this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't play any Switch games and have never used Yuzu, but I just started donating to their Patreon. Hopefully they can afford to go to court over this. Nintendo can pound sand.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago

Same, I just signed up. Here's the URL for anyone else interested:

https://www.patreon.com/yuzuteam

Fuck Nintendo.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago

Fuck Nintendo!

[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago

Nintendo is a shady company. When somebody improves their product all they care to do is destroy it and whoever supports it.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago

The DMCA anti-circumvention angle is scary, it's so draconian they may actually win. Even though Yuzu is open source, not many people want to paint a target on their back.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago (2 children)

fuck me, yuzu was one of the emulators I was excited about

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago

git clone https://github.com/yuzu-emu/yuzu.git

If the developers settle or lose the suit and have to take down the code, at least you'll still be able to compile all the old releases.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago

Devs have to give up, companies have limitless funding for these things while people don’t

They have anti-piracy measures in the emulator though and it’s not like it’s any more difficult to play pirated games on the Switch. So this is sad to see

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago

I had no idea such a thing existed. I don't usually buy Nintendo stuff, but if this is free I'll probably give it a try

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago

Yeah? Such a dick about it, Nintendo. Your platform is not special and people will run software however they please.

Emulation is legal. Emulation will remain legal. If you can't deal with it except through courtroom bullying, may devs should look into SLAPP defenses.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago (10 children)

Time to sell my switch, i only have it because of yuzu.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago

Hey Nintendo, Eat dick.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Yuzu is open source though so can't people who don't live in the US just fork it? Copyright laws are a lot for lax outside the US.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago

Fuck Nintendo

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

In other news, I got a DMCA email from Xfinity today. Might or might not be able a Nintendo switch game. 🤪

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Sony v Bleem ended with victory in court for Bleem, but it also ended with Bleem out of money and out of business. Nintendo doesn't have to have a legal leg to stand on to practically win, just a big pile of money which they definitely do have.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago

Welp, guess I'm downloading a copy of yuzu just in case.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It doesn’t matter, it’s legal to create emulators and plugins for interoperability.

Yuzu cannot distribute switch games, nor distribute Nintendo software, but it can emulate the console.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

Unfortunately, it's more of a gray area than most people think.

17 USC §1201 (f)(1)

Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a)(1)(A), a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, and that have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent any such acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this title.

Ok, and that applies to...

17 USC §1201 (a)(1)(A)

No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

And a technological measure is:

17 USC §1201 (a)(3)

to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and

Perfect! Right?

17 USC §1201 (a)(2)

No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that—

(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or

(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

And unfortunately, Yuzu is capable of and needs console keys to decrypt games and system firmware files.

The reverse engineering for interoperability exception, (f)(1), only explicitly exempts (a)(1)(A) for research purposes. If Yuzu—as a software product—is found to have the primary purpose of circumventing Nintendo's DRM, it will be in violation of (a)(2) and the developers are not protected.

This is something that will need to be tested in court, but the only way they would be entirely in the clear is if they stripped out all encryption/decryption code and forced users to use some other tool to fully decrypt the firmware, NAND filesystem, and game image filesystems during dumping. They'll likely argue that the primary purpose is preservation, and Nintendo will use the fact that the Switch is still sold in retail as a counterargument to suggest that their development of the emulator was unnecessary and not in good faith. If they instead argue that it was created as a development or debugging tool, Nintendo could point to their low barrier of entry for developers to obtain a devkit (as evidenced by the crapton of shovelware and asset flips in the E-Shop).

If they don't settle, it's going to be an expensive mess to sort out.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (5 children)

It was bewildering to me in the moment that when TOTK was leaked that they didn't restrict themselves from working on the emu to handle TOTK. It was some nod and wink "breath of the wild" improvements coming in all of a sudden.

Like... for real? If I were the project lead I would've banned discussion and development about it until after launch. And part of the legal filing from Nintendo is that Yuzu's own telemetry shows that Yuzu devs must be aware of piracy because they can see games being played on the emulator pre-launch. Make of that what you will.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I pirated BotW and TotK and others

Which made my brother buy a Switch and TotK and Mario Kart and a Nintendo Online subscription and aaaa...

Piracy increases sales, goddammit. Literally free advertising.

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