For those also learning about Yuzu thanks only to Nintendo's lawsuit, let's save you a search:
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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not sure if they have a case, even if lawful uses of it are very rare, it doesn't mean the software itself is illegal (pretty sure this kind of thing has been settled in court before)
At least here in the states reverse engineering is totally legal. So generally emulators are legal to build. That said Nintendo can and will make their life difficult regardless of whether or not the emulator itself is taken down
This time around, Nintendo is arguing that by using prod.keys, Yuzu is a copyright protection circumvention product in violation of 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.
The reverse engineering protection under the DMCA only applies to 17 USC §1201 (a)(1)(A), so there's a very real and very scary possibility of Nintendo winning this one and setting a precedent if they can convince a judge that Yuzu's is primarily for DRM circumvention.
Yuzu doesn't ship with prod.keys. You need to provide them from your legally ripped switch. And the guides outline that (https://yuzu-emu.org/help/quickstart/#dumping-decryption-keys). Nintendo needs to go after sites that provide those keys, not Yuzu...
Yuzu doesn't provide them... Yuzu goes out of it's way to tell you how to get them legally. I'm not sure that Yuzu has circumvented anything.
Nintendo could have a claim against tools like Hekate, since that's the tool that has to decrypt stuff to dump it. But I'm not sure that would fly either.
The interesting part of this lawsuit is that it doesn't matter whether Yuzu provides prod.keys or not. Nintendo is going after them for using the keys to decrypt things, framing the emulator itself as being a Switch DRM circumvention tool.
That‘s the thing with huge, shitty corporations. Even when they know they‘re absolutely in the wrong, they can still go after the small fishes and make their lives hell.
To give another example, LEGO has been flooding small toy sellers in Germany with cease and desist letters for selling sets from competitors that might look like knock-offs to some, but are perfectly legal because LEGO does not own the brick system. And of course they would never go after Amazon for doing the exact same. Only small sellers that are ruined if they can‘t scrape the money together for a proper legal defense.
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What worries me is they think they have a case. Nintendo isn't dumb. And they have known about Yuzu for a long time. Something must have changed recently that made them think this would be worth it.
Just being an expensive pain to the developer dissuades future developers.
Why now then? Why not a couple years ago when Valve teased that you could use Yuzu on the Steam Deck?
They do specify cite the Tears of the Kingdom release and increasing revenue to Yuzu, maybe that motivated them more.
Anyway I don’t mean they certainly have no case. We'll see.
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Nintendo has lost this type of case before. Their strategy is usually to drain the defendant of cash.
Yes there is, you could press it and put in a cocktail !
Seriously though you can very legaly copy the bios from your own officially bought switch, copy your legaly bought cartridge, and use them to play the emulator. All of which is legal, just like you could buy spare parts and build your own switch, and copy the bios from a legaly bought one. I'm not going to pretend people do that, but it is possible to use it in a legal manner.
The lawsuit says that they think exactly what you're talking about is unlawful according to the DMCA. Let's see how it goes.
Nintendo is taking a new approach to this one, claiming it's a copyright protection circumvention product. There isn't any precedent for this yet, and it isn't protected by the interoperability exception in the DMCA.
This is actually a very scary and very important one to follow, and if Nintendo can successfully convince a judge that the primary purpose of emulators like Yuzu (which decrypt games on the fly) is circumvention, it's going to open the floodgates against emulators for any systems newer than the PS2.
DeCSS wasn't precedent for this? How was it different?
DeCSS's creator was sued in California, under the state's trade secret law for disclosing the CSS key. Nintendo is suing under the DMCA for Yuzu violating the anti-circumvention provisions laid out in 17 U.S.C. §1201.
I follow emulator stuff pretty closely, and I'm not aware of any judgments for or against emulator devs going it from this angle. I hope I'm wrong, but this could set a very bad precedent if Nintendo is successful.
If you don't trust my word, the ArsTechnica article does a great job explaining why this is such a huge deal. In particular, this one quote at the end:
"Nintendo isn't attacking the core concept of emulation's legality. They are attacking the tools and techniques that you need to make emulation actually work. There's a whole chain of things you need to make emulation work and Nintendo doesn't need to destroy every link in the chain."
Nintendo isn't retreading old ground about emulators with this lawsuit as much as they're trying to kill or at least severely complicate the ability for emulators to actually emulate ROMs.
From the article:
Nintendo goes directly after this [personal archive copy] argument in its lawsuit, arguing that buying a Switch game only means you "have Nintendo's authorization to play that single copy on an unmodified Nintendo Switch console." Any other copy is by definition an "unauthorized copy," Nintendo says, even if it's made by the original purchaser for their own personal use.
What's more, Nintendo argues that using Yuzu as a way to play legitimate Switch purchases on another platform (e.g. an Android device or Windows machine) is also forbidden. "Nintendo has the right to decide whether or when to enter the market of games for platforms other than its own console," the company writes.
This part of the argument specifically needs to be smacked and shut down by the courts. (Edit: I'm not saying what the law/DMCA says about it, but I'm saying if the court has discretion they need to shelve this argument from Nintendo.) If I purchase a digital copy of a song from Sony, I don't want to only be able to listen to it on a Sony Walkman, and only where and when Sony wants.
Hopefully they can find someone with one arm that buys switch games and plays them on PC with a special controller to bolster their case.
Agreed. That is an extremely far reach, and it would have really bad consequences for consumers if not smacked down.
How possible would it be, if this lawsuit does work, that yuzu devs could remove the decryption portion of the code and only work on pre-decrypted roms?
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Typical Nintendo move. So sad to see Yuzu possibly going down this way. Even looks like Nintendo might win this one. I'm just gonna download the entire source from GitHub just in case.
I wish this would just go full hydra mode if it goes down though. Start popping up new anonymous accounts releasing the source code everywhere.
Of course the source code stays available somehow. What's more important to Nintendo is that further development stops. At least on the scale it is right now
Can't development just be moved out of the US? Like in my country even downloading copyrighted materials isn't a crime, only uploading so emulators are like double legal.
Where is that? Asking for a friend.
Most of South America.
Brazil, for instance, tacitly encourages piracy. Because foreign media is too expensive for locals to be able to regularly afford it, so the entire country’s foreign media consumption is basically fueled by content piracy. It’s sort of an open secret, where everyone just openly downloads or streams pirated content and the government doesn’t give a fuck.
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story as old as time...nintendo sues * insert piracy/emulation/gameplay video*
Thank you, Barbra Streisand-san.
Fuck Nintendo! Glory to the emulators
There's a Switch Emulator? Sweet!
Even better, there's two!
Ryujinx and Yuzu are both competent emulators even though the Switch is Nintendo's current console
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Cry and seethe, Nintendo.
I hate nintendo. I know a lot of ppl that plays the game with their our bought copies all legal on pc just because it RUNS BETTER. Nintendo....
Yeah that’s me. I owned the games on switch first, then later played them on PC because they ran better and I could mod them. But Ninty is arguing that since playing the games requires encryption keys from a legitimate Switch, that the emulator is impossible to play legally. Because they argue that the act of extracting those encryption keys is illegal, so using them to play your own games is also illegal.
Never mind the fact that you already own the console, and therefore own the keys that are stored on the console. But Nintendo basically argues that buying the console and the game only gives you a license to play the game on a legitimate console using the licensed keys, so emulation is a violation of that software license and the DMCA.
It’s a piss poor argument. But with the way the courts are stacked these days, they may actually win. And if they win, the precedent could have horrible implications for any emulation later than the PS2/GameCube generation.
Just because it's not lawful (according to them) don't mean it's not a good idea.
Maybe if their Switch was priced better and games were cheaper, I'd get one.
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...so if I wanted to test my Switch game before I apply for a proper dev kit i'm now officially shit out of luck? Thanks, Nintendo!
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Just downloaded a copy this morning.
Good thing there is still ryujinx
For now
I think yuzu is associated with more piracy because FitGirl et al include it in their pirate releases for games with Denuvo
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If you would like to support the Yuzu Team, there is an Early Access Yuzu App on the Play Store
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