Hi! All, Ok, I have a question. Is homebrew illegal? If not, then why people don't take credits with their real name? I always see, homebrew developer use their strange name. People who thinks homebrew isn't illegal, what's your arguments?

Quote:Original post by moo_gamer
Is homebrew illegal?

It depends on the platform. In general, homebrewing for mobile phones or PDAs it's not. For consoles, you'll have to read the EULA. Whether that agreement will hold up in court, may vary from country to country though.

Here's the new Wii Homebrew channel:

">

you can't say it's illegal, nobody like to use their real name at that

Homebrew is perfectly legal; I love it to death. They just don't want you to know about it because if your video game systeam can run homebrew, it can probably also run pirated games, which is NOT legal.

The short answer: homebrew is legal, piracy is not.

Quote:Original post by chucky176
The short answer: homebrew is legal, piracy is not.

While this is a nice theory, it is not true.

Running homebrew on unmodified hardware can be difficult or impossible for some consoles and phones -- but in some places modding or unlocking your your hardware is illegal. (It should have been the piracy that is a problem but altering hardware you own is okay, but people with money wanted to go after modding the boxes.)

Unauthorized emulators are illegal to use or possess in a some countries, generally through vendor's patents and copyrights. Note that vendors authorize emulators all the time with certain restrictions, such as exclusive use for development of sanctioned content.

Reverse engineering to create the homebrew apis is illegal in some countries, and in other countries, using those tools is illegal.


Since the OP never stated his country, we can only guess about what is legal for him.

Also, because these are IP claims, it must go through the courts on a case-by-case basis. Most homebrew development would collapse long before going through any legal proceedings.