Before anyone goes off on a tangent and calls me a software-nazi, let me explain my stance.
I've developed games since 1992, and I have had to deal with piracy and cracks for my products. I have had to watch as people steal my games, and take money out of my pocket.

People who do not rely on royalties or sales of software to support them have no conception of what it's like to be in this business. I posted a poll a week ago about Photoshop, and almost half the people who replied that they used Photoshop had a pirated copy. That's a lot of people stealing a $700 piece of software simply because they could. Would you walk into CompUSA and steal one off the shelf ?

Anti-piracy tactics and digital rights management (DRM) are only going to get tougher to beat in the coming years, and that causes an inconvenience to people who really do pay for their digital goods.

Emulators, back-ups, mod chips, etc. are all illegal. They exist mainly to allow people to bypass DRM and copy or use things they don't own. It is very rare that anyone gets in trouble for "casual piracy" though because it is so widespread, but at least think about it before doing it. No matter what you think, you are helping to put a person out of work, or put a company out of business, or move jobs out of the USA.