Proposed Solutions

Below are the three solutions most frequently proposed by those familiar with the emulation debate:

This is the solution supported by most in the industry and best summarized by Nintendo spokeswoman Beth Llewelyn when she straightforwardly claimed that "emulators are illegal." Because emulators encourage piracy and may illegally contain copyrighted material, this solution proposes that all emulators be banned outright.

This solution proposes that not all emulators should be banned. True, emulators may encourage piracy -- but this in itself is not sufficient justification to ban them, just as beer encourages alcoholism but this in itself is not sufficient justification to ban beer. However, this solution concedes that emulators that break copyrights -- specifically, those emulators that illegally incorporate copyrighted BIOS into their code -- should indeed be banned because they are unarguably in violation of the law.

This solution, supported by some "hardcore" users in the emulation community, proposes that emulators should not be banned at all, primarily because most emulator developers are in it for fun and not for profit.