Nintendo is suing the makers of the Switch emulator Yuzu, claims ‘There is no lawful way to use Yuzu’::Nintendo of America is suing the maker of the Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu, saying it “unlawfully circumvents the technological measures” that prevent Switch games from being played on othe
Yes there is, you could press it and put in a cocktail !
Seriously though you can very legaly copy the bios from your own officially bought switch, copy your legaly bought cartridge, and use them to play the emulator. All of which is legal, just like you could buy spare parts and build your own switch, and copy the bios from a legaly bought one. I’m not going to pretend people do that, but it is possible to use it in a legal manner.
The lawsuit says that they think exactly what you’re talking about is unlawful according to the DMCA. Let’s see how it goes.
Nintendo is taking a new approach to this one, claiming it’s a copyright protection circumvention product. There isn’t any precedent for this yet, and it isn’t protected by the interoperability exception in the DMCA.
This is actually a very scary and very important one to follow, and if Nintendo can successfully convince a judge that the primary purpose of emulators like Yuzu (which decrypt games on the fly) is circumvention, it’s going to open the floodgates against emulators for any systems newer than the PS2.
How possible would it be, if this lawsuit does work, that yuzu devs could remove the decryption portion of the code and only work on pre-decrypted roms?
I don’t have enough knowledge about the exact technical details behind the Switch’s DRM, so I can’t really say. Modern DRM involves multiple layers of cryptography, which makes it difficult to reason around unless you know exactly how it works.
If they win this one, I guarantee that workaround won’t be feasible for future consoles. Nintendo could simply make on-the-fly ROM decryption part of the Switch 2/3 firmware to make it impossible to fully decrypt without actually running the game.
ho… Scary indeed. I hope yuzu has a good legal team. Would the ruling also apply to other software product in this category (outside of emulation) ?
Probably not. The argument Nintendo is making is very specific and involves finding out if a rom-decrypting emulator’s primary purpose is {some proclaimed legal activity like preservation} or if it’s actually DRM circumvention.
If they get a favorable ruling, it will open the flood gates for console manufacturers to decimate the emulator landscape for anything newer than the PS2 era, however. Wii+, 3DS, PS3+, and Xbox 360+ all employed some form of encryption. Any emulators for those systems that don’t exclusively load already-decrypted ROMs and firmwares would be prime targets in the coming years.
Outside of emulators, maybe it would make it easier to argue that any homebrew that creates decrypted game backups is a circumvention tool. Anything beyond that would likely be too different of a scenario for Nintendo v. Yuzu to be considered a precedent.
DeCSS wasn’t precedent for this? How was it different?
DeCSS’s creator was sued in California, under the state’s trade secret law for disclosing the CSS key. Nintendo is suing under the DMCA for Yuzu violating the anti-circumvention provisions laid out in 17 U.S.C. §1201.
I follow emulator stuff pretty closely, and I’m not aware of any judgments for or against emulator devs going it from this angle. I hope I’m wrong, but this could set a very bad precedent if Nintendo is successful.
If you don’t trust my word, the ArsTechnica article does a great job explaining why this is such a huge deal. In particular, this one quote at the end:
“Nintendo isn’t attacking the core concept of emulation’s legality. They are attacking the tools and techniques that you need to make emulation actually work. There’s a whole chain of things you need to make emulation work and Nintendo doesn’t need to destroy every link in the chain.”
Nintendo isn’t retreading old ground about emulators with this lawsuit as much as they’re trying to kill or at least severely complicate the ability for emulators to actually emulate ROMs.
I wonder if creating a test game and key would work. I.e. make a game you know works on the switch, then sign a new version just for yuzu.
Still it would be bullshit hurdle put up
Typical Nintendo move. So sad to see Yuzu possibly going down this way. Even looks like Nintendo might win this one. I’m just gonna download the entire source from GitHub just in case.
I wish this would just go full hydra mode if it goes down though. Start popping up new anonymous accounts releasing the source code everywhere.
Can’t development just be moved out of the US? Like in my country even downloading copyrighted materials isn’t a crime, only uploading so emulators are like double legal.
Developers can’t just move… they will always be a target themselves.
Do you have any idea how hard and expensive it is just to move out of the US without brining a company with you?
There’s no way they could afford that, even if they found a country that would take them.
Don’t like every single large company have a 1m x 1m basement in Ireland where their HQ is technically located in for tax reasons? Just do the same thing but for copyright.
It might have helped to have the HQ elsewhere, so to say. Well, too late now.
Where is that? Asking for a friend.
Most of South America.
Brazil, for instance, tacitly encourages piracy. Because foreign media is too expensive for locals to be able to regularly afford it, so the entire country’s foreign media consumption is basically fueled by content piracy. It’s sort of an open secret, where everyone just openly downloads or streams pirated content and the government doesn’t give a fuck.
Australia. Not sure if it counts for everything, but AFAIK for movies pirating them is okay as long as you’re not sharing (i.e. uploading, seeding, etc.) and it’s for personal use.
Estonia
Thanks. FWIW I’m pretty sure that what they are accused of is illegal in all the EU because of the copyright directive.
Most EU countries aren’t following the copyright directive actually. Only Germany, Hungary, Malta and Netherlands are.
story as old as time…nintendo sues * insert piracy/emulation/gameplay video*
Cry and seethe, Nintendo.
Just because it’s not lawful (according to them) don’t mean it’s not a good idea.
Maybe if their Switch was priced better and games were cheaper, I’d get one.
Maybe if you weren’t so poor you’d get one heyooooo!
Ha I ain’t poor. I got a custom PC and a PS5. But Nintendo just over charges their stuff. My gf has one of her own, I never played it. Just don’t really have interest in Nintendo games.
Now if the Switch was about $250 new, I might get one and it’d probably collect dust. I stopped playing Nintendo after the GameCube.
…so if I wanted to test my Switch game before I apply for a proper dev kit i’m now officially shit out of luck? Thanks, Nintendo!
Correct. They want you to buy a dev kit for $450.
Just downloaded a copy this morning.
Good thing there is still ryujinx
For now
I think yuzu is associated with more piracy because FitGirl et al include it in their pirate releases for games with Denuvo
I’ll be shocked if they’re not next.
If you would like to support the Yuzu Team, there is an Early Access Yuzu App on the Play Store
Man, maybe if nintendo didnt keep siccing lawyers on everyone for everything (including themselves in their infinite geeneeus) maybe they wouldnt be having these imaginary financial hardships that they want to blame piracy on.
I’m donating to yuzu now. Fuck off Nintendo.
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Wow. A copyright lawsuit where Lemmy isn’t rooting for the establishment. Won’t anyone think of the poor, starving artists?!
Are you lost?
No, just disappointed.
Can you point out an example of anyone here who roots for the establishment? It’s kind of contrary to the purpose of federation.
EG 2 weeks ago, there was a post that had people calling for making robots.txt legally binding. Very disappointing.
How in the world is people wanting giant tech companies to stop violating every single technological oriface for every bit of data they can get their hands on to feed to their AIs dissapointing?
Lol. Yeah, sure. Tech companies would be accused of circumventing robots.txt. It’s not like being able to monopolize information would benefit them or anything. It’s not like that’s not already happening.
When you make harsher laws against trespassing, you’re not locking in the people in the big mansions.
I’m just disappointed by the complete absence of any rational thought.
“They already do it, so we should just let them” and then getting mad at the people trying to stop them is kind of a psychotic take. Unchecked corporate power is how we got to this point and refusing to ever hold them accountable is not going to make it better. Genuinely, what NON MALICIOUS reason could there even be for a small company to need violate robots.txt, and how on earth would that give them any leg up over google?
And you come at ME with “abscence of any rational thought”. Truly vile.
You’re very disappointing.
