Don’t know how good a case Nintendo has here unless it can prove that Yuzu itself contains proprietary code that allows the ROMs to be played. If the decryption is being done on the ROMs’ end, then that’s just another reason to go after the ones dumping and distributing the ROMs. Nintendo couldn’t even substantially stop Dolphin, and Dolphin actually had a decryption key straight from Wii firmware in it. Good luck to them, but they’re likely going for the wrong legal target. Taking down what ROM sites they can (which would legally be a lot easier than the emulator makers) is just getting rid of drops in the ocean of the ROMs’ spread, but they’re the target Nintendo should be going after.
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Yuzu has any proprietary code. Folks have to go to other websites to download the Switch firmware and keys needed to play games.
That’s not really enough to be not in violation. For example, vlc can’t natively decrypt blurays. This is because both its not bundled with the decryption library nor the decryption keys. Vlc out of the box can not decrypt blurays.
If yuzu can, if you provide some keys, eh that might be enough for them to win. It’s certainly not enough to push nintendo away. You unfortunately need to be extremely careful around the dmca stuff.
DMCA § 1201 is the anti-circumvention clause. It makes it illegal to circumvent DRM, no copyrighted content reproduction needed.
Yuzu may have defenses if they clean-room broke the encryption, but it’s a fight that will be difficult because the statute itself is unreasonable - essentially outlawing using knowledge to circumvent access controls. To those of us who know about this statute and its history in attempt to lock-down content, it’s a serious scumbag move because they may actually win. The statute is terrible and has been since it was enacted in 1998.
They also seem to be asserting a secondary liability argument - i.e., the infringement of users is Yuzu’s responsibility because Yuzu allegedly facilitated piracy, or recklessly moved forwarded when it knew or had reason to know it would be used as such. This is harder to prove.
Even if Nintendo doesn’t win the suit (but they may win it), they already “won” by filing because this will have a chilling effect on legitimate emulation.
There are two things in conflict that apply to Dolphin, and in general to post-DRM console emulators:
It’s illegal to create or distribute a device which circumvents DRM.
It’s legal to ignore DMCA restrictions for the sole purpose of making things interoperable, like running software on machines it wasn’t originally created for when you’d be able to run it on the machine it was created for.
The wording in the legislation is sufficiently vague that it’s not obvious whether it’s illegal to create or distribute a device that circumvents DRM for the sole purpose of interoperability. If a case goes to court, it could set a precedent that has to be applied in the future, or it could be settled out of court to avoid setting a precedent, and so far, there’s no case law setting a precedent.
When Nintendo asked Valve not to allow Dolphin onto Steam, despite what some people were saying, the decryption key was known to be there, and the Dolphin team had legal advice that it was reasonable to expect that the interoperability exceptions had more power than the DRM circumvention restriction. The decryption key is a so-called illegal number, but these are probably not actually illegal, and you can see several examples on the Wikipedia page about them. Nintendo ended up taking no action against Dolphin, and it wouldn’t have been a good case to try and set a precedent with as there weren’t obvious damages now it’s been so long since the Wii stopped being sold, and because the Dolphin team have historically been so diligent about stamping out discussion of piracy in their official communities, making it hard to argue that it’s intended as a DRM circumvention device rather than an interoperability tool. Also, Dolphin’s never taken donations, easily covering all their costs with just basic ads on their site.
Yuzu’s a bit of an easier target. For a start, it’s got a Patreon, and that makes it easier to paint its developers in a bad light as they’re getting money (as well as meaning there’s actual money to recover). They’ve also got data to back up the suggestion that lots and lots of Yuzu users are pirating games instead of just playing games they’ve already got a disk copy of. In a sensible world where laws are applied fairly, there’s an easy argument that hoops to jump through like requiring the user to provide Switch firmware show they’re not trying to make piracy easy, but it’s not like Yuzu will be able to muster up enough money for lawyers to match what Nintendo will be spending.
The worst thing that could come out of this is a decision that interoperability isn’t an excuse for circumventing DRM under any circumstances, as that’ll have serious consequences for a bunch of other projects, and Nintendo are likely to want to push for this precedent to be set rather than accepting an out-of-court settlement. On the other hand, Nintendo could mess up and get the opposite precedent set, although if it looks like that’s going to happen, they’re likely to drop the suit.
Nope, you have to obtain the decryption keys yourself - I spent hours hunting around online for a set of console keys and firmware dump to get the emulator working on my steam deck.
If you own a moddable switch you can dump the keys legally, but I don’t plan on doing that any time soon.
Edit: I am dumb, of course the source code is out there. I have visited this repository a thousand times but my monkey brain can’t remember what I ate for breakfast.
Everyone download the hell out of it and never let this die.
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If it isn’t already open source, Yuzu team needs to get that shiz open source post-haste. Let’s get that code absolutely everywhere.
When that popular manga app Tachiyomi got legal bonked, the bajillion forks of it kept some semblance of the original going.
I know there’s money to be made and something like an emulator is considerably more complex than a book reading app/scraper, but it would at least give the project a chance of not dying forever.
there are already 3rd party repositories that come from yuzu. e.g Yuzu Pineapple is a repository that autocompiles the source code that yuzu puts out so that you dont have to sub to get early access builds prebuilt.
This spells “xiao riben” in Chinese. To anyone not familiar, this is derogatory Chinese slang for Japanese people, basically meaning “little Japanese person”. English speakers would use the term midget or runt. It hails back to WWII, when it was commonly believed that the Japanese were smaller than the Chinese.
Yuzu actually even took steps to make the emulator NOT run pirated versions of the new Mario game before it officially released. I ran it on Ryujinx like a week ahead of its release date, but Yuzu literally refused. They insta-banned anyone who talked about it.
Yet another reason I never buy anything from Nintendo. Fuck those fucks. On average only like 2 Nintendo games per console generation are ever any good anyway. They should be held responsible for all the e-waste they generate.
Shit like this is why I moved away from Nintendo for my gaming platform of choice.
But take heart, Nintendo, I’ll try to make time to enjoy Nintendo first party games later on a pre-loaded cheap Chinese knock-off device.
Except, I definitely won’t because Nintendo will definitely succeed in stuffing the genie back into the bottle, and preventing their games from being enjoyed on un-approved platforms in un-approved ways. /s
Yup. I was in a second hand game shop (cex) a month or so ago and most switch games were only 10 quid cheaper than the e shop. Mario and legend of Zelda where something like 50 pounds. That’s because those games don’t actually drop in price either psychically or on the eShop much.
The legality of the emulation itself has long been established, but I’ve been concerned for a while that illegal DRM circumvention of the games themselves has been a viable legal avenue. Under the DMCA, even the process to dump your own legally-licensed games has arguably been in a legal grey area for a while now, with how they are locked down. If any method to playing the games become illegal, any unauthorized emulation of games becomes de facto illegal.
I’d cite legal precedent here, but there’s been a substantial right-wing, pro-corporate shift in American courts over time. Who knows how this will go.
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Aktywne