<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>extragood</author><text>Emulation of a device is totally legal.&lt;p&gt;For instance, I run qemu all the time to emulate various android devices.&lt;p&gt;I suspect that you&amp;#x27;re thinking specifically of game emulation though.&lt;p&gt;Running software on an emulated device is fine legally as long as it doesn&amp;#x27;t violate copyright law.&lt;p&gt;For instance, you can legally backup software that you own in the US [1] - that extends to games as well - and because emulators themselves are legal (although you may also need to backup the device&amp;#x27;s BIOS), you can have a completely legitimate archive of copyrighted games to run via an emulator.&lt;p&gt;That said, it&amp;#x27;s unlikely that most people archive software themselves, and it is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; legal to distribute backups in the US, even if both parties have legitimately acquired copies of the source material.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;help&amp;#x2F;faq&amp;#x2F;faq-digital.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.copyright.gov&amp;#x2F;help&amp;#x2F;faq&amp;#x2F;faq-digital.html&lt;/a&gt;</text><parent_chain><item><author>Madmallard</author><text>Emulation has been deemed legal? Since when? You&amp;#x27;re not paying for the system or the games and playing them freely?</text></item><item><author>IceWreck</author><text>While Valve shouldn&amp;#x27;t have done this, Yuzu (and emulation) is completely legal. Nintendo cant do anything unless they want to go hard against emulation itself which brings us to the same are APIs copyrightable debate.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Valve&apos;s latest Steam Deck trailer briefly plugs a Nintendo Switch emulator</title><url>https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/valves-latest-steam-deck-trailer-briefly-plugs-a-nintendo-switch-emulator</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>Fargren</author><text>Emulation is legal. Freely sharing roms of copyrighted content isn&amp;#x27;t. You can dump a cartridge you own and emulate it on a device you own.</text><parent_chain><item><author>Madmallard</author><text>Emulation has been deemed legal? Since when? You&amp;#x27;re not paying for the system or the games and playing them freely?</text></item><item><author>IceWreck</author><text>While Valve shouldn&amp;#x27;t have done this, Yuzu (and emulation) is completely legal. Nintendo cant do anything unless they want to go hard against emulation itself which brings us to the same are APIs copyrightable debate.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Valve&apos;s latest Steam Deck trailer briefly plugs a Nintendo Switch emulator</title><url>https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/valves-latest-steam-deck-trailer-briefly-plugs-a-nintendo-switch-emulator</url></story>