This is disappointing. https://www.theverge.com/20...

This is disappointing.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/4/24090357/nintendo-yuzu-emulator-lawsuit-settlement

On one hand, the Yuzu folks had it coming with all the thinly veiled promotion of game piracy (if you can even call it thinly veiled). There's a reason I banned everyone even remotely talking about that back when I was part of the Wii homebrew community.

On the other, the proposed settlement asserts that the *emulator* itself is a DMCA violation (not just the conduct of those developing it), and that is an absolutely ridiculous idea. I *believe* this doesn't actually set any legal precedent (since it is wasn't litigated, but IANAL), so other emulators should still be safe... but still, really not a good look.

I'm so glad I'm no longer in the game hacking world and having to deal with this kind of stuff...

Like 4 March at 20:38 | Open on social.treehouse.systems

22 comments

Xer Shadow Tail ☄️🌺🏳️‍⚧️

@marcan Yeah since it was never litigated we are with the status quo, which is just fine for me!

4 March at 20:40 | Open on chitter.xyz

phi1997

@XerShadowTail
I think the threat of legal action is going to scare a lot of people out of working on emulators, not to mention that Yuzu and Citra are way harder to find now. We still have Ryujinx for Switch emulation, but there's no other 3DS emulator out there yet that's even close to as good as Citra.
@marcan

4 March at 21:27 | Open on mastodon.social

Xer Shadow Tail ☄️🌺🏳️‍⚧️

@phi1997 @marcan It does not scare me one bit, still going to continue working on my emulator.

4 March at 21:57 | Open on chitter.xyz

Patrick $8 :verified:

@XerShadowTail @marcan read the whole article 💀

4 March at 21:50 | Open on infosec.exchange

Brandon

@marcan I’m just really curious why they didn’t keel over before Nintendo even fired the first shot. Usually demand letters get sent out as warning shots and that’s when projects fold, but there was something that kept them going until something got filed. Maybe it was arrogance? Who knows.

4 March at 20:42 | Open on social.treehouse.systems

@marcan WTF, they paid 2.4 million? Where did they get this kind of money from? And if you can easily pay that amount of money, you can definitely afford a lawsuit - especially as that one would probably even get crowdfunding.

4 March at 20:49 | Open on ap.nil.im

JamesGecko

@marcan My perception is that Citra development lost a lot of steam due to the focus on Yuzu, and now they’re both discontinued. Their decision to chase new games left us with kinda half-baked emulation of the older system that actually needs preservation.

4 March at 20:49 | Open on toot.cafe

gudenau

@marcan I do believe that there's no president unless there's a verdict (ignoring appeals) and things like settling and dropping cases don't count.

Doesn't mean companies won't follow this example though.

4 March at 21:05 | Open on fosstodon.org

Emelia/Emi

@marcan Based on my somewhat rudimentary knowledge of some of the weirder bits of the US legal system (also NAL): Since it never even made it to a district court, it carries about the same legal weight as a newspaper opinion column, also known as "the judge can use it as TP if they want to", but there's nothing formally stopping a judge from basing a ruling off it either, which means anyone with skin still in the game should be reading it and coming up with counter-arguments just in case.

Honestly I think their biggest mistake is that they didn't shut the hell up about the TotK leak, which was basically shooting a flare gun at a kaiju...

Expand text...

4 March at 21:12 | Open on tech.lgbt

Hector Martin

@becomethewaifu Yeah, the leak thing was just handing this on a silver platter to Nintendo.

4 March at 21:19 | Open on social.treehouse.systems

Pierre Bourdon

@marcan I mean, not setting any precedent doesn't mean emulators are any safer, 17 USC 1201a is still shit and still applies to emulation of commercial games on pretty much any system more recent than the GameCube.

4 March at 21:42 | Open on mastodon.delroth.net

endrift

@delroth @marcan I still have a hard time believing they can prove 17 U.S.C. § 1201(2)(A) in court, but in this specific instance 17 U.S.C. § 1201(2)(C) would probably be the one that gets most heavily litigated. The same goes for any emulator that provides instructions for how to dump games involving cracking DRM, it seems...

4 March at 21:47 | Open on social.treehouse.systems

Pierre Bourdon

@endrift @marcan both apply here imo, because the emulator is what's decrypting the protected work, which is circumventing technical protection measures.

(Also I assume you mean (a)(2)(A) and (a)(2)(C)?)

4 March at 21:50 | Open on mastodon.delroth.net

endrift

@delroth @marcan um, maybe? I'd have to go through that section again.

Also the words "primary purpose" are what make (A) somewhat arguable. But that didn't make it to court, so who knows.

4 March at 21:54 | Open on social.treehouse.systems

Hector Martin

@delroth @endrift This seems like it would be fairly easy to work around by separating out the decryption from the emulation. The Wii even had those bits for supporting plaintext games with dev versions of IOS, so it's even baked right into the format...

4 March at 21:54 | Open on social.treehouse.systems

Pierre Bourdon

@marcan @endrift possibly. I don't know the precedents ruling on how broad (a)(2)(C) would apply there. It's mostly a stupid dance anyway: I can't imagine any emulation project not settling given how expensive court proceedings would be.

4 March at 22:00 | Open on mastodon.delroth.net

Gonzalo Nemmi :runbsd:

@marcan DMCA § 1201 is an absolutely ridiculous idea. That's all there is to it.

https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?httpsredir=1&article=1078&context=cjlpp

4 March at 22:55 | Open on mastodon.sdf.org

Danny

@marcan Just went on my favourite Nintendo news site and the amount of people who think emulators are somehow innately illegal is genuinely staggering.