After shutting down several popular emulators, Nintendo admits emulation is legal
2 years ago by fne8w2ah to c/technology
I wrote my own NES emulator out of spite
I'm 3D-printing Gameboy Cases full of hatred
They set the stage that they never said otherwise, but circumventing piracy protections is somehow illegal…
Now the question arises, what counts as piracy protection? Is a nag enough? Can you be criminalised in clicking away a nag you dis not read?
🤔
Here in Denmark, it's legal to circumvent piracy protection, if the purpose is to legally use the product.
The example that was used in the media when this was new, is when you buy a DVD and want to play it on a PC instead of a DVD player. Usually piracy protection would stop it from working on a PC. Of course the circumvention also makes it easy to make and distribute a pirate copy.
So the ability to use the product in the way the customer choose (within reason), is weighted higher than stopping piracy a little.
Piracy protection is things like encryption, firmware checks, pairing systems, unique game identifiers per instance of game, unique console id's, ...
Basically any system put in place to make, or identify, a game/console to be genuine or make sure a genuine game running on genuine hardware and nothing else.
These are all systems the switch had btw.
Switch emulation bypassed or faked all of those, which counts as piracy protection circumvention.
At least in the DMCA I believe
Subverting copy protection had always been a vuage notion because they sell you encrypted content, but they still have to sell you something with the decryption keys as well.
Now, using the key to remove the encryption falls under "subverting" but if you use the key to play the encrypted media directly, why does it matter what hardware it is happening on?
When it came to switch emulation you didn't really circumvent the copy protection, you exported the keys from a switch. The game images are basically dumped as is.
Yes, you could find the keys elsewhere, but if you dumped your own it wouldn't really be considered subverting. Especially with the jig you put the switch into a state built into the switch hardware. It's not even a exploit like jailbreak usually are. The recovery boot mode is an intended service feature.
The only illegal thing would be getting copies of games and keys from other people.
Keep an eye on this page to stay up to date with Switch emulators.
I guess this is what you are searching for https://citron-emu.org/
Okay but they still need to distribute it if they want others to use it. And you don’t reach a lot of people through sneakernet alone. Nintendo will just shut down every place the software gets distributed. Then no legitimate site wants to touch that with a ten yard stick.
What percentage of the gamers that you know would just be able to find and download an emulator from a git repo hosted on .onion or .i2p?
For me, that's just me. None of my gamer buddies would put in that effort, they'd just buy a product or play a game from steam.
I think we're still a long way from privacy focused protocols being mainstream in the way the web has become in the last 15 years.
torzu currently does this, though iirc the development is slowing because it's a big time commitment
Emulation is legal but emulators that circumvent the DMCA in order to function are not. Yuzu and Ryujinx both decrypt encrypted Switch content using prod keys and title keys in order to execute it. The act of decrypting switch games in real-time using those keys is a violation of DMCA and is illegal (in countries that care about the DMCA anyhow). Having code in your emulator that CAN decrypt the Switch content can be viewed as a DMCA violation as well, even if it also supports unencrypted content.
Based on that, it seems like all we need is for Ryujinx/Yuzu/some other switch emulator that hasn't yet been sued by Nintendo to be built in a way that it requires decrypted copies of the software and they could then argue that the person who violated the DMCA was the person who released the decryption tool or the teams that release decrypted versions of switch software.
Seems like if the developers remove the need for the emulator to use prod keys or title keys and they can remove the primary DMCA violation that is being weaponized against these emulators.
So, I have the prod keys from my own v1 Switch, and plugged those into the emulator, to play games I bought on physical carts.
I’ve never understood how that is illegal when everything (if you’re doing it legitimately of course) is done legitimately? They could’ve taken out the generic prod keys and be okay? Or does it not matter either way because Nintendo said so?
I’m genuinely curious because that seems like it’s well within my rights to do, but I’m not sure as legalese gives me a headache. :/
The problem is that the DMCA is a flawed piece of legislature that hamstrings fair use in a couple of really key ways.
Obligatory IANAL, but my read on the (admittedly very legalese) section 1201 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201) is that it lists a very few exemptions for what is allowable under the DMCA with regard to bypassing copyright protection mechanisms, and archival copies of personal media are not in that list of exemptions. Archival use of computer programs is covered under section 117 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117) and it allows you to make a bit-by-bit copy of your media for archiving it. It doesn't allow you to bypass copyright protection mechanisms that exist on that content.
So, you'd be protected if you were making a 1:1 exact cloned (and therefore, encrypted) copy of your switch game. Any action to decrypt that switch game (because the encryption is explicitly a copyright protection mechanism) would be a violation, whether it be you doing it manually with a tool, or an emulator doing it on your behalf. If you move that violation outside of the emulator, I would think that based on how the law is written they'd have to find some other way you were violating the DMCA with the emulator specifically in order to target it.
Ultimately, I think the reason it's illegal is because the DMCA is corpo crap that has been bastardized several times over to reduce consumer rights, but the lawyers seem to wield section 1201 as the silver bullet.
Thank you for this very in depth explanation. I see that it doesn't matter that I spent my money to own my product to do what I want with it. :/
We're forgetting that Yuzu devs had Tears of the Kingdom and released a version that could run the game before it came out commercially. And to those who were behind a donation paywall too.
The team got caught with their hand in the cookie jar and had to settle the lawsuit. They had too much cash on hand to appear like innocent homebrew developers. And how silly is it to be sharing such hot warez like AAA game leaks on a crappy platform like Discord?
They served this lawsuit to Nintendo on a platter. I've been following the emulator scene since 1998 and have no love lost for their high-priced ninja lawyer warriors. Teams deserve donations but not based on the promise that users will get an updated emulator before games even hit store shelves. The scene has to protect itself by making good decisions that avoid further legal debacles.
See, this point I understand completely. The moment you start making money from these types of things, you’re opening yourself up for lawsuits.
They didn't shut down anything, they asked and people took them down voluntarily. Legally speaking that's what happened.
When reached for comment Nintendo is quoted as saying, "Stop busting my balls and fuhgeddaboudit."
Not true. They filled a lawsuit against Yuzu and Citra and the developers had to pay 2.4 million dollars to Nintendo. They probably threatened the Ryujinx dev to do the same.
Yuzu was different due to how they were getting the keys. Still fucked tho.
That's correct, I thought it was just a cease and desist
So they're refunding that money, right?
Right?
Those never made it to trial, right? My understanding is they settled, because that was cheaper than the trial.
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You don’t admit that something legal is legal. You’re the asshole that says "OK, maybe you’re right." I’m fed up with their crap, I’ll emulate everything from now on.
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