7 ms·

> Nintendo has no leg to stand on legally speaking, and there's a precedent waiting to happen. IANAL, but my understanding is that while emulation is unambiguo

> Nintendo has no leg to stand on legally speaking, and there's a precedent waiting to happen. IANAL, but my understanding is that while emulation is unambiguously legal in the US after Bleem vs. Sony, an emulator which decrypts games is maybe not legal under the DMCA circumvention rules, and those have never really been tested in the context of an emulator. The Bleem case happened shortly after the DMCA was enacted, but PS1 games weren't encrypted or otherwise protected from being read by anything besides a PS1 so Bleem didn't have to circumvent anything. That seems to be the angle Nintendo is taking here, that Yuzu is the equivalent of something like DeCSS since it has the ability to circumvent their DRM scheme.

m-p-3 3y ago
AFAIK, the decryption keys to use the ROMs are not distributed with the emulator, and you need to retrieve these on your own from software licenses you possess.
- jsheard 3y ago
  That's correct, Yuzu doesn't include the keys, but is there any precedent that "bring your own keys" actually works as a loophole around the DMCA circumvention rules? I'm not aware of it ever being tested, so it's unclear whether it would actually hold up in a case where the softwares express purpose is to consume keys for the purpose of circumventing DRM. Back when the movie industry was going after DVD ripping tools I don't recall anyone trying to dodge legal trouble by making the end-user supply the keys instead, so unfortunately we didn't get a decision either way back then.
  - ursa_solaris 3y ago
    To my knowledge the keys are just standard RSA-2048 keys. It's not illegal for a program to support RSA-2048, and it is no concern of the program or its developers where I get my keys from. I could just as easily use these keys in any other program. Even if in some foolish way they made it illegal for Yuzu to support industry standard decryption algorithms in this specific kind of program, then Yuzu would simply require the users to manually decrypt the game beforehand.
    - m-p-3 3y ago
      So the solution for Nintendo would be to take a risk and make their own encryption scheme? That way just trying to support that prorietary encryption scheme in the emulator would be enough to run afoul of the DMCA. But then, as a workaround I could see the proprietary encryption code being supported as an addon (ie: DLL file) that you can just drop in, without distributing it with the emulator itself and letting the users search for it on the digital high seas.
catapart 3y ago
Nah, there's no circumvention here, on Yuzu's part. There may be parties involved in circumvention, but the emulator neither aids nor publishes any aid for that. The emulator REQUIRES a user to first have a legitimate copy. If the user illegally obtained that copy, they didn't obtain it via Yuzu, and they didn't use Yuzu to get around the encryption that is in the file. The emulator is just using the key on the file, the same way any application - including the Switch OS - has to. That's not "circumvention", that's "usage". If the key should not be able to be collected, for use on the file, then it's not the Yuzu emulator that collects the key. It's whatever ROM dumping/packaging solution a bad actor is using. If it ever made it in front a jury, it can be summarized as a big company trying to sue a little company out of existence because the big company doesn't like that the little company is executing the big company's code. But, unfortunately for the big company, executing someone else's code - even without their permission - is not illegal. Nintendo has the resources to sue torrent hosts and take on individuals involved in sharing networks. They have the resources to find the problem and fix it. But they're not using those resources to solve the problem; they're using those resources to scare lawful citizens into inaction because that's a cheaper target. There should never be a legal reward for that kind of scheme. But, honestly, this should never make it to trial. There are zero merits for argument, here.
- Klonoar 3y ago
  > but the emulator neither aids nor publishes any aid for that. Page 17 of the actual court document indicates otherwise: https://www.scribd.com/document/709016504/Nintendo-of-America-Inc-v-Tropic-Haze-LLC-1-24-Cv-00082-No-1-D-R-I-Feb-26-2024 https://www.scribd.com/document/709016504/Nintendo-of-Americ... > The current iteration of YUZU-EMU.ORG does not feature a live link to Lockpick—which had been hosted on GitHub—because recent enforcement action by Nintendo alerting GitHub to the illegal nature of the software caused GitHub to takedown and delist Lockpick. However, since that time, in Yuzu’s Discord server and elsewhere, Defendant’s agents have been referring users to a different website (RENA21.GITHUB.IO/YUZU-WIKI/) which does feature a live link to Lockpick. Note that I am explicitly not weighing in on legality or anything, merely pointing out your wording is at odds with the document/allegations themselves.
  - 3y ago

m-p-3 3y ago

AFAIK, the decryption keys to use the ROMs are not distributed with the emulator, and you need to retrieve these on your own from software licenses you possess.

jsheard 3y ago
That's correct, Yuzu doesn't include the keys, but is there any precedent that "bring your own keys" actually works as a loophole around the DMCA circumvention rules? I'm not aware of it ever being tested, so it's unclear whether it would actually hold up in a case where the softwares express purpose is to consume keys for the purpose of circumventing DRM. Back when the movie industry was going after DVD ripping tools I don't recall anyone trying to dodge legal trouble by making the end-user supply the keys instead, so unfortunately we didn't get a decision either way back then.
- ursa_solaris 3y ago
  To my knowledge the keys are just standard RSA-2048 keys. It's not illegal for a program to support RSA-2048, and it is no concern of the program or its developers where I get my keys from. I could just as easily use these keys in any other program. Even if in some foolish way they made it illegal for Yuzu to support industry standard decryption algorithms in this specific kind of program, then Yuzu would simply require the users to manually decrypt the game beforehand.
  - m-p-3 3y ago
    So the solution for Nintendo would be to take a risk and make their own encryption scheme? That way just trying to support that prorietary encryption scheme in the emulator would be enough to run afoul of the DMCA. But then, as a workaround I could see the proprietary encryption code being supported as an addon (ie: DLL file) that you can just drop in, without distributing it with the emulator itself and letting the users search for it on the digital high seas.

catapart 3y ago

Nah, there's no circumvention here, on Yuzu's part. There may be parties involved in circumvention, but the emulator neither aids nor publishes any aid for that. The emulator REQUIRES a user to first have a legitimate copy. If the user illegally obtained that copy, they didn't obtain it via Yuzu, and they didn't use Yuzu to get around the encryption that is in the file. The emulator is just using the key on the file, the same way any application - including the Switch OS - has to. That's not "circumvention", that's "usage". If the key should not be able to be collected, for use on the file, then it's not the Yuzu emulator that collects the key. It's whatever ROM dumping/packaging solution a bad actor is using. If it ever made it in front a jury, it can be summarized as a big company trying to sue a little company out of existence because the big company doesn't like that the little company is executing the big company's code. But, unfortunately for the big company, executing someone else's code - even without their permission - is not illegal. Nintendo has the resources to sue torrent hosts and take on individuals involved in sharing networks. They have the resources to find the problem and fix it. But they're not using those resources to solve the problem; they're using those resources to scare lawful citizens into inaction because that's a cheaper target. There should never be a legal reward for that kind of scheme. But, honestly, this should never make it to trial. There are zero merits for argument, here.

Klonoar 3y ago
> but the emulator neither aids nor publishes any aid for that. Page 17 of the actual court document indicates otherwise: https://www.scribd.com/document/709016504/Nintendo-of-America-Inc-v-Tropic-Haze-LLC-1-24-Cv-00082-No-1-D-R-I-Feb-26-2024 https://www.scribd.com/document/709016504/Nintendo-of-Americ... > The current iteration of YUZU-EMU.ORG does not feature a live link to Lockpick—which had been hosted on GitHub—because recent enforcement action by Nintendo alerting GitHub to the illegal nature of the software caused GitHub to takedown and delist Lockpick. However, since that time, in Yuzu’s Discord server and elsewhere, Defendant’s agents have been referring users to a different website (RENA21.GITHUB.IO/YUZU-WIKI/) which does feature a live link to Lockpick. Note that I am explicitly not weighing in on legality or anything, merely pointing out your wording is at odds with the document/allegations themselves.
- 3y ago