It's all illegal, and so was recording music onto audio tapes from radio or video tape from TV in the 80s. Technically it is the same downloading a TV show as it was recording it on video tape and lending it to your friend who missed that show, doesn't have that channel. The difference is technology now enables larger scale piracy AND draconian civil liberties infringing laws.
Downloading any ROM or disk/tape image on any emulator, even for a TI99/4A, is illegal unless the copyright holder has specifically released it into the public domain. Abandonware is not recognised as a legal term, it's a made up term from all the rom sites.
The point is if you take something like Hollywood's output, if a film was crap and I bought it then it goes straight back to the shop for a refund under the "duplicate gift" policy. I don't suffer full price drivel gladly. But the key here is no sale either through torrent or shop refund, and rightly so as crap is crap. Personally the biggest moaner especially, the music industry, produces 99.99999999% crap from talentless me-too puppets, so the figures about billions lost in sales are for clueless idiots lapping up their vitriol and is far from the truth. The reality is for some movies/albums the sales are pretty much all they would get in reality. There is a lot of rubbish in the mainstream that can't support a full price release fact.
It's sour grapes on both sides. What's illegal here is legal in another country, and in the 80s when cassette games for 8bit micros were 10 bucks, in Spain they were sold legally for 3 bucks. So why was it not 3 bucks here in the UK?
Piracy moans are like politics, when some media mogul is up on the stand ranting and raving remember to engage brain and common sense for maximum benefit. At the same time, The Pirate Bay are not your soulmates, they do it for the money....and the site creators have plenty of money from advertising revenue.
For very small companies however piracy would be crippling I agree, but small companies generally don't make crap, that's the difference. I bought Super Stardust AGA, I checked out Turbo Outrun on pirate (and wiped it within 2 minutes of play for pathetic coding)
And where do you draw the line? I own some TV shows on DVD but also have the same shows I own as downloaded DVD/TV rips. This is purely for convenience....I could legally rip every DVD I own that is my right, but why would I spend months doing that when someone else has done this already for me anyway? Seems like a dumb thing not to have my legally owned DVDs stored on my 2TB hard drive to cure boredom and is far more convenient than hunting for a disc in the bookshelves.
Never mind all the horseshit about 'would you download a car' if you paid a painter to paint your walls and he did a terrible job would you let him keep the money or demand a refund? Same thing with a film, if it is not entertaining it goes back to the shop for refund. Torrents just cut out the refund from shop and burning of petrol stage of the same outcome 9/10. And I've not heard a single musical production in the last 3 years I would want to own, so clearly the record industry needs to sort their stock out before complaining about thieves in the wharehouse. It's a bit like leaving the keys in a rubbish car hopping it will get stolen with some of the albums being pimped for 10 bucks in the shops these days,
