Yuzu NSW emultor legally terminated by Nintendo *spawn

Nintendo has pulled the nuclear option, taking down all forks (8535 of them!) from GitHub:

www.eurogamer.net

Nintendo's latest DMCA takedown notice eliminates 8535 Yuzu emulator copies in one go

A little under a month after Nintendo successfully brought an end to open-source Switch emulator Yuzu, the company has …
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net

It's getting messy. Seems unlikely a firm will take up the challenge of establishing what is and is not copyrighted and the DMCA gives all the power to the money.
 
I wish I knew more about this topic. From a bunch of reading online, I understand Yuzu and their original Git repo were under a TON of legal pressure because, functionally, they were being paid to subvert copyright laws in the form of Patreon or other similar funding models. I get why that's legally problematic, unrelated to the (what I'm led to understand as) cracked protections for copyrighted game material. Sure, fine, I get it.

Strictly speaking, emulation lands in a very grey area. Can you actually use a copyrighted and protected Switch cart to connect to an emulation device? If not, then does that also mean you're providing a mechanism to subvert copyright protection? The answer to the first is an obvious no -- there's no way (that I'm aware of) to plug a Real(TM) Switch cart into your PC to play it on an emulator. As such, anything you're playing on an emulator has to somehow come from a "cracked" source. But does that mean the creator of the emulator is doing the cracking? Of course not. But does that land in a strange gray area of the law? I mean, about the same way that using a 3D printer to print lowers and uppers for otherwise "illegal" guns is also in a somewhat similar gray area.

I don't like it, but in order for the precident to be made, someone out there who is writing an emulator needs the insane amount of funding necessary to defend themselves for literally years against Nintendo's inside counsel, and any outside counsel they might bring along, and then also all expected appeals. And then for what? That it might end up not going the way we all woud hope?

A few months ago I settled out of court with my former employer on some pretty obvious contractual language which said they owed me quite a lot of money as part of my severance. I paid my legal team in excess of six digits to recoup not a whole lot more than I spent, and that was just to get to the second round of both sides sitting at the negotiating table to make it end earlier than the next 12 months of fighting and appeals. I might have ended up "winning" to the point where they owed me not only what was promised, but also what I spent in legal fees to recoup the money they owed. Or I might have been out for both... At some point, it's just not worth the fight anymore.
 
IANAL but I think for now if one develops an emulator using only public information it's basically legal. It's more problematic when one needs to reverse engineer some non-public information, such as special hardware. With DMCA it's possible to argue that the special hardware existed for enforcing copyright and the emulator is a way to circumvent around it (thus it's illegal).
The same goes for real hardwares itself. For example, copying ROM is obviously illegal, but how about making a reader for the cart? Again, since in most case there's no public information, it's possible to argue that there's some special hardware in the cart reader that's for copyright purposes and building a compatible reader (or even using the original hardware part) is against DMCA. Another huge problem is BIOS (and in some case OS software), as an emulator generally need the BIOS to run, where it's generally not available on cart and may have to be ripped from the system (which is also obviously illegal).
Note that there're many new rules on anti-circumvention exemptions, but mostly about preserving "obsolete" systems.
 
Backing up a BIOS or OS shouldn't be any more illegal than backing up the data on a cart, though. The problem with all of these projects is that they rely heavily on the distribution of these backed up files, since most people have neither the tools or expertise to do that themselves.

I know the subject of preservation come up a lot in conversations about emulators, and I, like probably everyone, think that preservation is an important thing. Where I think my opinion differs is that I also think that we, as consumers, aren't entitled to access to things we haven't paid for. People hide behind this noble cause because a game isn't readily available, or is excessively priced on the secondary market, or tied to a dead platform... Yeah, I can't get behind that. Not the act, but the attitude. I don't care that people are playing games via emulation, or grabbing old DOS games from an abandonware site, I just hate the faux virtue about it being about preservation. Museums and art galleries are about preservation. You can go look at a painting by George Condo. But that doesn't mean you should be able to print that painting out. Sometimes things aren't being sold because people don't want to sell them, and we aren't entitled to have them because they aren't being sold.
 
I play Champions of Norrath with my friends on PCSX2. It's great - better than the original. But we all bought PS2 hardware and the game when it came out, so we 'own' the content. The requirement to rip directly from our own copies when someone else has done the same isn't really an enforcement of copyright and is just an unnecessary step. Your right to play the content you paid for requires various technical hoops, because...?

A bit more grey for the conversation. ;)
 
see colon said:
You can go look at a painting by George Condo. But that doesn't mean you should be able to print that painting out. Sometimes things aren't being sold because people don't want to sell them, and we aren't entitled to have them because they aren't being sold.
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I think published works are different. Sega have sold Scud Race, and just because there is no legal convenient way to buy that game does not mean that we as gamers should not enjoy the work and creativity that went into that production. It is a sad thing that people won't be able to play it when the creators clearly intended that.
 
Albuquerque said:
a mechanism to subvert copyright protection? The answer to the first is an obvious no -- there's no way (that I'm aware of) to plug a Real(TM) Switch cart into your PC to play it on an emulator. As such, anything you're playing on an emulator has to somehow come from a "cracked" source
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You can use a hacked switch to dump your game to pc over network

I think nobody has made direct cart streaming from switch to pc tho.
 
This is where I think copyright law gets it wrong, or to spin it as positively as I can, at least doesn't "get it" period.

George Condo's painting doesn't require any special equipment to look at, nor would a printed physical copy of Stephen King's Four Past Midnight. I can, with my own two eyes, go to the Louvre or the LIbrary and see every single painting and read every single book no matter the color of my eyes, or skin, or hair. It doesn't matter my gender identify, my clothing (as long as I'm at least somewhat covered), my social caste or my reglious beliefs. For as long as the physical, purely analog "thing" exists, I can interact with it.

Let's ignore purely digitally delivered games (eg no physical media) for just a moment -- we'll come back to it. When you bought your favorite PS1 game back when the PS1 was around, you were not entitled to more copies of it. Twenty years later, your ability to buy a functioning PS1 is pretty damned limited, and finding working PS1 games is a similar situation. And since it's 100% used market, neither the original developer, publisher, IP holder nor Sony are going to see a dime from any possible sale of the product. Even if you DO own the physical PS1 game CD, are you expected to ONLY be able to play it on PS1 devices? You paid for it, why can't you use it in the way you see fit and/or are physically able to? I cannot understand why an emulator would be wrong in circumstances where the physical hardware to play it can no longer be purchased.

Digitally delivered games are just a whole 'nother level of shit. Like so many EULAs tried to before, now they've found a way to force you to stop playing their game when they decide to no longer support it. Obviously it's one thing if the game itself required externalized-to-you infrastructure, because now you're incurring a cost to a 3rd party and they shouldn't have an obligation to you for the perpetuity of any one game copy's existence. But for single player games? We paid for it, let me play it. Yes, yes, I don't "own it" which means I cant be making money on their hard work. But I'm not trying to make money on their hard work, I'm trying to play the game I paid for and there's literally no reason it cannot work other than someone wanted to be a dick.

When you buy a physical, analog asset there's no question of who owns it. I don't know enough about George Condo to know if he has licensed prints of his paintings, but I know Stephen King can't roll up to my house and demand I give back my hardback first edition copy of Four Past Midnight. And even if he did, I'd be so awestruck that it would take me probably five minutes to finally tell him to get the fuck off my doorstep and eat shit 'cuz I'm not giving it to him :D

Point being, games and emulation aren't quite the same arguments as stealing someone's artwork off the wall of the Louvre, making copies, and reselling it. Or at least, not all emulation is... There's a gray area, bounded by a lot of black and a lot of white, and I think we shouldn't equivocate emulation to straight stealing of property -- because it's not. And for that matter, I think public domain laws need to extend to video games in the same way. You can't tell someone they can NEVER have your item, even if you're not around, even if the item isn't even for sale anymore, even if the hardware doesn't exist to play it.

But that's just me :)
 
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Albuquerque said:
When you buy a physical, analog asset there's no question of who owns it. I don't know enough about George Condo to know if he has licensed prints of his paintings, but I know Stephen King can't roll up to my house and demand I give back my hardback first edition copy of Four Past Midnight. And even if he did, I'd be so awestruck that it would take me probably five minutes to finally tell him to get the fuck off my doorstep and eat shit 'cuz I'm not giving it to him :)
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The difference ends up one being of contract. If you pay $10 to buy a DVD, you own it and can do what you want with it including making a copy for personal use. If you pay $10 to rent a DVD, you are not allowed to duplicate it and the owner can ask for it back. And games have managed to set themselves up as a rental service such that buying the disc with the game on, the disc is only a transport medium for the game you're renting - or so they want to believe.
 
"... or so they want to believe" is where it gets hard for me, when I'm literally holding a physical thing containing the software, and that physical thing is mine to keep Forever*.

* societal upheaval, climate change, or supernova of our nearest star notwithstanding.
 
Albuquerque said:
"... or so they want to believe" is where it gets hard for me, when I'm literally holding a physical thing containing the software, and that physical thing is mine to keep Forever*.

* societal upheaval, climate change, or supernova of our nearest star notwithstanding.
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Not all of them unfortunately have license that you keep. Destiny 2 game disc, concord game disc

You have the disc, but the license is tied to online.
 
Oh I get what they write into their Eula.

That doesn't mean I agree, nor does it mean it's ethical or actually legally binding if someone actually had the money and time to purposefully fight it.

Therein lies the challenge... Who will spend literally hundreds of thousands of dollars and years to fight the good fight? That's the wager "they" make against "us.". That we cannot or will not fund the legal fight to call them on their bullshit.

And sadly, for now, they're right.
 
Albuquerque said:
Oh I get what they write into their Eula.

That doesn't mean I agree, nor does it mean it's ethical or actually legally binding if someone actually had the money and time to purposefully fight it.

Therein lies the challenge...
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That fight probably needs to happen, and it should really be crowd-funded, Gamers versus Big Corporations.

There are people on the Apex Legends sub-reddit reporting events like bans with no explanation, and loss of in-game items which support just shrugs off. the T&Cs say, "you can't do anything," but statutory rights say otherwise. However, EA is too big for an individual unless someone very wealthy gets stung. Whenever those posts come up, I advocate finding like-affected users, coming together, and lodging a big case together. But TBH it's not worth most people's efforts, even to a couple grand's investment.

It really needs a gaming figure-head to bring gamers together and get a collective defence.

Similar thing that affected me this morning - I have some Sony earbuds with an app to turn them on and off. Sony have updated the app and now it requires an EULA agreement to use it, to turn my earbuds on and off. WTF?! How the f*** can they completely change the operation requirements of a product I paid for post release?! But that's how software is operated, the creators are free to change it however they want. You can see a TV in store, see the OS, like it and choose that TV based on that interface, and then have the TV company change it after sale to add adverts or whatever. There's no way these unconsented post-release changes is fair but consumer protections are lagging.
 
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