>I was so focussed on the technicalities of getting an emulator up and running, I didn't even stop to think about the legalities of anything. I had just assumed that since it has been decades and companies have long since folded there would be no issue, although I confess I did notice the strong recommendation to buy Kickstart from Cloanto on a number of download pages, so had it in mind to look at later. Having done a bit of research, it seems that technically playing any game is illegal if you don't own the original. Depending on the game licence, it may be possible to make a backup, but this does not allow you to using it to play in another machine or platform, so using a game ROM it in an emulator may actually be illegal. At this point I also discovered a number discussions about the legality or illegality of IPF, SPS, CAPS and WHDload (no idea what these acronyms mean and did not go into any depth at this point so further research required). Then there is also talk about cracked vs uncracked games.... Since the companies involved disappeared years ago, apparently nobody cares that much anymore, but it adds up to a confusing picture nonetheless.
The right to emulate, the right to format-shift, etc. have all been well established for decades. EULAs are not enforcable in most jurisdictions so I wouldn't be too concerned about those. IPF is just a file format, nothing illegal about that. WHDLoad is just a compatibility-patching system, again nothing illegal about that. As for the legality of cracked games...you might like to know that all the ones bundled with the supposedly "legal" Amiga Forever are actually cracked pirate versions.
>Going back to Cloanto, technically making a copy of the ROM for "backup" purposes and using it on another platform was also supposed to be illegal. Apparently the backup can be used to replace the original, but not to used to play on another machine. Apparently such terms of usage are common and not exclusive to Commodore. It seems Cloanto are one of the current legal copyright holders for Kickstart and Workbench and they claim that they acquired licences for reasons of historical preservation and supporting the Amiga community. These licences apparently gives them distribution rights. the copyrights themselves apparently do not expire until the 2080's so have some time to run yet. Of course, these are claims that were made on their website, but a number of Amiga related sites do refer to Cloanto site for Kickstart ROMs. Based on this, it seems that the only legal way to acquire and have the right to use Kickstart or Workbench is to licence it from the only company distributing them, namely Cloanto.
I would not take any claims by Cloanto on face value. Kickstart and Workbench can legally be acquired from Hyperion.
>Could you elaborate on that please?
There is court action underway against Cloanto for their various infringements, see
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.256770/gov.uscourts.wawd.256770.7.0.pdf
