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Nintendo blitzes GitHub with over 8k emulator-related DMCA takedowns
- wetpaws 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40236699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40236699
- basil-rash 2y agoNintendo is in an interesting position whereby they are actually selling emulators as a product to this day. Which gives them more of a leg to stand on in these sorts of efforts, regardless of whether or not I personally agree.
- FinalBriefing 2y agoSorry?
- throwuxiytayq 2y agoDon’t worry about it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- realusername 2y agoI would say the opposite, it gives them less of a leg to stand since they cannot say that there's never any justification for emulation anymore like they said in the past.
- admax88qqq 2y agoUsually the justification for emulation is "the company doesn't sell this product anymore, it's abandonware"
- vundercind 2y agoEmulation’s legal whether or not some of the software on a platform is abandonware (which doesn’t justify anything legally, anyway)
- josephh 2y agoWhen you make this kind of claim, please make sure to 1) disclose whether you're a lawyer, and 2) your jurisdiction.
- unixhero 2y agoNo. This is not legally binding. This is not the United States Of America where we speak officially, this is a random web forum.
- filleduchaos 2y agoI think the point is that the audience might like to know whether confident claims that something is legal or illegal are backed by actual expertise or just vibes, not that things people say on a web forum are legally binding.
- unixhero 2y agoThe same as when you talk to a random person at a pub. All illegal and just vibes, always - that is the default.
- vundercind 2y agoThere’ve been lawsuits. Anything can happen in court, but emulators are currently about as settled as “legal” as anything. Including commercial ones. Sure, in the US. Can’t distribute games or other copyrighted software with them, though. Of course that’s still highly likely to get you in trouble. And with the same caveat as anything legal in the US: it’s as legal as your ability to weather a series of failing lawsuits against you.
- iwontberude 2y agoOracle v Google determined this in my mind, the emulator is implementing an API, the API is not protected by copyright law.
- Laaas 2y agoFWIW that case was about whether copying the interface file almost verbatim was fair use, not about the API itself, IIRC.
- iwontberude 2y agoRight because an API is too abstract for copyright law, it has to literally be copied works.
- gnopgnip 2y agoEmulators are legal in the US because of Sony v Connectix
- Shish2k 2y agosome aspects (not all aspects) of creating (not using) emulators are not illegal by way of copyright laws (but may be illegal by way of other laws such as trademarks, patents, DRM) in the US because of Sony vs Connectix.
- phendrenad2 2y agoSo are people going to make t-shirts with the cryptographic keys? I.E. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...
- emodendroket 2y ago2007 was a different time. Can't imagine that happening today
- pipes 2y agoI thought this was going to be all Nintendo emulators, thankfully it is only yuzu (switch emulator) related.
- langsoul-com 2y agoFor now, Nintendo won the lawsuit against Yuzu, on grounds of piracy. Given how most emulators can allow playing pirated games, the others might be next.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- smrq 2y agoWell, no, it never went to court.
- SllX 2y agoRead up on Sony vs Connectix. This is basically FUD. Yuzu is cooked but that doesn’t mean all emulation of Nintendo consoles is. The Yuzu devs settled, and among the allegations in Nintendo’s filing was that they, the developers themselves, engaged in piracy.
- bonzini 2y agoProblem is that was before DMCA. New law can override judicial precedent.
- SllX 2y agoFirst, no it wasn’t. Second, the DMCA has nothing in it that explicitly targets emulators. Now what some hardware makers have done is include some kind of cryptography and called it an anti-circumvention method, but that is a later phenomenon and the earlier attempts at this didn’t amount to much in most cases. Third, the Yuzu Devs brought the wrath of Nintendo of America down upon them through means other than merely writing an emulator, in particular they were likely engaged in actual piracy. They probably knew they were cooked and chose to settle rather than go to trial. So again, FUD. There’s been a lot of it everywhere on this specific topic, so quit spreading it around like so much manure to nurture Nintendo of America’s basic stance towards emulation. They can have their opinion, but it doesn’t overrule judicial precedent.
- dannyw 2y agoI wonder if there’s a “git over BitTorrent”. Having a cryptographically signed (by authors, not by GitHub) and fully open source git hosting network would be a boom for FOSS security in general.
- dgellow 2y agohttps://radicle.xyz/ https://radicle.xyz/
- ekianjo 2y agoclose but it does not use Bittorrent for the P2P part?
- miohtama 2y agoBittorrent as a distribution protocol is not suitable for Git-like traffic, so Radicle is doing their own p2p.
- alurm 2y agoAs I understand, Bittorrent is not a persistent data structure. Git and IPFS are. Radicle is another interesting approach. They used IPFS but switched to a custom protocol, as I understand, for performance.
- ultra_nick 2y agoIPFS can do that https://docs.ipfs.tech/how-to/host-git-repo/ https://docs.ipfs.tech/how-to/host-git-repo/
- zmgsabst 2y agoWhat’s stopping you from making torrents of your repos now? (Not as a rhetorical question; I don’t quite understand your vision, so I’m hoping you’ll clarify the usage.)
- marci 2y ago
- pprotas 2y agoWhy are emulators illegal? I understand that they are associated with piracy because people play pirates games on them. But it’s like banning BitTorrent because it allows you to pirate, or Windows because you can play pirates games on it as well. The article mentions that emulators “illegally circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and run illegal copies of Switch games.”. But which law makes it illegal to circumvent such systems? And what about Wii-only emulators? Surely they have nothing to do with the safety systems of the Switch.
- None4U 2y ago> But which law makes it illegal to circumvent such systems? DMCA section 1201
- pprotas 2y agoYou are right, it says it right there: No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201 Can the emulators remove the circumvention code to avoid the DMCA takedown?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- d_tr 2y agoIsn't the whole emulator a circumvention? It circumvents the hardware which "effectively controls access to a work", which is the console itself.
- dannyw 2y agoNot exactly. Clean room reimpmentations are fine, and has been upheld in court. I think the copyright office even has a published exemption for it. The issue is when you bypass encryption keys and systems.
- weinzierl 2y agoHow did Tropic Haze make money if Yuzu and Citra were free. I could not find other products they sell. In consequence, how could they pay millions to Nintendo?
- Hamuko 2y agoThey had a Patreon that pulled in tens of thousands per month. If I recall correctly, some features were locked to early access that required being a Patreon member. https://graphtreon.com/creator/yuzuteam https://graphtreon.com/creator/yuzuteam
- GardenLetter27 2y agoThe early access was also open though (the whole repo was FOSS and up to date in the end) - you just had to build it manually. This situation really sucks because soon there will be the Switch 2, and then maybe in 5 years or so you won't be able to play a lot of these games easily anymore (nevermind at good resolutions, etc.).
- daeros 2y agoReminder when the youth take power the first thing we should do at this point is fully repeal the DMCA.
- forty 2y agoHow is an emulator different from things like libdvdcss? (videolan lib used to break DVD protection). Or is libdvdcss still illegal in the US? Because I feel it's the same, in both cases I want to be able to play things (movies or games) I legally acquired.
- moefh 2y agoI don't think it's different, there's a note about it on VLC's wiki: https://wiki.videolan.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions/#Is_libdvdcss_legal.3F https://wiki.videolan.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions/#Is_lib...
- boomboomsubban 2y agoThere are Library of Congress approved reasons to bypass DVD DRM, putting libdvdcss in a gray area. Any exemptions that could apply to emulators either expired or are limited in scope to things not being sold. Your use of libdvdcss is almost certainly illegal under US law though, as absurd and ridiculous as that is.
- _imnothere 2y agoVote with your wallets! Stop purchasing their products!
- kyriakos 2y agoNintendo could have hired few of the yuzu devs and launched its own gamepass style service for PC and allow people to play games via emulation. People aren't using switch emulators only to pirate but because they actually perform better than the original console the games were developed for due to hardware limitations.
- extrememacaroni 2y agothat kind of PR stunt is for failing companies, nintendo will remain rich doing its thing for the foreseeable future
- idle_zealot 2y agoIf Nintendo wanted its games playable on non-Nintendo platforms it would not need the yuzu devs to achieve that. Keeping their games exclusive is a deliberate strategy.
- FMecha 2y agoAt that point, you should argue for platform exclusivity being illegal anticompetitive behavior.
- idle_zealot 2y agoEnabling compatibility/format shifting has been a successful fair-use argument for DRM circumvention in the past, but it would be nice to have an official carve-out.
- malka 2y agoOut of sheer spite, I have long decided to never give any money to Nintendo. I pirate. And if I can't pirate, I won't play.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bilvar 2y agoYes, what an absurd notion they have that they must get paid for their (excellent) work.
- malka 2y agoOh they deserve it. But, as a player, I feel deeply hated by them. And i Do not give money to people who hate me.
- bilvar 2y agoIt's a perfectly reasonable position to not give them your money. I thought we were talking about pirating their games though, which is worlds apart from voting with your wallet.
- malka 2y agoThey are not getting my money anyway. However, I do not see any good reason to not enjoy their games. Yeah, if everyone does as I do, they go bankrupt. I do not care. Try not to be hated by people using your product, I guess.
- isodev 2y ago> In keeping with its developer-friendly approach and branding, the Microsoft-owned platform... Yes, because Microsoft has the other side where they take everyone's code and then repurpose it as a "coding aid as a service" kind of thing (copilot) without attribution or even permission in the first place.
- omeid2 2y agoThat cat got out of the bag when Google was allowed to gobble up all copyrighted content to operate a commercial service without paying the copyright holders. If you can demonstrate genuine benefit to society --of course, beyond mere access to copyrighted material-- even if during the course of a commercial enterprise, copyright does not apply.
- isodev 2y agoBecause others do it doesn't make it right and indeed, we're yet to see even remote benefit to society from the "AI" bots hype. Eventually, one hopes to see _really good_ benefit, like... much greater than the cost and negative side effects of putting virtual pets on virtual, energy consuming hamster wheels.
- omeid2 2y agoThis was for Google Books not AI, but it also applies to AI training nonetheless. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-08-10-what-happened-to-google-s-effort-to-scan-millions-of-university-library-books https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-08-10-what-happened-to-goo...
- dariosalvi78 2y agoI only expect this to amplify the Streisand effect. Funny to see how disconnected corporations (and their legals) are from the world.
- ethagnawl 2y agoThey've been waging a disconnected war against their loyal fan base for years. See, for example, them suing people over hosting Super Smash Brothers tournaments.
- lll-o-lll 2y agoI can see the cost of second hand Wii U’s going up.
- miohtama 2y agoThe solution is decentralised Github: https://radicle.xyz https://radicle.xyz Radicle gives a decentralised Git network that is much more immune to any legal action. This makes it much more difficult for Nintendo to take such action. Because it is a civil dispute, not a criminal one, the trick is to make it more costly for Nintendo to abuse the legal system (it is unlikely the legal system abuse will be fixed in long term, or ever). When DMCA and such laws were designed, it is unlikely the lawmakers intended it to be abused like this. There is no penalty for Nintendo to do as many takedown notes they want, whileas there is a headache for anyone involved in these projects to defend themselves.
- stavros 2y agoThe solution is legal reform, because these laws are bullshit.
- miohtama 2y agoIt’s the wanted outcome, but it is hard to see a path of event that would lead to this.
- bloqs 2y agoThis is the same old story though, and nerds dont get this right: what about all the viruses/child porn games and other heinous shit people will host there? Decentralisation is only as good as its moderation and unpaid moderation is a hell of a weak link
- lll-o-lll 2y agoThe issue is accountability. A big centralised server has accountability built in to some extent, because you can find and sue or jail the bastards that own it. Decentralised, is often conflated with anonymity and hence zero accountability. But it doesn’t have to be this way. For something like source control, must we have anonymity? You wouldn’t require all that much PII to deter most bad actors, I would have thought. Maybe the PII bits can be stored in a different system that provides cryptographically signed assertions. You remain anonymous, but can assert your identity is stored in X. Law enforcement have the power to recover the PII if there is a warrant. Like some of the proposals for asserted qualifications in Europe and such.
- sheepscreek 2y agoWhile patent protection expire in 20 years, but this absurd rule lasts an eternity? Not right! There should most definitely be a time limit in it’s applicability.
- bobim 2y agoThis! Copyright is just absurdly overinflated.
- DoctorMckay101 2y agoEmulator developer here (not for videogame consoles but IoT and Honeypots). The DRM circumvention that Yuzu implements can be attacked legally twofold. The decryption process to run a game in the Nintendo Switch uses some alphanumerical keys stored in 2 files if I remember correctly, called "prod.keys" and "title.keys". Yuzu did not distribute those. However it did implement the code to use those keys and decrypt a game. So you could say the final compiled binary "implements a way to circumvent DRM". Although you could also defend it by saying "it just models what the hardware does". Regardless, for the whole "emulators are illegal" discussion, you could technically distribute code for an emulator that does not include that piece of code. Then "ask" your users to "search" for it (kinda like with prod and title keys) and "tell" them to compile it. But these are very technical arguments you would need to pass in front of a non-technical judge. So good luck.
- 3836293648 2y agoNintendo in arguing that the people behind Yuzu actually did distribute them, just not very openly
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- plg94 2y agowhy over 8k??? The linked [dmca notice](https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2024/04/2024-04-29-nintendo.md https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2024/04/2024-04-2...) lists exactly 12 repos, not 8000. Where did they get this info from? edit: ah, the number of 8,535 is in the beginning of the notice itself, but due to the large number they did not list all of the forks, I guess the listed ones are the only non-forked repos.