computer Entertainment v. Connectix Corp
and
Sony Computer Entertainment v. Bleem LLC

The former explicitly stated emulator software is legal, and the latter explicitly allowed for BIOS copying and reverse engineering when the BIOS contains trademarked material (IE company logo and such) and is excepted by the DMCA.

http://www.lawtechjournal.com/notes/2002/12_020819_leung.php
and
(PDF warning) http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=njtip

Well, some powerful legal scholars and the court cases they describe disagree and state that in this exact predicament the 5th does apply. The so called Fischer test fails on point 3 and the burden is on the government. They warn that if this were not the case one could be jailed for contempt, and that is exactly what happened in this case. Likely the incarcerated lawyer did not push this hard enough, or the judge chose to ignore it. But without all the details we may fall short of the understanding needed to make an argument one way or the other. But understanding this person may not know, may have forgotten, or some other individual may have applied the FileVault passphrase, or may just be such a willful person (and two years makes that self evident) that he will never reveal the passphrase if he knows it; he should be released. The current zeal the courts are using to make encryption a worthless technology is unwarranted. Least people think this is a new problem, read the paper from the above link. Thomas Jefferson invented an encryption for mailed messages that was not broken for 100 years apparently. this problem is not modern at all and has been tested in courts since the beginnings of the U.S.A.

Consider if this hard drive contains emails between this defendant and his lawyer, thus privileged communications. Or contains material related to confidential informants. Disclosure in open court could be disastrous ... and in the former would violate the defendants rights in yet another way.

We have lost sight of the American concept that it is better to let a dozen guilty people go free that to jail one innocent man. Our prisons have uncounted numbers of innocents, some lucky enough to have people interested in freeing them to preserver until they are vindicated. Some innocents die having exhausted all appeals and they are executed. It is very sobering to look at The Innocence Project and understand many of these people lost decades behind bars while innocent.

This goes way beyond prosecutors overstepping their authority. It's the over-broad laws and clueless legislators that give great interpretive power to prosecutors to charge someone with a crime. If you think this is crazy, take a look at Michigan's laws regarding computers. Our laws are so vague that you can literally get arrested for using a free public hotspot without buying something from the hotspot owner ( www.lawtechjournal.com/articles/2009/01_091026_nowicki.pdf). It's a matter of, "I don't like you or what you did, therefore I'm going to search every vague law for a possible way to charge you with a crime"

Now before you mindlessly react by saying "Algorithms cannot be patented", read this.

How about: "Algorithms should not be patentable". Actually, even "normal" patents may hurt innovation if the patent holder decides that fending off rival inventors is more important then innovating by himself.

I am not sure ALL software patents should be disallowed.

Say I invest a large amount of time and money in inventing and testing an algorithm that very accurately recognizes faces in a picture or one that more efficiently routes gate connections inside a computer chip or one that produces better search results in a web search. I should be able to patent those algorithms and, hence, recover my investment by selling software based on those unique and novel algorithms.

Now before you mindlessly react by saying "Algorithms cannot be patented", read this.

A modchip is not acting as a replacement part. It does not 'unlock' or permit operation of the console. The purpose of a modchip is to bypass the signing mechanism used to prevent you from playing pirated games.

Okay, time for a list of modchip uses:

- Playing unofficial/unlicensed software (ex: Game Enhancer, which was almost definately first developed with the help of a modchip, since absolutely ZERO Sony code or patents were used to complete the software)
- Using unofficial devices (ex: New max memory devices made by Datel)
- Cheating devices (ex: Game genie by Galoob)
- Playing backups
- Bypassing region protection

These are all locks placed on the device by the manufacturer in an attempt to stop the usage of third party items, such as:

1 - Third party discs not authorized by the console manufacturer
2 - Third party software not authorized by the console manufacturer
3 - Third party hardware not authorized by the console manufacturer
4 - Authorized software from the manufacturer that was not intended to be used in your country

As far as I know, in all three situations, doing those things is legal. It is legal for me to put Maxell media in an HP burner (item 1), it's legal for me to install Windows XP to a Mac (item 2), it's legal for me to use a non sony DV tape in my Sony DV camcorder (item 3), and it's legal for me to watch a PAL videotape in the USA (item 4).

Now, for some reason, the person who built the device decided for me they didn't like items 1 - 4. So they built the device not to allow this. Now this law says such locks are illegal. And since the actions were legal to start with, where's your beef?

That someone might do items 1 - 4 with an illegal intent? Yeah, they could. In fact, you could install a pirated Windows XP on a Mac using an emulator. Does that make the emulator illegal? You could copy a copyrighted gameboy game into a blank flash memory cartridge and play it on your gameboy. Does that make computer memory illegal?

This is no different than banning box cutters on airlines because you think a terrorist is going to slash your throat with one. You're using an (extremely poor) band-aid to cover up what is a societal problem that already has PLENTY of legal recourse against the act, and you are inconveniencing and embarassing people as you do it. It's nasty and wrong, and, quite honestly, it makes me, as an outsider, afraid to enter your country. It's no different than trying to ban chewing gum just because someone might stick it under a desk.

A modchip is not acting as a replacement part. It does not 'unlock' or permit operation of the console. The purpose of a modchip is to bypass the signing mechanism used to prevent you from playing pirated games.

Okay, time for a list of modchip uses:

- Playing unofficial/unlicensed software (ex: Game Enhancer, which was almost definately first developed with the help of a modchip, since absolutely ZERO Sony code or patents were used to complete the software)
- Using unofficial devices (ex: New max memory devices made by Datel)
- Cheating devices (ex: Game genie by Galoob)
- Playing backups
- Bypassing region protection

These are all locks placed on the device by the manufacturer in an attempt to stop the usage of third party items, such as:

1 - Third party discs not authorized by the console manufacturer
2 - Third party software not authorized by the console manufacturer
3 - Third party hardware not authorized by the console manufacturer
4 - Authorized software from the manufacturer that was not intended to be used in your country

As far as I know, in all three situations, doing those things is legal. It is legal for me to put Maxell media in an HP burner (item 1), it's legal for me to install Windows XP to a Mac (item 2), it's legal for me to use a non sony DV tape in my Sony DV camcorder (item 3), and it's legal for me to watch a PAL videotape in the USA (item 4).

Now, for some reason, the person who built the device decided for me they didn't like items 1 - 4. So they built the device not to allow this. Now this law says such locks are illegal. And since the actions were legal to start with, where's your beef?

That someone might do items 1 - 4 with an illegal intent? Yeah, they could. In fact, you could install a pirated Windows XP on a Mac using an emulator. Does that make the emulator illegal? You could copy a copyrighted gameboy game into a blank flash memory cartridge and play it on your gameboy. Does that make computer memory illegal?

This is no different than banning box cutters on airlines because you think a terrorist is going to slash your throat with one. You're using an (extremely poor) band-aid to cover up what is a societal problem that already has PLENTY of legal recourse against the act, and you are inconveniencing and embarassing people as you do it. It's nasty and wrong, and, quite honestly, it makes me, as an outsider, afraid to enter your country. It's no different than trying to ban chewing gum just because someone might stick it under a desk.

MS got to be market dominant (which is NOT a true monopoly) by making genuinely good programs

Out of curosity, how old are you, and how long have you been using small / personal computers?

Oh, I'd say he's about 49 years old and has been using personal computers since 1981.

The only people who deny that Microsoft is a monopoly are Microsoft itself or its apologists. You can make the argument that the web browser SHOULD be part of the OS - after all, that's what Netscape was thinking at one point, to build a platform on the browser, and Mozilla has a good start in that direction - and you can make arguments against a number of the other cases that lead to the monopoly judgment; but you can't dismiss them all. Microsoft is a monopoly which has illegally leveraged that monopoly to drive competition out of most of the markets they've targeted. Those are the findings of fact produced by Penfield Jackson, a judge who was cherry-picked by MS after they claimed the previous judge, Daniel Sporkin, was biased against them; and then, of course, when Jackson judge ordered a break-up, Microsoft successfully got him dismissed for defending his ruling before the pro-Microsoft business press, helping Microsoft to stall the case long enough for a pro-MS administration to come in and pull the prosecution's fangs - as Jackson actually predicted (see the com.com link above)!

If the monopoly ruling had been used to enforce the imposition of standard formats for a handful of document types, to force MS to release their flagship applications for competing platforms, or best of all to divorce the applications product line from the platform product line via a break-up, we might see for all aspects of computing a degree of integration similar to what the web provides (common protocols that promote and ensure interoperability). Instead, we have hydraulic despotism - the entire world economy is beholden to Bill Gates' whims, because the only way a company can interoperate effectively with its corporate partners is through Microsoft on the desktop, and Microsoft on the desktop doesn't interoperate well with anything other than Microsoft on the network, except where Microsoft's competitors have made heroic efforts toward interoperability.

The crux of the ruling seems to stem from the inherent deniability of the gnutella proto... i.e. the plaintiffs could NOT prove contributory infringment, unlike in the Napster case.

If this decision is not overturned, then it will create even greater incentive for the RIAA to go after individual users - as they have already been doing. Unfortunately neither Fastrrack nor Gnutella provide anonymity for users of the system. See this article for a good analysis of Freenet from a legal perspective - with this ruling Freenet just got stronger.

The problem is, that it could have been your system that made the upsteam system go get this illegal content. So by mearely checking and requesting illegal material, you help spreading it!

This makes it kind of hard for you to argue, that the node you got the illegal material from was doing anything illegal before you asked for it. I think that's what they mean by plausible deniability.

Go read this article for an interesting analysis of the legal consequences of nets like Freenet.

For all that is wrong with it, DMCA did not abandon or overturn this concept. This item, like a VCR, obviously has significant utility that does not involve violation of copyright. Nintendo doesn't stand a chance.