Decrypting SELF

RPCS3 should automatically decrypt .self files.
Also I don't think it's really "illegal" to have a string of certain numbers and characters be included with your program.

That's what I was wondering but unfortunately there exists this concept of illegal numbers.
Afaik if a program is condemned with intend to "circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a [protected] work." it can be illegal to distribute and use such program. Afaik there has been certain cases like this with free (open source) software that circumvents AACS.

So my question is could the fact that modern consoles have very nasty DRM that has to be bypassed in order to emulate the console give companies that profit from the emulated system the power to throttle/cease emulation development?

Also If theoretically I was to rip a PS3 game from the original BD that I own could this be considered illegal activity as well because the contents of the disk itself are encrypted and decrypting them would violate some strange DRM law?

Sony at this point probably doesn't care enough about the PS3 anymore, thus I highly doubt they'll be taking legal action.

If you rip a PS3 game through a PS3 (getting the files using a FTP server), then AFAIK, it shouldn't be illegal, because the PS3 itself decrypts them, and you simply transmit them.
But I don't know much about legal stuff, so any of what I said could be completely wrong.