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Looking over the legal document, realistically, their arguments are so damaging from a software perspective that they should lose. IANAL, but from skimming the
by fzeroracer 3y ago
Looking over the legal document, realistically, their arguments are so damaging from a software perspective that they should lose. IANAL, but from skimming the legal document:
The two major notions are that Yuzu violates Nintendo's copyright [1] by allowing people to play unauthorized copies [2]. In order to do so it allows for bypassing Nintendo's encryption (by taking in the keys, it does not embed the keys in the software) it falls under a violation of the DMCA [3]. Essentially, trying to argue that the keys are copyrighted. Additionally, they claim that every user that has either dumped Nintendo games they lawfully owned and play in Yuzu, or have pirated the roms and played in Yuzu have violated copyright and thus Yuzu should pay up [4].
[1] "In effect, Yuzu turns general computing devices into tools for
massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and others’ copyrighted work"
[2] "In other words, without Yuzu’s decryption of Nintendo’s
encryption, unauthorized copies of games could not be played on PCs or Android devices. "
[3] "Recognizing the threats faced by copyright owners like Nintendo in the age of digital piracy, Congress enacted the Anti-Circumvention and Anti-Trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), making it illegal to circumvent or traffic in devices that circumvent technological measures put into place by copyright owners to protect against unlawful access to and copying of copyrighted works."
[4] "On information and belief, Yuzu users have (1) dumped Nintendo games they
have lawfully purchased and copied the game ROMs into Yuzu; and (2) obtained Nintendo games online from pirate websites and copied those game ROMs into Yuzu. Each such reproduction constitutes a violation of 17 U.S.C. § 501(a) for which Plaintiff is entitled to damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504 and injunctive relief under § 502"
- Acrobatic_Road 3y ago"On information and belief" - legalese for "we have no evidence".
- aidenn0 3y agoActually legalese for "by secondhand knowledge" so not "no evidence" but "no direct evidence"
- Acrobatic_Road 3y agoSecondhand knowledge - things we've heard, or suspicions formed based on things we've heard.
- monocasa 3y agoTrue, but therefore setting up for the kinds of information that they'd be looking for in discovery. For instance, perhaps Yuzu keeps telemetry data around?
- monocasa 3y agoI'm not sure they're necessarily claiming the keys are copywritten (which honestly would be a terrible strategy), but instead that yuzu's ability to injest keys and encrypted copywritten works (decrypting them on the fly as needed like a switch would) constitutes a circumvention device banned by 17 US § 1201. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201
- fzeroracer 3y agoYou might be right, I was connecting this with the Dolphin case which was making the argument that the keys are copyrightable. Essentially this is an extension of that, which is arguing that any circumvention is a violation of 17 US § 1201.
- withinboredom 3y agoFor the keys to be considered to fall under the DCMA, they'd have to be copyrighted.
- monocasa 3y agoNot under 1201. They can form a copyright circumvention device without being subject to copyright themselves as long as they're used to protect an actual copywritten work (in this case the encrypted game images).
- withinboredom 3y agoI'm going to assume the encryption is not custom. If it is "off-the-shelf" then they'll have a real hard time proving that without making every browser on the internet a "copyright circumvention device." But regardless, if they "distribute" (ie, can be freely read off the device without special tools) the keys in the clear, it isn't used to protect anything.
- monocasa 3y agoThey use AES, but a pretty custom key derivation scheme to get to the AES keys for a specific game given the game's metadata and pre shared root keys installed on the switch at manufacturing time. Yuzu implements that key derivation scheme so that you don't have to track down per game version keys. A browser does not have the code to decrypt a switch ROM.
- boolemancer 3y ago> [4] "On information and belief, Yuzu users have (1) dumped Nintendo games they have lawfully purchased and copied the game ROMs into Yuzu; and (2) obtained Nintendo games online from pirate websites and copied those game ROMs into Yuzu. Each such reproduction constitutes a violation of 17 U.S.C. § 501(a) for which Plaintiff is entitled to damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504 and injunctive relief under § 502" How on earth can they claim that the developers of Yuzu are responsible for copying done by their users?
- withinboredom 3y agoWrite a letter to your congress-person. Laws can say whatever they want them to say.
- dubcanada 3y agoYou can claim what ever the hell you want, doesn't mean it will last longer then 5 seconds in court. It's very common people make outlandish claims, these then get dismantled by a judge and jury into usually 1 that sticks. Even though you went in with 50. That's the whole point of court.
- qingcharles 3y agoAgreed. Most law suits throw everything at the wall and then see what sticks. The first thing the defense will always do is file a Motion to Dismiss listing a reason that each count of the suit fails to state a claim.
- monocasa 3y agoBecause "trafficking in a circumvention device" has it's own special carveout in the DMCA.
- Root_Denied 3y agoThat's a pretty broad definition of "device" Nintendo is using there.