10 ms·
Gitlab confirms it's removed Suyu, a fork of Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu
- jsiepkes 3y ago> The company says it’s just following its DMCA takedown policy. They are a Dutch company (Gitlab B.V.). So why do they even bother with the DMCA?
- slimsag 3y agoGitLab Inc. is a Delaware corporation[0] like pretty much all other startups that seek US-based VC funding. [0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1653482/000162828021024605/gitlabincderestatedcertifi.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1653482/000162828021...
- itake 3y agoIsn't Gitlab listed in the Nasdaq?
- azundo 3y agoEven if they are you can't do business in a country and ignore that country's laws just because you're domiciled somewhere else.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lozenge 3y agoYou often can actually. Unless the country you're trying to ignore is the US.
- Kwpolska 3y agoOr the EU.
- astkaasa 3y agoEven EU.
- warkdarrior 3y agoOr China. Or the EU. Or many other countries who don't like having their laws ignored.
- skissane 3y ago> Unless the country you're trying to ignore is the US. Well, that really depends on where in the world you are. If you are in a Western country, the US will probably find a way of getting to you. If you are in China or Russia, maybe not – especially if your business isn't dependent on the US (and its allies) for its inputs or outputs.
- captn3m0 3y agoGitLab is a US listed remote-only company with no HQ: https://ir.gitlab.com/ir-resources/investor-faqs https://ir.gitlab.com/ir-resources/investor-faqs.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Kelteseth 3y agoYes but they have EU sub companies. They also have a GmbH here in Germany.
- School-Cotton 3y agoWhy does that matter?
- lgbr 3y agoBecause a user sitting in the United States could be served copyrighted content by GitLab. It would likely even come from one of GitLab's servers in the US. In that hypothetical instance, GitLab is in clear violation under US law. In theory GitLab could decide to ignore the DMCA, as you suggest, but that would mean removing all US servers, firing all US staff and cancelling all contracts with US customers (including those that GitLab has with the US government itself). Even in that instance, you would just move the copyright lawsuit to Dutch courts.
- shiroiushi 3y agoI'm no expert on Dutch copyright law, but it seems like such a lawsuit would go nowhere. Presumably, there's no copyright violation at all here: the emulator's source code is FOSS and contains no Nintendo source code, as is usually the case with emulators. What it's used for is irrelevant; the only thing that matters is whether someone actually copied something without authorization from Nintendo, which (I assume) they did not. The use of the code only becomes relevant with the US DMCA, with its stupid "infringing uses" clause. US law only applies inside the US though. But a company like that, which does a lot of business in the US, can't afford to thumb its nose at the US's stupid copyright law, if they want to continue doing business there. So business and money take priority over copyright ethics.
- mort96 3y agoMy understanding of the DMCA is that whether or not there's any infringing actually going on is irrelevant, you have to take the content down first and then have a court battle to decide whether you can put it back up.
- indeyets 3y agoOnly if the entity who published the content does not oppose. And then it doesn’t have to go to the court. But if they oppose, the content should stay online until the court decision
- Agingcoder 3y ago
- johncoltrane 3y agoFor the same reason US sites must comply with EU regulations.
- eemil 3y agoMany sites block EU users because they don't want to deal with GDPR. Seems to me that Gitlab could just block US users from DMCA'd repos.
- johncoltrane 3y agoWell, like others here, I was under the impression that GitLab was a Dutch company but it turns out that they are actually incorporated in the US, which makes that whole line of thinking pointless.
- elzbardico 3y agoWell, that would cut a sizable portion of gitlab's revenues
- flipbrad 3y agoDMCA is sometimes just used as shorthand for all similar notice-and-takedown regimes.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39783444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39783444
- ur-whale 3y agoCentralized infrastructure at its very best.
- pjmlp 3y agoIt has been proven multiple times since Compuserve, AOL and MSN, that users don't want decentralised systems.
- MeteorMarc 3y agoAdd Bitcoin
- throwaway563214 3y agoI think the runaway success of p2p file sharing platforms (from Gnutella to Bittorrent and everything in between), Bitcoin and others prove that plenty of users do want decentralized systems. It's interesting that you named a bunch of very large corporations who have a vested interest in users not having the choice of decentralized systems (which they cannot control or profit from) as "proof" that decentralized systems are not desirable.
- pjmlp 3y agoI use those on purpose, because they were there before Internet became a thing, using their proprietary systems, and after the Internet boom, the abstract set of "users" basically gathered around centralized systems that provide them the comfort to know where to go to, what to talk about with their friends and family. Where are Gnutella and Bittorrent now? Gone, in what non geeky users are concerned they never happened.
- persnickety 3y agoThey were made gone by fiat, despite the demand and popularity they enjoyed. That does not support the conclusion that people don't want them. Indeed, torrenting never died, a testament to the demand.
- 3y ago
- bitwize 3y ago[flagged]
- kozinc 3y agoAnd if, for example, my Switch breaks, or Nintendo shuts down whatever online stuff they got, and I still want to play the games I own? Sometimes an emulator ends up being the only answer.
- thih9 3y agoYou're not wrong, but to be fair, Switch offers a decent offline only experience. So in that scenario Nintendo would like you to get a new Switch or to buy a game cartridge. For many cases, especially Nintendo exclusives, this would work.
- orionblastar 3y agoI want to boycott Nintendo for this. They have a lot of old games that can only be emulated if the old hardware is too expensive to buy. Nintendo is bullying the open source developers with DMCA takedown notices for an emulator that doesn't use any of Nintendo's code.
- timetopay 3y agoThis is not an issue about "old hardware" or "old games", it's about an emulator for a currently selling system. I don't agree with what Nintendo is doing, but I understand why they're so angry.
- School-Cotton 3y agoI am sure Nintendo doesn’t mind if people who pirate their stuff start to “boycott” them.
- aurareturn 3y agoIf you cared so much about this, you were probably pirating anyway. I'm sure Nintendo doesn't care much about whether you will "boycott" them or not.
- alex_suzuki 3y agoI love Nintendo for their products, habing grown up with them. I have a really hard time understanding this hardball stance against emulators. How is this a threat to their business? Feels more like they’re alienating a lot of people that might harbor good will towards them.
- Hamuko 3y agoI imagine that they're against Switch emulators when the Switch is still their primary business. I also don't imagine their hardline stance against Switch emulators will change anytime soon if the Switch 2 is backwards compatible.
- alex_suzuki 3y agoIt just seems to me that having a great Switch emulator present would deter only a tiny fraction of Nintendo‘s customer base from buying the real thing. Still more than the cost of legal action, probably.
- rincebrain 3y agoWell, if you have a reputation for suing anyone who even breathes funny, suing one group or two high-profile groups every so often is cheaper than suing hundreds of smaller things that might be more prevalent if you didn't have a reputation of landing on people.
- StressedDev 3y agoThey are against emulators because they know the vast majority of emulator users are pirates.
- alex_suzuki 3y agoYes, sure, but it’s hard to imagine that they’ll suddenly turn into willing buyers when they can’t pirate.
- foverzar 3y agoDevelopers could take advantage of the current political climate and mirror potentially endangered projects in a jurisdiction where companies like Nintendo have a limited legal reach. E.g. on a Russian GitVerse, good luck getting your DMCA processed over there.
- _a9 3y agoYea not sure why they didn't go straight to selfhosting a Gitea instance on some offshore VPS. If any Suyu devs are reading check out https://kycnot.me/ https://kycnot.me/ I've personally used these hosts to provide data to the public that was subject to constant takedowns - UDN (Used before the invasion) which is based in Ukraine. Good way to support them I suppose. - BuyVM in Luxembourg - Incognet in NL (Probably reach out to them first to see if it's OK) - PQ.hosting in Russia
- oliverpk 3y agoThey don't even observe DMCA, and they still did this?
- ffpip 3y agoGitLab is a US company. It's cannot choose to not "observe" DMCA. If they get a notice they have to take it down
- nicce 3y agoWho validates the ”correctness” or ”validity” of the DMCA notice?
- madaxe_again 3y agoEx post facto. Takedown happens first, then you can appeal - but generally hosts err on the side of caution. It’s a blunt force instrument. Always was. Fun side effect is that you can use it as a blunt force instrument, too - don’t like what someone is saying online? DMCA. Competitor champing at your heels? DMCA. I still think the best way to kill it is mass abuse of the process.
- indeyets 3y agoNo one is supposed to. It goes like this: 1. DMCA request (take them down, they use our copyrighted stuff!), 2. opposition (no, we do not agree! Do not take us down), 3. the process with lawyers and judges starts An expectation is that “wrongdoers” just do not bother to oppose and everything works faster. Then there are corporate policies which make this weirder (like YouTube who says: “if people send too many dmca request towards you, we chose not to see you as a customer”. But this has nothing to do with law)
- nicce 3y agoAre the any penalties if the DMCA request was invalid? Just pay the legal fees?
- extragood 3y ago"Sue you". I can't help but appreciate a clever name
- ed_mercer 3y agoSumi would probably have been more appropriate… Also other candidates could have been Nosumi Kamusumi Kantosumi Aideayusumi Toraiandosumi
- bitwize 3y agoWhen Apple (computer company) was legally threatened by Apple Corps (Beatles record company) about the inclusion of audio technology in their computers in ostensible violation of a trademark agreement between the two companies, the sound designer for the former Apple defiantly added an alert sound to the Macintosh called "Sosumi".
- junon 3y agoThat's where it comes from?? That's incredible.
- farawayea 3y agoGitlab has just told the world that they disable the accounts of people who contribute to a repository which receives a DMCA. You just need to send a reasonably complete DMCA takedown request to get the accounts of the contributors blocked and the repository removed. It doesn't have to be legitimate or even mention what content violates someone's intellectual property, who owns it or how it's actually violated.
- andy_ppp 3y agoI’ve always wondered this (specifically for my situation with music copyright) how do you only give access to takedown requests from the actual copyright holder? How do you know they are who they say they are? Music company email address or KYC checks and then sue people who try to do this as a joke? I wish copyrighted music was a fair price and easy to use, currently for sync licensing the music industry claim to want around 16% of REVENUE which seems insane to me.
- JackSlateur 3y agoIn France, it must come from a judge. So when I worked at an ISP, we received tons of DMCA requests for customers doing torrent. All of them were redirected to the trash. We won't obey to some random email.
- voxic11 3y agoUnder DMCA to file a takedown request you must attest under penalty of purgery that you represent the copyright holder. Also the service provider is protected under law if they restore the content due to a counterclaim by the user that the work is not actually infringing.
- farawayea 3y agoI'm not part of that industry. My impression has always been that artists from big labels get most of the money. The not so popular ones are probably not getting that much since they likely get worse deals.
- deleted 3y ago
- botanical 3y agoDMCA seems more like a weapon abused by corporations. These laws are written solely for corporations. An emulator is not the thing. It's an American law but a European company abides by it with no leeway given. Shameful. Everything on the web needs decentralisation as we nearing some sort of dystopia where corporations dictate how we live.
- not_a_dane 3y agoThe future is decentralized.
- datadeft 3y agoIn what sense? You need a true peer-to-peer internet before you can think about decentralized. The current internet is a highly centralized place and every effort to change that failed so far for various reasons. See the Skype story as an example.
- soygem 3y agoAlready today, people share the hot stuff on decentralized services (matrix, torrents, ipfs). There was recently a hn submission about a decentralized github. Of course this has tradeoffs, for example matrix doesn't have the fast cdn's discord has, but many people are ready to pay that price.
- datadeft 3y agoThose systems are trivial to shut down by any central authority. I would not classify those as decentralized.
- 0xedd 3y agoDid you tell Hollywood your secret? They're dying to know how to "trivially shut down" all the decentral media sharing going on for decades. Even China's Great Firewall has its hole-punchers (https://github.com/barry-far/V2ray-Configs https://github.com/barry-far/V2ray-Configs). Maybe they have an opening for Grand Master of Reality position you can apply to.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sillysaurusx 3y agoThere seems to be some confusion here. Let me step in as someone who has gone through this. My repo https://github.com/shawwn/llama-dl https://github.com/shawwn/llama-dl was taken down last March by Facebook. They asserted copyright over LLaMA, which is obviously bogus since it was trained on data they do not own the copyright to. I was bummed about this, but after I mentioned on HN that I was willing to fight Meta, an anonymous person named L contacted me and sent $20k of Monero to cover legal fees. I was also contacted by an amazing lawyer who wanted to represent me in this. I was absurdly fortunate on both counts. He drafted a counternotice, we sent it, and then my repo was restored within a week or so. GitHub had no choice in the matter. Legally this is a required process. Ditto for GitLab. Both are US companies. When YouTube-dl was taken down some time ago by a DMCA, Nat went to bat and got it restored, and GitHub made some sort of pledge to cover legal fees associated with bogus takedown requests. Here’s the shitty part for this particular situation. A case can be made that the emulator is for the purpose of circumventing copyright protection mechanisms. This, sadly, is a solid legal basis for issuing a lawful takedown, as much as we all absolutely despise that idea. It’s pretty clear cut; Nintendo doesn’t want Switch games to be run on non-Nintendo platforms, and the emulator seeks to enable Switch games to be run on any platform. Therefore, the intent of the emulator is to circumvent Nintendo’s protection mechanisms. So where does this leave us? Well, the team can file a counternotice. GitLab will restore the repo. But that opens up the team to a lawsuit by Nintendo. And as much as I want to stand up to bullies, there’s a difference between standing up to a guy shoving a kid in a locker vs standing up to a Silverback gorilla charging at you. Nintendo’s legal history implies the latter. Welcome to Nintendo pain. The Smash community has been dealing with Nintendo’s BS for decades now. They shut down tournaments that use emulators for Smash Melee. And no one can do anything, because it’s their legal right to do so. EDIT: It’s horrible that GitLab disabled the accounts of the developers, though. My GitHub account was fine. This should be the focus of the outrage here.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Cortex5936 3y agoWas there any moment where you could have got your legal fees reimbursed ?
- pipes 3y agoI've been using emulators for decades. Yuzu were making money on current gen Nintendo content, no one would pay for them patreon money if Nintendo did make the content for it. I'm fine with them being shutdown. What I'm hoping is that the yuzu team haven't ignited a wider crack down on emulator Devs who provided their work for free.
- rowanG077 3y agoWhich is precisely what is happening now.
- didntcheck 3y agoWhat's morally wrong with making money on it?
- pipes 3y agoNot so much moral, but I don't think piracy is good for the game industry. And the primary use case for yuzu is playing pirated Nintendo games. I doubt a significant percentage of users are playing games they bought legitimately. In short they are making money from enabling piracy of Nintendo games.
- ranguna 3y agoIn short, they were allowing the distribution of pirated content on their patreon only discord server. That's what allowed Nintendo to win this time. Nintendo has tried for ages to take down emulators, and this time it was tropical haze's fault for siding with Piracy. It has nothing to do with console reverse engineering.
- crtasm 3y ago>allowing the distribution of pirated content on their patreon only discord server Their discord server was open to everyone last I looked, did you mean a patreons only channel on there? What's the source for the claim about pirated content being distributed on it?
- lloydatkinson 3y agoIt’s only a matter of time before a freedom focussed source control provider similar in nature to Pirate Bay, or some distributed model over BitTorrent or Tor comes into existence.
- nicman23 3y agois there a p2p git?
- hansonpeter 3y ago[dead]
- junon 3y agoMan, way to make your customers never want to buy your products. I don't know that I'll ever give another cent to Nintendo at this rate, they just seem completely Anti-User.
- darby_eight 3y agoNintendo has always been sue-happy. What's notable here is they haven't been able to find a way towards injunctions against hosting the source. It's not going to be difficult to find non-hostile hosting. I don't believe the DMCA can be used to do anything but harass the team anyway.
- tiagod 3y agoI doubt this affects even the tinyest measurable amount of Nintendo's customer base.
- junon 3y agoThat wasn't my point at all. However imagine the alternative, where they embraced it.
- noirscape 3y agoFor clarity's sake: the Yuzu repository is most likely radioactive in general. As part of the settlement, the judge issued an injunction to declare Yuzu as software to exist solely to bypass TPMs. That gives Nintendo the legal right to issue takedowns (and pursue legal action) against Yuzu code. It doesn't set any precedent for other emulators though. As far as I can tell, yes, injunctions like that extend beyond the person they've been issued against. Sure, it may not be fully correct assuming you modify the Yuzu code to take out everything to do with bypassing TPMs, but Nintendo has a strong legal team and the ability to drag out a court case if you want to test that. I don't think most people will want to do that.
- Shawnj2 3y agoI’m guessing the future of the Yuzu codebase is being self hosted in China or another country that doesn’t care about IP law and all contributions being anonymous.
- My1 3y agoto be frank, I'd say that judge knows nothing. the Protection measures, like encryption need keys, these are bot included, so yuzu cannot exactly bypass them. you need to get the keys to decrypt the roms.
- theodric 3y agoInterestingly, while it was down last night (GMT) and all the release download links on their website were broken, those links and the associated GitLab repos appear to be back up now (09:47 GMT). Quick, mirror everything :)
- Deukhoofd 3y agoNot the only thing they DMCA'd yesterday, they also DMCA'd: - The primary forums for Pokemon fangames [1] - Youtube Creators playing games with mods that added Pokemon [2] [1] https://twitter.com/RelicCastleCom/status/1770901435867361351 https://twitter.com/RelicCastleCom/status/177090143586736135... [2] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/20/pokemon-co-is-now-dmcaing-years-old-videos-showing-pokemon-modded-into-other-games/ https://www.techdirt.com/2024/03/20/pokemon-co-is-now-dmcain...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Worldblender 3y agoIt's apparently not the end for this project. This basically made it unavailable on Gitlab, but the source code itself didn't disappear. They already have their own Git repository (running on Forgejo) at: https://git.suyu.dev/suyu/suyu https://git.suyu.dev/suyu/suyu Even now, it's still seeing activity, and even has their actions and wiki migrated over. If there are problems with having this link here, let me know.
- re_riley 3y agoYup, and we just put a provision prohibiting anything from remaining resident on gitlab to our company's security policy, and several larger firms just did the same. LMAO.