[HN Gopher] Dolphin on Steam Indefinitely Postponed
___________________________________________________________________
Dolphin on Steam Indefinitely Postponed
Author : Lammy
Score : 350 points
Date : 2023-05-26 23:47 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dolphin-emu.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (dolphin-emu.org)
| cranium wrote:
| Nintendo is famous for being trigger-happy with DMCA requests.
| They shut down tons of Youtube videos that no other gaming
| company would even think of striking, like speedruns. Some
| Youtubers won't even cover Nintendo games for fear of a takedown
| (3 strikes and you are out).
| psychphysic wrote:
| Nintendo are an awful companies and their fanboys are as
| aggressive as scientologists.
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| [flagged]
| ineedasername wrote:
| "They" has been a very common usage in a singular context
| for a very long time, certainly during the 3+ decades that
| I've been educated enough to even know what a pronouns is.
| This usage dates back the better part of a 1000 years to
| the 1300's
|
| Formulations like the following are common: "Bob saw
| someone shopping for the Dolphin emulator in the steam
| store on their computer. They couldn't find it though
| because the litigious corporation Nintendo had sent a DMCA
| takedown notice."
| guffins wrote:
| Umm... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British
| _English...
| messe wrote:
| Yes, but that would be "Nintendo are an awful _company_
| ", not "Nintendo are awful _companies_ ".
|
| That being said, I have absolutely no idea why the other
| commenter thought this was related to gender identity and
| pronouns.
| ineedasername wrote:
| They were probably bringing their overly sensitive
| dislike of a cultural point of view into it when none was
| intended. They probably should have considered that HN is
| a broad community. As such they would know that HN has
| non native speakers. They would have realized that their
| interpretation was likely off the mark for this or
| another reason. They should have more charitably
| interpreted it as a typo and they should also have
| realized that their viewpoint on the singular use of
| "they" was inaccurate since they have probably heard such
| usage their entire lives but only now, in recent years,
| are they are just beginning to listen for it. They
| probably are not aware that this usage extends back long
| before everyone currently alive, but I guess this is new
| information for them. But now they know so hopefully we
| won't hear such comments from them again.
| [deleted]
| Rexogamer wrote:
| 1. That seemed to be a pretty obvious typo, no need for the
| snark
|
| 2. Why did you feel the need to bring gender into this
|
| 3. The singular they has been used for centuries, see also
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| This is one of the few times I sympathize with Nintendo's piracy
| issues. They're a competing platform/console, why wouldn't they
| stop this?
| wtallis wrote:
| It's not a question about whether Nintendo _wants_ to stop it,
| but whether US copyright law gives them the power to stop it.
| It might; but it also seems quite possible that Nintendo would
| prevail merely through intimidation rather than by having the
| law soundly on their side.
| jakkos wrote:
| > piracy
|
| It's an emulator for consoles (wii and gamecube) and games that
| you cannot buy from Nintendo
| circuit10 wrote:
| You're saying that Nintendo should be able to take things down
| for... competing with them?
| kadoban wrote:
| Because they have no right to.
| _joel wrote:
| Nitendo being nintendo then
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Last week when there was a comment on a dolphin thread that went
| on about "oh why don't they contribute solely to MESS", I said
| the following...
|
| > Probably a combination of NIH syndrome, not knowing other
| projects exist, and not putting all your eggs in one basket
| (especially because Nintendo is quite litigious when it comes to
| emulators)
|
| That post was flagged, and nobody ever told me why. Now it seems
| quite obvious why it was flagged.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Because the first two points are, at best, insulting/flamebait
| without any substance to back them up. What good is
| hypothesizing stuff like the two crowning jewel open source
| emulation projects haven't become well aware of each other over
| the last 20 years as one of three main reasons they are
| separate today? The third point being good and valid rarely
| makes up for that kind of conversation here, in terms of a
| comment doing well. Sorry I participated in that without
| leaving a reason, it's not always obvious people want to be
| further explained why.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| I'm sorry but how is that flamebait? In the early 00s not
| everyone knew of every minute detail in the emulation scene,
| and honestly, they still don't. It's still to this day a very
| underground scene.
|
| To be completely honest, most people just want a way to play
| free games... but even going back to nesticle in the late 90s
| it was about preservation and gaining personal knowledge of
| the hardware we enjoyed so much growing up.
|
| Having been in touch with several emulator developers over
| the years, there is also quite a lot of infighting over who's
| code is the best, or whether they even want outside
| contributions at all.
|
| I don't feel my comment was incorrect at all.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Something like "In years past, many emulation projects were
| more niche and development done as part of a scene rather
| than collaboratively. Maybe that early history played into
| Dolphin starting out separate and then never having a good
| opportunity to merge its already developed codebass with
| MAME/MESS?" might come off less aggressively as well as
| focus the discussion around substance, if it were to be the
| original comment. Hopefully you can agree that it's a lot
| easier for meaningful conversation to form around that
| while, on the other hand, it's a lot easier for an
| emotionally charged conversation to form around a statement
| starting "Probably a combination of NIH syndrome, not
| knowing other projects exist,". Both statements might have
| genuinely seeked to make the same intended argument, but
| had completely different approaches are what make it
| interpreted as insults/flamebait vs well intended
| conversation, not the personally perceived factuality.
| Similarly, past experiences (second or third party) with
| other developers who had infighting problems is not an
| excuse to argue that's the problem with other developers
| you don't know while expecting it to be interpreted as
| well-intentioned, without a particularly deep explanation.
| Those kind of claims leave little in the way of content to
| respond to and invokes only emotional responses, which is
| precisely what flagging is for.
|
| It wouldn't necessarily make it any more true as to why
| Dolphin is merged with MAME/MESS currently though. Dolphin
| has been an extremely collaborative open source effort over
| the years and went through multiple rewrites with hundreds
| of developers who were well aware of MAME/MESS (as well as
| other projects like retroarch these days) and still kept it
| standalone. What it would, however do, is be a well
| received comment and open the floor to earnest responses
| which could earnestly talk about those thoughts with more
| direct knowledge of the project. The other comments did a
| good job of covering technical reasons this kind of merger
| wouldn't really make sense, so I'm not going to duplicate
| that conversation here, but the comment being put next to
| them likely amplified that it seemed like a particularly
| unfounded take of the Dolphin team.
|
| None of this is to say any of us here are perfect, me very
| often not, but just because you are asking why it was
| flagged so heavily and nobody else gave any explanation.
|
| Even if you disagree with every last bit of the above
| though, please keep in mind many long time members of the
| Dolphin development community are active here on HN and
| they probably don't feel great reading comments from people
| they've never interacted with assuming these kinds of
| things (e.g. infighting, guarded about contributions,
| unaware of other popular projects, motivated by NIH as a
| primary reason) about them.
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| I got to play Zelda BOTW on linux using steam and some emulators.
|
| then I even bought a switch controller and was able to get the
| motion control to work.
|
| then I realized I had more fun setting it all up and didn't even
| bother to finish the game
| sosodev wrote:
| You're really missing out. It's a beautiful game.
| rationalist wrote:
| After hearing users talk about it here on HN in 2020, I
| bought a Switch just to play BOTW - it was worth it. The
| sequel isn't as beautiful of a game play though.
| awestroke wrote:
| I disagree. I find TOTK to be much more polished and they
| fixed everything that annoyed me in the first game.
| Skeime wrote:
| I agree that it's much more polished. However, because
| you can constantly just get into the skies and glide over
| everything, you (or, at least, I) don't get as much of a
| "feeling" for the world as in BotW. I still remember
| several situations where I stumbled over a mountain, or
| forest, etc., in BotW and there was suddenly a whole
| different atmosphere. I didn't encounter that in TotK,
| yet (the different layers of the map don't feel the same,
| the BotW instances were more "intimate").
| philistine wrote:
| It's very much a sequel set in the same world. The
| original still exists, and allows you to experience the
| feeling of exploring a world after the end.
|
| Tears doesn't want to repeat the exact same limited
| experience of exploration you had with the last game. It
| tries for something different.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| > you (or, at least, I) don't get as much of a "feeling"
| for the world as in BotW.
|
| The world of BotW felt barren and empty, so maybe that's
| a good thing. It was huge, but not a lot going on. It
| felt like a lifeless desert with some events sprinkled
| throughout.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I never liked BotW apart from the initial "shock" of
| exploration. It felt very empty and almost unfinished.
| Particularly in terms of the enemy and gameplay variety and
| the quests. I realise now that this is because TotK is the
| actually completed version. BotW feels like a tech demo now
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| you're missing part of my point (granted, I was not
| explicitly stated)
|
| that what I find most enjoyable (by this point, at my
| "advanced age") is setting it all up, it was not that simple
| to get it all working
|
| I have to start some command line daemons, I had to get some
| kernel modules, I had to recalibrate the thumb joysticks,
| etc...
|
| after all this fun clicking around my PC, the game became
| almost an after thought... I did play around, brilliant game.
| the superb quality on release was impressive...
| deergomoo wrote:
| I'm intrigued as to why they DMCA'd the Steam version when it's
| available on the Play Store and has been for quite a while.
|
| I wonder if it's driven by the Steam Deck being a Switch-like
| device and they see it as a threat to any future plans of
| releasing GameCube/Wii games on NSO.
|
| Then again Nintendo still insists that emulators are blanket
| illegal despite the disagreement of (at least US) court rulings,
| so maybe I'm looking too far into things.
| sigmar wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if it was because of the Steam Deck
| hardware. Also possible all the news coverage of leaked copies
| of 'Tears of the Kingdom' running on the Steam Deck prompted
| Nintendo to want to take a more aggressive posture towards
| emulation generally (even if dolphin doesn't emulate switch)
| gymbeaux wrote:
| Yeah I think it's because the Steam Deck is very similar to the
| Switch, whose sales have been declining drastically the last
| year or two. Recently a big wig at Nintendo said something to
| the effect of "we want people who already own a switch to buy a
| second switch", a "one in every room" type of deal.
|
| To me at least, playing emulated games on something like a
| phone is unpleasant, because of the on-screen, touch controls.
| It sours the nostalgia and is plain ol unpleasant. The controls
| use part of the screen and aren't tactile at all.
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| I cynically think its all in retribution to teach all of
| those who would dare emulate Nintendo a lesson... As all of
| the takedowns since the Tears of the Kingdom leak seem to be.
| All in all it just steels my resolve never to give Nintendo
| money.
| moneywoes wrote:
| is the Steam deck powerful enough to run Dolphin?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yes. Sometimes it can even run better than native Switch
| games better than the Switch itself, but sometimes it
| doesn't. IIRC it depends on the game.
| 58028641 wrote:
| Dolphin doesn't run Switch games.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Oh, I got completely confused. I guess that changes the
| answer to "almost everything can run well on dolphin on
| the Deck"
| indrora wrote:
| Yuzu does, though, and Yuzu runs so well on the Steam
| deck that it was accidentally shown in the launch video.
| You have youtubers saying to buy a steam deck and sell
| their switch for spare cash to offset the cost of the
| deck.
|
| Nintendo is trying to do to its consoles and the 90s game
| nostalgia in general what Disney has done with the last
| 40 years or so of media: become the arbiter of this
| content by being an impossible to confront megalith.
| selimnairb wrote:
| Valve < Nintendo << Google?
| oliwarner wrote:
| Maybe but I doubt either Google, Valve or any marketplace
| would intercede on Dolphin's behalf and risk their safe
| harbor.
|
| What'll be interesting to see is if Dolphin officially
| objects, and if Valve reinstate it on that basis.
| random5245 wrote:
| [flagged]
| totetsu wrote:
| Is their debian PPA also offline?
| whateveracct wrote:
| Complete abuse of the DMCA
| notatoad wrote:
| i'm generally of the opinion that the DMCA is an overreach and
| a bad law, but this seems like exactly the sort of thing it was
| meant to address. in what way is this an abuse of it?
| bogwog wrote:
| The DMCA basically exists to support Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft's
| anti-consumer and anti-competitive business models.
| Jailbreaking is "legal" for anything that isn't a game console,
| under the logic that users don't have a good reason to do it
| besides piracy.
|
| Which is of course complete fucking bullshit, especially since
| it means that an alternative store can never exist without
| being violating the DMCA.
|
| I hope that the push towards an alternate app store on iOS also
| brings more attention to this issue.
|
| (btw, idk if anything I just mentioned above is relevant to the
| Dolphin situation)
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > Which is of course complete fucking bullshit, especially
| since it means that an alternative store can never exist
| without being violating the DMCA.
|
| I doubt it'll happen, but it would be pretty funny for
| someone in the EU to try to apply the Digital Markets Act on
| Nintendo to force them to open the Switch to alternative app
| stores as revenge for all of these anti-emulation cases.
| Instead of losing no money at all on people playing 15 year
| old games, they'd be forced to compete with alternative
| stores or leave a lucrative market entirely (which would mean
| everyone would just emulate their crap).
|
| For that to happen, they'll need to sell 12 million more
| Switches inside the EU, stay a gatekeeper for three years,
| and after that they'll have to piss off some rich person
| pretty badly, but I can see it happen.
| anticensor wrote:
| You forgot Elsevier and Apple.
| SLWW wrote:
| It is Nintendo after all
| Jasper_ wrote:
| The DMCA was for the private encryption keys included directly
| inside Dolphin source code [0]. I am not defending the DMCA at
| all, I think it's a shit law, but let's be clear, I can't think
| of a clearer example of a valid DMCA violation. It is
| circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls
| access to a protected work [1]. Defending it by saying the work
| is non-infringing is fighting a very losing battle, you would
| have to attack the DMCA at its core in order to come out on top
| here.
|
| [0] https://github.com/dolphin-
| emu/dolphin/blob/master/Source/Co...
|
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| Are these keys even necessary for emulating games with
| Dolphin?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| In theory you can dump disk images pre-decrypted, but that
| would make the Steam version of the emulator incompatible
| with every disk dump tool and personal Wii game archive out
| there.
| LocalH wrote:
| Plus, for preservation's sake, there at least needs to be
| _some_ attention paid to 1:1 media dumps, as closely as
| possible.
| userbinator wrote:
| Maybe we should just let the Streisand Effect take care of
| it.
|
| I still have the infamous 09 F9 11... stuck in my head as a
| result of that.
| immibis wrote:
| Now you can also memorize
| 0xebe42a225e8593e448d9c5457381aaf7
| jeroenhd wrote:
| If this is going to be Nintendo's
| 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 (or its
| 455FE10422CA29C4933F95052B792AB2 as this is far from the
| first time Nintendo's keys leaked), I doubt the courts would
| care.
|
| Worst case scenario, someone in France can probably get
| around the problem by launching it on French Steam so people
| can only get the emulator through one of those throwaway
| VPNs. VLC managed to avoid censorship from big media
| companies through "foreign" law. I doubt it's worth the
| trouble, though.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| DMCA 1201 is good law in France. America conditions trade
| agreements upon countries adopting equivalent language to
| 1201 in their local law. In the case of France, the EU
| Copyright Directive has had 1201-equivalent language in it
| since the early 2000s.
|
| Even if it wasn't good law in France, Steam is a US
| platform, there is no "French Steam". You need something
| entirely owned and operated by non-US individuals to even
| have a chance of escaping US jurisdiction. Chinese domestic
| equivalent services would be your best bet these days,
| except now you have to deal with China's censorship
| machine, which makes the censorship[0] of not being able to
| release encryption keys for old videogames look like
| nothing.
|
| [0] US courts have categorically rejected the argument that
| copyright infringement is free speech. In fact, they seem
| to believe the opposite: that artists not being paid in
| monopoly rights is censorship, and that the 1st Amendment
| has a sort of ROBOT9000[1] rule where copies aren't speech.
|
| The EFF has 1st Amendment challenges to DMCA 1201
| specifically but I do not expect them to be successful.
|
| [1] An IRC bot operated by XKCD creator Randall Munroe,
| which was also implemented by moot in 4chan's /r9k/ board.
| The bot removes speech that has been spoken in the past.
| saghm wrote:
| > It is circumventing a technological measure that
| effectively controls access to a protected work
|
| To be fair, the law is worded so poorly that I'm not sure
| that _anything_ can be considered a "clear" example of it.
| How can a measure be "effective" if it can be circumvented?
| If you're going to define "effective" in any way that
| includes this, you're going to need to explain why it
| wouldn't apply equally well to a loading screen message
| calling "dibs" when the game starts up. It's just as
| effective up until the point that you circumvent it (by just
| ignoring it)!
|
| I do think that this is the type of thing that's _intended_
| to be against this law, but it's hard to take that seriously
| as an argument that this justifies legal action when the view
| that laws should be read exactly as written and not
| "interpreted" for intent is promulgated with such fervor in
| many political circles.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Effective is very clear in legal drafting - it means that
| there must be a function that occurs for this purpose, not
| that it has to succeed.
|
| Essentially all "effective" means is that you can't put a
| piece of paper in the box that says "this is a technical
| protection measure", you need to have some engineering that
| is intended to be one.
|
| No ambiguity in the drafting here, and if you took your
| argument to court you would lose.
| bitwize wrote:
| > How can a measure be "effective" if it can be
| circumvented?
|
| "Effective" is defined in the law. It basically means any
| copy protection measure which, during the _normal_ course
| of its operation (i.e., the happy path), prevents
| unauthorized copying. A bit of JavaScript that disables
| "Save Image As" qualifies. If you write a browser extension
| that knocks out that JavaScript, you could be civilly and
| criminally liable under the DMCA.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| By "effective" it means "that has the effect of"
| saghm wrote:
| I don't see how that clarifies anything; what effect does
| a measure that's been circumvented have, and how does it
| differ from the effect of a message of "dibs" that some
| people decide to abide by?
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| The law says that nobody shall circumvent a technical
| protection measure that has the effect of controlling
| access to a copyrighted work.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Even if I play my own games? I bought the game, I just
| want to play it on an emulator.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| Courts have clarified that bypassing it "without the
| authority of the copyright owner" means the authority to
| access the work despite the technological protection
| measure. By default you can't access it without bypassing
| the measure.
| saghm wrote:
| Repeating from another subthread: if the game tells me I
| can only play on Tuesdays, and when it boots up it gives
| me a prompt saying "press A to continue if it's Tuesday,
| but if it's not, shut down the console and wait until
| Tuesday", and I ignore that and press A on Wednesday, how
| am I not bypassing a technical measure (requiring an
| input electronically to the console) without the
| authority of the copyright owner (who only gave me
| permission do to so on Tuesdays)?
| saghm wrote:
| Okay, so how is my access controlled if I circumvent the
| measure? And how does that not apply equally well to me
| just being told in a "technical" way not to access
| something?
| zarzavat wrote:
| You are strawmanning the law whereas a judge interpreting
| it will steelman it.
| saghm wrote:
| Sure, I don't actually think that my arguments would
| actually hold up in court, but that's kind of my point;
| the law is written very poorly, which means that the
| _actual_ legal effect is not nearly as clear to a lay
| person as the original comment I was responding to was
| arguing. I alluded to this in my second paragraph in my
| comment, but I guess I could have been more explicit.
| wtallis wrote:
| Exactly. A judge will not interpret the law as only
| outlawing what is impossible.
|
| And the law does provide a definition:
|
| > a technological measure "effectively controls access to
| a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its
| operation, requires the application of information, or a
| process or a treatment, with the authority of the
| copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
| saghm wrote:
| This is just continuing to move the question into new
| language that's not any less obtuse; if the game comes on
| a cartridge and I need to copy it onto a computer to put
| in an emulator, and the game's loading screen tells me
| not to, how is this not "a process" that doesn't have
| "the authority of the copyright owner" even if it's not
| encrypted in any way? Even more preposterously, if the
| game tells me I can only play on Tuesdays, and when it
| boots up it gives me a prompt saying "press A to continue
| if it's Tuesday, but if it's not, shut down the console
| and wait until Tuesday", and I ignore that and press A on
| Wednesday, how am I not performing a process (pressing A)
| without the authority of the copyright owner (who only
| gave me permission on Tuesdays)?
| Jasper_ wrote:
| In the same way that you are still trespassing even if
| you can easily step over a fence saying "no entry". Try
| going to a judge and saying "well the sign lied, because
| yes I was able to entry when it said I shouldn't be able
| to"
|
| Crimes are not based on technicalities, they are based on
| _intent_. The environment put up resistance and signs to
| let you know it was trying to effectively control your
| access. You just willfully ignored them and stepped over
| the fence anyway.
| immibis wrote:
| The access isn't very controlled if you give all your
| customers the key, now, is it?
| immibis wrote:
| That's the intention. They make the law so unclear on
| purpose that they can arrest you for almost anything.
| asveikau wrote:
| Maybe you're right, but it seems very strange that a series
| of bits, that is, data, not code, is a circumvention device.
|
| Additionally, it does look like there are carveouts... The
| anti-circumvention methods need to "effectively control
| access", which, seems to me as a non lawyer, that if it's
| very easily broken that's not very effective. (Does DVD CSS
| still count for this?) The device needs to have no other
| purpose (homebrew anyone?). There are carveouts for reverse
| engineering in order to make a compatible product.
|
| Anyway, IANAL, but ... it seems to me like this
| interpretation can be challenged in court? Does anyone know
| of examples of it being upheld? There was that prosecution of
| that Bowser guy, I'm guessing he took a plea deal.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| The "effectively" means that it has the effect of, not
| whether it does it poorly.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Are you sure those are Nintendo AES keys? The comments above
| suggest they're not: // Dolphin does not use
| the same "default" values as IOS does, as we do not emulate
| unblown // scenario.
|
| If they're Nintendo's keys, why would they DMCA a Steam page
| but not a GitHub repository that's distributing the keys?
| skhr0680 wrote:
| you can extract that exact key from a real Wii using a pair
| of tweezers
|
| > If they're Nintendo's keys, why would they DMCA a Steam
| page but not a GitHub repository that's distributing the
| keys?
|
| I don't know
| anonzzzies wrote:
| So remove it and have people copy it in when they set up
| Dolphin. You can find the keys easily and you can get
| them for your own wii.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Yeah it feels like republishing with the keys removed
| will mean this DMCA request is moot
| [deleted]
| Jasper_ wrote:
| Yes, they are Nintendo's private keys. I believe the
| comment is referring to the early factory programming stage
| of the console, though I'm not 100% sure. PCGamer.com also
| confirmed the DMCA notice says it's about encryption keys
| [0]
|
| > The DCMA letter sent to Valve cites the anti-
| circumvention language of the DMCA and specifically claims
| that "the Dolphin emulator operates by incorporating these
| cryptographic keys without Nintendo's authorization and
| decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime. Thus,
| use of the Dolphin emulator unlawfully 'circumvent[s] a
| technological measure that effectively controls access to a
| work protected under' the Copyright Act."
|
| > If they're Nintendo's keys, why would they DMCA a Steam
| page but not a GitHub repository that's distributing the
| keys?
|
| Because Nintendo's legal department is not dumb and makes
| very specific takedown requests that they know they can
| win, as opposed to taking down more gray-area things like
| source code.
|
| Grabbing an emulator from dolphin-emu.org or GitHub is not
| the same thing as grabbing an emulator from a well-
| moderated public storefront where a good number of your
| third-party partners also publish their games.
|
| Nintendo does not publish their games on Steam as of right
| now, but for an analogy, imagine how happy Sony would be if
| a PS4 emulator showed up on Steam recommended right next to
| their other PC games.
|
| This was always playing with fire.
|
| [0] https://www.pcgamer.com/nintendo-sends-valve-dmca-
| notice-to-...
| Asooka wrote:
| > imagine how happy Sony would be if a PS4 emulator
| showed up on Steam recommended right next to their other
| PC games
|
| You don't have to imagine, Bleem! was sold in boxes in
| game stores. Sadly, Sony lost that battle and emulators
| were deemed legal.
| flashmozzg wrote:
| >Because Nintendo's legal department is not dumb and
| makes very specific takedown requests that they know they
| can win, as opposed to taking down more gray-area things
| like source code.
|
| But you couldn't even grab the emulator from Steam! There
| is zero indication that the Steam version of emulator
| would even include those keys (it's trivial to make the
| user to type them in/point to a file with them). So DMCA
| is a total bs and typical example of the abuse that is
| never punished in our legal system.
|
| It's like copyright striking a channel with the
| announcement that they'll be streaming a parody of
| Morbius with the reason that it contains copyright
| material (perhaps some previous parody included shots
| from the trailer), without actually seeing the final
| product.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| Doesn't the DMCA's interoperability exception cover this?
|
| (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.
|
| (2)Notwithstanding the provisions of subsections (a)(2)
| and (b), a person may develop and employ technological
| means to circumvent a technological measure, or to
| circumvent protection afforded by a technological
| measure, in order to enable the identification and
| analysis under paragraph (1), or for the purpose of
| enabling interoperability of an independently created
| computer program with other programs, if such means are
| necessary to achieve such interoperability, to the extent
| that doing so does not constitute infringement under this
| title.
|
| (3)The information acquired through the acts permitted
| under paragraph (1), and the means permitted under
| paragraph (2), may be made available to others if the
| person referred to in paragraph (1) or (2), as the case
| may be, provides such information or means solely for the
| purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently
| created computer program with other programs, and to the
| extent that doing so does not constitute infringement
| under this title or violate applicable law other than
| this section.
| [deleted]
| wtallis wrote:
| Aside from that, there's also the problem that a DMCA
| notice as defined in 17 U.S.C. SS512 is a procedure for
| handling copyright infringement. Nintendo is apparently
| alleging a violation of 17 U.S.C. SS1201, which defines a
| separate class of offense that is not the same thing as
| copyright infringement. So what Nintendo sent probably
| isn't a proper DMCA notice, but rather a cease-and-desist
| letter that pretends to be a DMCA notice or has been
| misinterpreted by the target and the press as being a
| DMCA notice because it mentions the DMCA (albeit a
| different part of the DMCA).
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Encryption keys are not an expression, they are more like
| technological utility. I don't think they are copyrighted.
| The DMCA could apply because of the anti-circumvention rules
| but that's also kind of doubtful because emulation is fair
| use.
|
| Nevertheless making an emulator for a current console so
| easily available so anyone can pirate games on release day is
| unfair to Nintendo and it should surprise no one that they
| would act.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Fair use is irrelevant to the anti-circumvention provisions
| (at least unless the Library of Congress explicitly sets
| out an exception, and they have not for emulation), and the
| statement that encryption is fair use is significantly more
| ambiguous than people hope it is (for a start neither of
| the relevant cases were heard in a high enough court to
| establish a significant precedent).
| Culonavirus wrote:
| > We were notified by Valve that Nintendo has issued a cease and
| desist citing the DMCA against Dolphin's Steam page, and have
| removed Dolphin from Steam until the matter is settled. We are
| currently investigating our options and will have a more in-depth
| response in the near future.
|
| I hope that the "settled" here means until the Dolphin team's
| legal counsel sends a DMCA counter notice. Then Nintendo can sue
| or drop the issue. But if they sue, the Doplhin project can stay
| on Steam until a judge orders differently or until they lose the
| trial. That's how it's supposed to work. Valve should stay
| absolutely hands off and neutral on this! This is not piracy and
| emulators are important.
| bybybyby wrote:
| [dead]
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| This allegedly isn't a DMCA safe harbor takedown, but rather a
| C&D based on Chapter 12 (which bans breaking DRM outside of
| certain exceptions, and I don't think any of the exceptions for
| video games cover personal entertainment use). As far as I
| know, Chapter 12 violations are considered a separate
| consideration from copyright infringement and are thus not
| covered by the safe harbor process (outside of which a counter-
| notification is irrelevant).
| wtallis wrote:
| From a more informed source (outgoing treasurer of the
| foundation backing Dolphin, and HN user delroth):
| https://mastodon.delroth.net/@delroth/110440308907131051
|
| So yes, this is about the anti-circumvention provisions and
| not related to the takedown procedure that usually comes to
| mind when the DMCA is mentioned.
| bentt wrote:
| Here is a strategy Nintendo could follow that would help:
|
| Oprn their own PC based game store
|
| Sell only Nintendo first party games in it
|
| Require a Nintendo online account
|
| They would defeat whatever is bothering them and make a lot of
| money
|
| But they won't do this
| pwpw wrote:
| If Nintendo had a ROM store where I could buy game ROMs and
| play them on whatever system I wanted to, I would spend a lot
| of money.
|
| In fact, Nintendo more or less did this with the Wii U, which
| was a commercial failure. I bought an incredible amount of
| games from the virtual console and oftentimes on sale for a few
| dollars. Then with a modded Wii U, you can extract the ROMs.
| Now I am playing GBA games on an actual GBA (with an upgraded
| screen extracted from a DSi) and SNES games on a MiSTer FPGA
| connected to a PVM with an original SNES controller. Ever since
| they shut down the Wii U online shop, there's been no new legal
| way to acquire these ROMs. What a bummer and too bad the market
| didn't appreciate the Wii U for what it was: the ultimate
| collection of past Nintendo games.
| deergomoo wrote:
| I think Nintendo has a similar attitude to Apple in this
| regard. Sure, Apple could probably make a lot of money by
| selling subscriptions to iMessage on non-Apple platforms, but
| that sacrifices control and gives people a reason not to buy
| their hardware.
|
| Nintendo has historically demonstrated that both of those
| things are extremely important to them. For example, it's not
| uncommon for Sony and Microsoft to sell boxes at a loss for the
| first few years, making their money back in software. Nintendo
| typically doesn't do this.
| evandale wrote:
| The other thing the companies have in common are massive
| fanbases who will buy anything they release and defend every
| move they make. Both their fans have the ability to spin
| negative news into positive news to keep up the fantasy that
| the company loves them and is looking out for their fans'
| best interests.
| dingledork69 wrote:
| At least we have the eu to help put apple in it's place
| kevincox wrote:
| I would definitely buy a lot of Nintendo games if they were
| available on desktop. But they would much rather push their
| consoles and resell you each game each generation.
| kimbernator wrote:
| Because why would they? They would have to dedicate a shitload
| of resources to optimizing decades of work for PC so a small
| slice of the market can buy old stuff. All of those games would
| stop being a hacky thing you're okay with bugs on to a thing
| Nintendo now needs to support. Not only software, but widely
| varying hardware and worse yet, controllers. There's simply no
| way they release wii games as paid products on PC and make a
| satisfying experience with a keyboard/mouse.
|
| I have seen this idea now suggested multiple times. Nintendo's
| business model is sound. Protect the "official" experience at
| any cost so that it's 100% clear when you're playing on a
| Nintendo console vs a non-official emulator. Blocking dolphin's
| steam release is consistent with this goal; if it's on steam,
| it looks like a real product and non-tech people might start to
| think it's official.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Emulating old systems on new systems is something Nintendo
| successfully did in the past, monetizing unmonetizable.
|
| _> so a small slice of the market can buy old stuff_
|
| You might be underestimating the size of this slice. Nintendo
| is fundamentally a toy company, just like say Lego, and they
| rely on pretty much the same process: indoctrinating kids
| into using their products, then waiting until they grow up so
| they help indoctrinate their own kids. The control over this
| process might be more important than the sales figures.
|
| They already lost several generations of kids in Latin
| America and former USSR precisely because they failed to
| control the pirated clones market there. (either ignoring
| these markets or being too heavy handed in them; it's a long
| story). The piracy is happening with or without them.
|
| However, as a toy company, they are focused on physical
| products more than software, so they probably aren't ready
| for the emulation on the hardware not designed by them.
| kimbernator wrote:
| I think you're underestimating the effort required to
| complete the task you're suggesting, probably by multiple
| orders of magnitude.
|
| The point that people seem to not get is that Nintendo's
| entire brand rides almost entirely on having a "perfect"
| experience. Word is that they spent an extra year just on
| polish for TOTK; having played it myself, I believe it. No
| game is this quality on release on any other platform. They
| have their walled garden in the switch (and previous
| consoles) where they make sure it works absolutely
| perfectly, and it costs them a lot just to do that. I
| believe it might be literally impossible for any company to
| achieve that reputation under any other circumstance, and
| the polar opposite circumstance is emulating your game on
| the hyper-chaotic hardware situation that is PC gaming. Not
| to mention the fact that modern emulators almost
| universally offer things that Nintendo wouldn't dare:
| upscaled textures, higher FPS (this is a huge one that
| causes a litany of bugs), mods, etc. Even a release to PC
| wouldn't matter because people would demand parity with
| what emulators offer or just go back to them.
|
| Look at this list:
| https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_games
|
| What you are suggesting would require the following for
| every one of them:
|
| 1. Thorough testing for performance and stability to ensure
| a PC port works at all
|
| 2. Thorough testing of innumerable hardware configurations
|
| 3. Thorough testing of every conceivable type of
| controller, display, keyboard/mouse, etc.
|
| 4. Ongoing support of some sort, forever.
|
| Nintendo's focus on quality means that what you're asking
| is probably a multi-trillion dollar effort that would take
| decades even if they increased their staffing by 10x. Do
| you think there's that kind of money in it for them? To top
| it off, I will repeat that hardware on PCs is far, far more
| chaotic and unpredictable than any other platform. To even
| attempt this would be folly; it would be guaranteed to be a
| buggy mess (like how emulators all have been and to some
| extent remain), and their main selling point would be
| ruined.
|
| It seems self-evident to me that Nintendo doesn't really
| care about emulators for old games. They throw their weight
| around and make broad gestures to say they hate it, but
| that's the point. They know they can't stop people from
| doing this stuff, and they make almost no effort software-
| wise to prevent it. They just want people to know without
| any shred of doubt that if they play a nintendo game
| outside of a platform they have deemed worthy, they are not
| getting the "real" experience. This absolves them of any
| blame when the games inevitably don't work right, and it
| makes clear that they will never allow emulators to become
| "official" platforms. I'm sure they carefully weigh their
| actions to ensure they don't actually extinguish emulators,
| and I wouldn't be surprised if they have covertly
| contributed to their development at some point. These old
| games are unlikely to be money makers, but keeping people
| playing Nintendo IP will make them more interested in
| buying more in the future.
| nperez wrote:
| So we just have to use that feature that lets you add non-Steam
| apps to Steam.
|
| What is the real impact of this? Seems like it'll reduce exposure
| to the extremely rare Steam user who doesn't know emulators exist
| and/or how to install them outside of Steam
| thejsa wrote:
| Mostly relevant to Steam Deck users; a proper Steam release
| would offer better system integration, Steam Cloud, Steam
| Input, etc. as I understand it.
| aprilnya wrote:
| After you add it to the library, it shows up just like a
| normal steam game, but yeah some things are missing (for
| example Steam Cloud is missing, but Steam Input works fine)
| slurpyb wrote:
| I think they were crazy to even try. Just let it exist within
| RetroArch - in-fact I hope it doesn't draw attention to RetroArch
| after this incident
| Osmose wrote:
| What even is the point of emulators being legal if they have to
| tiptoe around the whims of companies like Nintendo? People have
| the right to run their software after the hardware required to
| run it has been discontinued, and emulators are the way to do
| that.
|
| That Nintendo is overly litigious because they want to make
| easy money rereleasing their classics on every new console
| generation forever doesn't mean they can stomp over that right,
| and emulators should be free to distribute themselves how they
| wish.
| wtetzner wrote:
| Nintendo themselves use emulators.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I agree. It was a totally reckless move, attracting a bunch of
| dangerous attention, and I would not be surprised if it causes
| the end of Dolphin or even RetroArch in general
| indrora wrote:
| The general opinion of every emulator author I have met that
| has had their work subsumed into RetroArch can be summarized as
|
| "Fuck RetroArch"
| IntelMiner wrote:
| I'd echo this sentiment. The MAME developer I know absolutely
| _detests_ Retroarch as a project
| dcchambers wrote:
| Have to agree with this.
|
| Nintendo is infamously litigious. I know that many people say
| the debate over emulators is "settled" and they are perfectly
| legal, but I'd rather not poke the bear and just keep things as
| they are.
|
| Emulators are an invaluable tool for game preservation...and I
| don't want to see one of, if not the best emulator ever, be
| forced to cease development.
| Retr0id wrote:
| While Nintendo _is_ infamously litigious, there 's
| speculation (without concrete evidence either way) that the
| recent string of DMCA takedown requests were not made by
| Nintendo themselves, but by someone impersonating them (as
| for why, who knows, some people get very caught up in the
| "emulation hurts game studios" line of thinking).
| wtallis wrote:
| That seems implausible. There's only one way for the sender
| of a DMCA takedown notice to get in serious trouble, and
| that's by lying about being authorized by the copyright
| holder to send DMCA notices over their works:
|
| > 17 U.S. Code SS512(c)(3)(A)(vi) A statement that the
| information in the notification is accurate, and _under
| penalty of perjury_ , that the complaining party is
| authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive
| right that is allegedly infringed.
|
| (emphasis added)
| vanchor3 wrote:
| Whoever's been trying to wipe the game Cookie's Bustle
| off the internet clearly hasn't been punished at all,
| even when they pretended to be Nintendo.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Submitting a DMCA takedown request does not require any
| authentication beyond a declaration that you're telling
| the truth. Anyone can do it, even over a Tor connection.
| wtallis wrote:
| A DMCA notice requires the aforementioned declaration
| _under penalty of perjury_ , plus some other declarations
| that are merely required to be good faith beliefs, plus
| _contact information_ for the sender.
|
| That last bit makes it quite easy to discover that a DMCA
| notice was faked, thus quite risky for the sender: either
| they provide contact information for themselves that will
| be repudiated by the actual copyright holder should
| anyone question it, or they provide contact information
| for the actual copyright holder and are unable to carry
| the charade beyond the initial message and the takedown
| will not last beyond the initial ~2 weeks for a
| counterclaim to take effect (plus they'd catch the notice
| of the actual corporate legal department, who are
| unlikely to appreciate the impersonation).
| [deleted]
| dotnet00 wrote:
| If it was all that risky for the sender, people abusing
| DMCA to tale down youtube videos they dislike would not
| be as common as it is. The vast majority of the time
| nothing happens to the claimant and the person claimed to
| just has to take the punishment.
| [deleted]
| kevingadd wrote:
| There's no way to actually enforce the penalty of perjury
| in many cases. I've tried before, lots of big companies
| will ignore you when you try to get the information on
| the person who filed the fraudulent claim, which prevents
| you from doing anything about it. Unless you feel like
| also suing Google or Valve.
| dingledork69 wrote:
| Yikes, this should be more well known. The bigcorps
| enjoying and abusing their protection from the law, while
| bullying people into submitting from them and shielding
| their own workers from any consequences.
| ekianjo wrote:
| penalty of perjury works how exactly? because there are a
| number of high profile politicians or directors from 3
| letter agencies who have been found to lie under perjury
| and as far as I know no one has ever gone to jail. sounds
| like its a free card to play.
| clessg wrote:
| > the takedown will not last beyond the initial ~2 weeks
| for a counterclaim to take effect
|
| I wonder how often a DMCA recipient actually bothers with
| a counterclaim, though? I thought counter-notices were
| extremely risky, particularly when dealing with a
| (seemingly) deep-pocketed entity. Doesn't a counterclaim
| open oneself up to immediate ligitation within 2 weeks,
| else the content must remain?
|
| If it _is_ in fact the rightsholder, I assume they won 't
| be happy to simply let the allegedly infringing content
| stand - which means they have to sue. Of course, if one
| really believes the claim to be bogus, they can always
| test it in court. They might even be right, but I suspect
| they'll be bankrupt nonetheless.
|
| I guess the solution is to just reach out to the listed
| contact directly... Without it being in the form of a
| counterclaim? I love this system.
| charcircuit wrote:
| If you infringe someone's copyright they can take legal
| action at any time. The 2 week timeline is just how long
| your content takes to be reactivated if they aren't
| sueing you.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I've worked in the field. Almost nobody bothers with a
| counter notice. It's just risky.
|
| Either they ignore it and you have to evaluate whether
| you'll gain or lose money by suing (oftentimes that's not
| the case, good luck bringing to court some 13 years old
| living in a different country and making 2k per month
| from ads) or they just comply as soon as possible to
| avoid legal drama.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Has anyone faced consequences as a result?
| wtallis wrote:
| I don't think anyone intelligent enough to compose
| something resembling a valid DMCA takedown notice would
| be stupid enough to fake it in that particular manner,
| when the law deliberately leaves much wider and safer
| gaps for a sender to abuse the takedown process.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| How about if you don't live in the US? A few million
| lawsuit is not going to get you extradited, but let's say
| the dmca request was created in Russia.
| anticensor wrote:
| Not even then. Copyright infringement is normally tried
| in the infringer's jurisdiction.
| dingledork69 wrote:
| So got any links to such cases? Its 100% certain some
| kids have sent invalid DMCA notices over the years. It's
| basically a prank that doesn't get you into trouble, at
| this point.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| Is it your position that no entity should ever try to
| challenge a big company's interpretation of the law, however
| ridiculous it may be? At that point, why even have a judicial
| system?
| rcxdude wrote:
| The main point is that it's not a good survival strategy
| for a hobbyist project that may draw the ire of a big
| company: even if the companies legal action is completely
| frivolous, it can easily destroy the project (basically the
| only option they actually have is enough public outcry to
| get the company to back off due to the bad publicity).
| Generally speaking laying low is the better option. It
| sucks, and it's a big problem with the current judicial
| system, but it is the status quo. It would take someone
| able and willing to put some serious resources into a risky
| bet to change that.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Many people agree but don't have the resources or are
| risking too much if they try.
|
| If you think you can make a difference, the world will
| welcome you.
| jonhohle wrote:
| It's an expensive theory to test. I would imagine most OSS
| projects or their contributors are not in a financial
| position to get to court, let alone see the trial to a
| conclusion.
|
| I don't know what to do about it, but it seems we've fell
| into aristocracy of ruling corporations.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| That's what advocate and civil rights organizations are
| for. I bet the likes of the EFF would be very interested
| in taking this case. It aligns with their incentives to
| take down the DMCA.
| viraptor wrote:
| If EFF is very interested, they can find a way to test it
| themselves. But here, even with EFF's help the developers
| would be still exposed to risk. EFF is not able to say
| "we'll fight this for you, pay 100% of expenses and your
| time's worth, and go jail instead of you if things turn
| really bad".
| Tams80 wrote:
| Sometimes it's just better to settle for good enough, or in
| this case pretty damn good.
|
| But no, some of you want the most convenient way. Only this
| time, that's painted a massive target on the back of what
| you want.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Every interaction with IP law is a total gamble and if you
| lose you are gone forever. It's best to take as few gambles
| as possible
| favorited wrote:
| Because the last time it was litigated in the US, the good
| guys won. But SCEA v. Bleem was over 20 years ago, and
| there's no guarantee that the courts won't roll back
| protections for emulation development.
|
| NoA is notoriously vindictive & litigious, and they have
| more money than the Dolphin devs. Even though Sony lost the
| case, the lawsuit ruined Bleem. It's not outside the realm
| of possibility that Nintendo will try to do the same thing
| to Dolphin, Ryujinx, Yuzu, etc.
| dingledork69 wrote:
| So when a bigcorp says jump you expect everyone to just
| do so?
| falcolas wrote:
| I think the point is, you're welcome to place yourself in
| Nintendos crosshairs, and we'll cheer you on as you pit
| your billions against Nintendos billions, fighting for a
| favorable ruling.
|
| Dolphin developers apparently are not in a position to
| pit billions against Nintendo. Can't blame them either.
| dingledork69 wrote:
| [flagged]
| falcolas wrote:
| Then give them the billions they need to prove that in
| court. This isn't about the ethics, it's about the
| unclear legality.
|
| Write better arguments.
| dingledork69 wrote:
| [flagged]
| LocalH wrote:
| I mean, I support emulation fully, I believe that "it's
| always morally correct to pirate Nintendo", and I even
| believe that piracy is preservation, but come on. The
| Dolphin devs _included the Wii keys_ , which was so
| incredibly stupid, probably one of the few _completely
| brain dead_ actions that the Dolphin team has taken in
| the entirety of the emulator 's history.
| jmkni wrote:
| Good video on this from MVG -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsQtv5IvrD8
|
| tl;dr The Dolphin source code contains a common/private key owned
| by Nintendo, which is their reason for asking it to be pulled
| from the Steam store.
| FounderBurr wrote:
| But but stealing is the coolest crime of all. Software wants to
| be free?
| LocalH wrote:
| Copyright infringement is not "stealing", it is not "theft".
|
| _Plagiarism_ is closer to stealing, as one is trying to
| misrepresent ownership. But even that is not _legally_
| stealing.
|
| Please use correct terminology.
| guraf wrote:
| [flagged]
| savingsPossible wrote:
| given that dolphin is open source, a company could be created
| just to litigate the issue. That is, to upload dolphin on steam.
| without the original team permission, and to contest the DMCA
| claim.
|
| If they'd have grounds or not, I don't know, but the liability
| could be limited to them, so, there is not much to lose (if, say,
| the EFF is interested in the case)
| drumhead wrote:
| What were they thinking. Nintendo allowing an emulator on steam??
| endisneigh wrote:
| Given how many YouTubers brazenly use dolphin on steam decks and
| say you can get free games, I'm surprised it didn't happen
| sooner.
| RGamma wrote:
| If that exists, it furthers the point for a (high entry
| barrier) separate internet for responsible folks. Some things
| are better left out of the spotlight given this IP regime...
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| And yet that didn't seem to stop the average schmoe from
| accessing Silk Road if they intended to.
|
| "Information wants to be free" as the adage goes.
| RGamma wrote:
| Maybe the separate internet was an exaggeration, but there
| are things I would never post on a frequently visited
| public forum, because they're best left unspoken or found
| if you look for/hear about them in private-ish convo (like
| emulators/ROMs), given the legislative climate around them.
| Too much (stimulated) popularity can be poison.
| chungy wrote:
| In general, I'm not sure what the idea of putting Dolphin on
| Steam was supposed to gain. First, I have a hard time
| conceiving why I'd even want to manage it from Steam, but aside
| from that, it seems like it'll only attract attention from
| people wanting "free games".
|
| It's sad too, since the Wii is a console that makes it
| extraordinarily simple to dump your own game discs and use the
| emulator in a completely legal fashion.
| Jochim wrote:
| Steam has been much more than just a store-front for a while
| now. There's a few features that would take the Dolphin team
| a lot of effort to implement independently but can be
| integrated without much effort through Steam. A few examples
| would be:
|
| - Steam Remote Play: Seamlessly playing your Wii games from
| your TV.
|
| - Steam Workshop: Authoring, distribution, and management of
| modifications to the emulator.
|
| - Steam Input: A powerful abstraction layer dealing with
| different controllers and the mapping of their inputs.
| Sharing and downloading input maps from the community is
| directly integrated.
|
| - Steam cloud save: Share configuration and save data between
| computers.
|
| - Steam's multiplayer API could potentially have made it much
| easier to use Dolphin for multiplayer games.
|
| Most of these things can be achieved without Steam but
| they're less convenient, more difficult for non-technical
| users, and yet another thing to manage, update, and keep
| track of.
| wtallis wrote:
| > In general, I'm not sure what the idea of putting Dolphin
| on Steam was supposed to gain. First, I have a hard time
| conceiving why I'd even want to manage it from Steam,
|
| In case you haven't heard of it, Valve sells the Steam Deck:
| a handheld gaming console with Steam as its primary UI. Under
| the hood, it's a low-power AMD x86 system running Linux
| (specifically, Valve's SteamOS distro). So having Dolphin on
| Steam would be the optimal way to make Dolphin available to
| Steam Deck users, just like having Dolphin available on the
| Google Play Store is the optimal way to make Dolphin
| available to Android users even though side-loading is an
| option.
| i2cmaster wrote:
| Is there a reason you can't just use the normal OS package
| repo like everyone else?
| chrisldgk wrote:
| No, but the average (read: casual) user isn't comfortable
| using the command line to install packages from the
| command line (and I don't think SteamOS comes with a
| package manager UI), so there's a huge potential install
| base for users if they could install it via the UI.
| dawidpotocki wrote:
| It comes with Discover, the KDE Plasma GUI package
| manager. You can install Flatpaks using it on SteamOS.
| Tams80 wrote:
| Which just paints an even bigger target on it.
|
| When it was on its own website and hosted on its own
| servers, with mostly word of mouth (online) spreading it,
| Nintendo were probably not too happy, but accepting that it
| was legal.
|
| But when Valve, who are sort of competing with Nintendo,
| host it and promote, that's another matter. Especially when
| many people do play games using it that they have not
| legally obtained.
| philistine wrote:
| I would bet good money that this is exactly why a DMCA was
| sent; someone at Nintendo was shown a Steam Deck, which is
| a big Switch competitor, loading Dolphin and playing
| Gamecube games for free with better performance than what
| Nintendo themselves deign to provide us.
| extrememacaroni wrote:
| It's not like having dolphin on steam will give you access
| to free gamecube and wii games. You will still have to get
| them yourself and/or any bioses that may be required, I
| dunno.
|
| Which means a bit of hacking, which means you should
| already be capable enough to install emudeck on your steam
| deck. Which is vastly superior to any single emulator on
| steam itself.
| Eduard wrote:
| > It's not like having dolphin on steam will give you
| access to free gamecube and wii games. You will still
| have to get them yourself and/or any bioses that may be
| required,...
|
| Yet.
| bhelkey wrote:
| From Dolphin's FAQ [1]
|
| >Where can I download game ISOs/ROMs ?P
|
| >Short answer: You don't. Buy games and dump them with a
| Wii.
|
| >Long answer: Downloading commercial games is illegal and
| thus strongly frowned upon by the Dolphin developers.
|
| [1] https://dolphin-emu.org/docs/faq/#couldnt-dolphin-
| use-more-m...
| bybybyby wrote:
| [dead]
| wkat4242 wrote:
| "Strongly frowned upon" lol. Wink wink
|
| Ps this is not a moral judgement, I would use it myself
| except I don't like Nintendo's style of games. I owned a
| Wii and bought some games but I was really bored. I
| modded it and downloaded everything I could get and not a
| single game could capture my attention. I missed good
| fpses, it was all party games and kiddyish/cartoonish
| stuff like Zelda and Mario. So I've never looked at
| Nintendo since. Perhaps these days their offers would be
| more interesting to me but I haven't checked.
|
| This was in the early days of the Wii though, when it was
| still a big hype. So all the games I tried were launch
| titles or very soon after. I thought the motion
| controller thing was not very well worked out and more of
| a gimmick. I was expecting it to be more exact like with
| VR controllers these days.
| DevKoala wrote:
| Srsly. I don't get what the point of this was.
| dgellow wrote:
| Dolphin doesn't need to be on steam to be used on a steam
| deck. You can install any program you want, it's not
| restricted to steam.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| To most people, if it's not on Steam, it doesn't exist,
| especially on a Steam Deck. So while anyone can still
| install it outside of Steam, by not being available via
| Steam their possible audience is significantly reduced.
| i2cmaster wrote:
| [flagged]
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Is this so true of emulators? Emulators already often
| require lots of work to go find the games themselves
| (which _certainly_ would not be distributed on Steam), so
| how much effort is actually spared for the users? Very
| little.
| asveikau wrote:
| > Emulators already often require lots of work to go find
| the games themselves
|
| That used to be true, but today, ROM sites are very
| easily discoverable on Google. People also sell ROMs on
| hard drives and SD cards on Amazon, many of them
| qualifying for Prime delivery.
| wtallis wrote:
| > That used to be true, but today, ROM sites are very
| easily discoverable on Google.
|
| I'm pretty sure it hasn't been true at any point in the
| past 25 years. ROM sites have always been easy to find,
| even pre-Google.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Yes but if you make an emulator available to most people,
| most people are going to use it for piracy, and you are
| obviously going to attract a lot of attention from the
| law. I'm not saying that emulation should be illegal, but
| really this is a case where I am literally not surprised
| at all that Nintendo would act
| das_keyboard wrote:
| But is it really piracy if there is no way to buy and
| play the original game except for completely overpriced
| second-hand stuff?
|
| I now it is legally, but morally I don't think people are
| doing something wrong here.
| numpad0 wrote:
| That view is just a result of massive cultural/language
| barrier between ja-JP and en-US(-gaming) community. Not a
| global thing.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Is it? Yes.
|
| Should it be? No.
| bowsamic wrote:
| That really is irrelevant. Companies don't want it to be
| there, and will use their immense powers to try and stop
| it being there. It isn't worth the risk of trying to put
| it on Steam
| dgellow wrote:
| Dolphin is by far the most well known emulator in its
| category. Honestly emulators don't really have their
| place on a game marketplace, that would really just be an
| incentive for people who want to easily pirate games for
| free.
|
| Anyone interested in emulating a Wii or GameCube for
| legitimate reasons will easily find Dolphin and can
| install it on their Steam Deck.
| refulgentis wrote:
| > Anyone interested...will easily find Dolphin and can
| install it on their Steam Deck.
|
| Anyone?
|
| Really, anyone?
|
| _rubs forehead_
|
| It's easier to have it on Steam. When I was 15, 25 even,
| maybe I'm so excited and hellbent on getting an emulator
| that I actively figure out the 10 step process to
| sideload. As a casual, it's much nicer when it's one
| step.
| chungy wrote:
| > maybe I'm so excited and hellbent on getting an
| emulator that I actively figure out the 10 step process
| to sideload.
|
| Steam Deck isn't locked down. From Steam itself, you just
| "exit to desktop", and bam you're met with a KDE desktop.
| Running Linux. You can do whatever you want. Including
| installing emulators and games that aren't distributed on
| Steam. It only takes one step: "flatpak install dolphin-
| emu"
| brookst wrote:
| Yes, and technically people can just code their own
| emulators, too.
|
| Convenience is important.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| Putting it on Steam means all your games have (seamless,
| Steam) cloud saves for all your games.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Only if they implement steam cloud saves. Its not
| automatic.
| kevingadd wrote:
| It's pretty close though, there's a mode where you can
| just point Steam Cloud at a folder and it will sync it.
| Legion wrote:
| Dolphin's Twitter account stated that cloud saves was
| part of the Steam release.
|
| It really is one of the main reasons to do a Steam
| release. Seamlessly playing your savegames and save
| states on desktop PC over to Steam Deck and back again
| made RetroArch one of the killer Deck apps IMO.
| chungy wrote:
| Even without Steam, you could use Syncthing for your
| Dolphin-emu data.
| MikusR wrote:
| Or even an ftp server and rsync.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Yeah, they have no shame. Feels like they would throw anyone
| under the bus for a few clicks and subs.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| This is something that often gets missed in the "Why can't
| Nintendo be more like Sega?" argument.
|
| Nintendo sells games from other publishers, Sega doesn't. Other
| publishers get mad if Nintendo can't keep piracy on their
| platform under control. They send angry letters, complain to
| their representatives, and so forth. It's not just (arguably)
| lost sales, but now you have to deal with more cheating
| players. To Nintendo, piracy is an embarrassment. Nintendo
| files DMCAs, in part, because other publishers expect them to
| and because only Nintendo can.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| What I'm hearing is that when Nintendo has to decide between
| its users or its publishers it is choosing the publishers.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| I didn't realize developers were still publishing Gamecube
| and Wii games. Can you share some of the newest games that
| have been released?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| What are you talking about? Every game developer licenses
| with Nintendo to publish to Switch. Nintendo takes about
| 30% royalties, which stings if their platform is insecure.
| Only Nintendo can make physical cartridges. Nothing with
| the status quo there has changed.
|
| Also, the last original Wii game was _Just Dance 2020._ Not
| joking, a Wii game was released 3 years ago.
| andylynch wrote:
| Not surprising it was _Just Dance_ The 2019 one was the
| last XBOX 360 title too.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| I was specifically asking about Gamecube and Wii games,
| not Switch. Dolphin is a Gamecube/Wii emulator, both of
| which no longer have active games being released for
| them. Your argument might have some application if it was
| a Switch emulator being propped up.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I would say it's more about establishing legal
| boundaries.
|
| The Wii was the first console to use digital signatures;
| which would make it the first console to really invoke
| DMCA Section 1201 when prior consoles did not.
| Establishing out the gate that this tramples on 1201
| could be extremely important in the future. Section 1201
| is also what overrides Bleam and other prior emulator
| lawsuits - they didn't have cryptographic keys protected
| by law flying around.
|
| Because, how long until Yuzu is on the Steam store? And
| if Nintendo didn't take action for the Wii (the first one
| protected under the title), defending against Yuzu is
| much harder.
| brirec wrote:
| I can say pretty confidently that the original Xbox had
| (and verified) digital signatures.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I'm sorry, I should have said first _Nintendo_ console.
| The earlier Nintendo consoles had no ROM encryption and
| used heavily physical protection methods (odd disc sizes,
| lockout chips).
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Cryptographic key doesn't matter. It's covered explicitly
| under the exemptions listed in Section 1201. Discovering
| the cryptographic key using reverse engineering and using
| it for system interoperability is legal. They explicitly
| call this out:
|
| > 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;
|
| Nintendo has no standing.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| If only it were that easy. The EFF had long warned that
| the interoperability exception is legally much weaker
| when it conflicts with 1201 than it appears, and is (in
| their view) legally almost useless.
|
| "The "act" prohibition, set out in section 1201(a)(1),
| prohibits the act of circumventing a technological
| measure used by copyright owners to control access to
| their works ("access controls"). So, for example, this
| provision makes it unlawful to defeat the encryption
| system used on DVD movies. This ban on acts of
| circumvention applies even where the purpose for
| decrypting the movie would otherwise be legitimate. As a
| result, it is unlawful to make a digital copy ("rip") of
| a DVD you own for playback on your video iPod.
|
| The "tools" prohibitions, set out in sections 1201(a)(2)
| and 1201(b), outlaw the manufacture, sale, distribution,
| or trafficking of tools and technologies that make
| circumvention possible. These provisions ban both
| technologies that defeat access controls, and also
| technologies that defeat use restrictions imposed by
| copyright owners, such as copy controls. These provisions
| prohibit the distribution of "DVD back-up" software, for
| example.
|
| Section 1201 includes a number of exceptions for certain
| limited classes of activities, including security
| testing, reverse engineering of software, encryption
| research, and law enforcement. These exceptions have been
| extensively criticized as being too narrow to be of real
| use to the constituencies who they were intended to
| assist."
|
| https://www.eff.org/pages/unintended-consequences-seven-
| year...
|
| This comes up elsewhere on this Hacker News thread,
| because Dolphin actually does contain a Nintendo
| encryption key. Which makes Dolphin almost
| indistinguishable from, say, a DVD ripper or counterfeit
| DVD player, which this law was specifically designed to
| crush.
|
| If you want a further example, look into _Apple v
| Psystar_ , where Psystar broke Apple's DMCA 1201 locks to
| run macOS on unofficial hardware with "interoperability
| between hardware" being one of their many legal defenses.
| They were squashed in hearing after hearing and declared
| bankruptcy after having exhausted all legal options.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > As a result, it is unlawful to make a digital copy
| ("rip") of a DVD you own for playback on your video iPod.
|
| Strictly speaking, this is true. It is not unlawful to
| plug a DVD player into your iPod and play the DVD back
| digitally though. That's basically what Dolphin is doing
| - it runs unmodified disc images, copy protection and
| all. They've even abstained from using code or insights
| gained from the Wii's source code leak. The emulator
| _should be_ clean, outside of any legal complaints about
| "damages".
|
| You're correct to highlight that it's still an ambiguous
| area, but in a post-Bleem! world it's hard for
| Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony to find the legal willpower to
| stop these people. They'll settle for easy wins like
| harassing Valve's legal staff with scary looking letters
| instead.
|
| > If you want a further example, look into Apple v
| Psystar
|
| There's more recent precedent with Corellium. Their
| _commercial product_ is allowed to create iOS VMs on
| unofficial hardware. Running their code is considered
| fair use, the most valid legal claim Apple had for
| shutting them down was their violation of icon and
| wallpaper trademarks.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > It is not unlawful to plug a DVD player into your iPod
| and play the DVD back digitally though. That's basically
| what Dolphin is doing - it runs unmodified disc images,
| copy protection and all.
|
| If it can play disc images with copy protection, it _de
| facto_ requires a way around that copy protection that is
| unlicensed, slamming it squarely into Section 1201.
|
| > The emulator should be clean, outside of any legal
| complaints about "damages".
|
| Dolphin contains Nintendo decryption keys; which is
| actually very likely illegal when the rest of the
| emulator is not. Recall 09 F9...
|
| A competing emulator developer (for Citra) has also
| commented on this and said what Dolphin did there was
| legally dangerous and very much not endorsed by courts.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/13ss1o9/comme
| nt/...
|
| > Their commercial product is allowed to create iOS VMs
| on unofficial hardware.
|
| If you read the ruling, the fair use won because
| Corellium successfully argued there was no way that their
| product could impact Apple in any substantial negative
| way in the general market. They also argued that their
| products do not perform as substitutes to any products
| that Apple provides. And lastly, their products offer a
| unique benefit for a unique, niche, special interest,
| with vetting and similar procedures to ensure only people
| with those interests used their software.
|
| If, however, they had done that to make their own
| smartphones, or a general iOS emulator for playing games
| on PC, they would have been annihilated. Nintendo
| _easily_ has a case that emulation causes substantial
| financial and business harm; _and_ that emulation can
| serve as a replacement for their products. Courts don't
| like that.
|
| Edit ("posting too fast"):
|
| Unlike the GameCube, Wii games are digitally signed and
| encrypted.
|
| This specific line of code contains the illegal key:
|
| https://github.com/dolphin-
| emu/dolphin/blob/34527cadcce49a9a...
|
| As the developer of Citra (above) noted, big no-no. The
| emulator is legally fine, but encryption keys are a no-
| go. Bleam was OK because keys were not involved. Every
| case that has involved keys for a non-extremely-specific
| use (Psystar, RealPlayer, VidAngel) has gone down in
| flames.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > If it can play disc images with copy protection
|
| > Dolphin contains Nintendo decryption keys
|
| I don't believe it does. Wii U emulator CEMU requires
| them to boot, and Citra the 3DS emulator also requires
| them. The Wii seems to have no copy protection to speak
| of, besides it's rudimentary disk check/hashing routine.
| I'd love to be proven wrong on this, though.
|
| > the fair use won because Corellium successfully argued
| there was no way that their product could impact Apple in
| any substantial way regarding security research
|
| > Nintendo easily has a case that emulation causes
| substantial financial and business harm
|
| So did Sony. Bleem even used screenshots of their
| official, licensed games to advertise their commercial
| alternative to owning a Playstation, and a judge deemed
| it lawful: https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar_case?case
| =1183722407805...
|
| From the appeal:
|
| > To the extent Bleem merely approximates what the
| PlayStation games look like, by generating screen shots
| through a process of degrading a computer image, it is
| simply creating a simulation. If Bleem insists on
| generating simulated approximations of Sony's games,
| there is no need for Bleem to use Sony's copyrighted
| material whatsoever.
|
| Again - there is still ambiguity in these rulings,
| especially for modern console emulators. It's easy to
| scare Steam into taking this down since Valve doesn't
| want to take the fall for emulators. That being said, a
| true cease-and-desist scenario for Dolphin is likely
| unlawful, given the precedent and context.
|
| Edit in response to your edit: Citra's developer is right
| - this is brazen. But it's also a legal can of worms
| Nintendo cannot guarantee a win on. Their claim is that
| it violates the Copyright Act, which they would then have
| to defend against the DMCA amendments that give explicit
| protections to many classes of usage. If "the key" is
| their objection, Nintendo's copyright complaint will be
| about as effective as the DeCSS moratorium.
| [deleted]
| monocasa wrote:
| > I don't believe it does.
|
| The aes keys checked in to their GitHub are linked
| elsewhere in this comment section.
| evandale wrote:
| I don't understand how private keys are any different
| from secret ingredients. You can't stop me from cracking
| the KFC recipe and if I successfully did it and published
| the recipe can KFC come after me? What if KFC was sloppy
| and dropped the recipe on the floor and I found it and
| published that?
|
| To me the private key is just a secret blend of bits to
| make the output bits look exactly the way you'd expect.
| If Nintendo can't keep their private keys private isn't
| that their problem? Why does someone else have the
| responsibility to keep Nintendo's key private if they
| discover it?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| DMCA Section 1201 is your answer. Those keys are
| primarily used for circumventing "technological
| protection measures" on software. That's not legal _even
| for otherwise legal uses_ which is why the Section is
| morally awful. What you do _could be completely legal
| otherwise_ , but if it involves circumventing these
| "TPMs" of which encryption keys are an important part of,
| you're screwed.
|
| An emulator, meanwhile, only mimics hardware which is
| considered legal. An example: It is completely legal to
| implement the DVD specification; but brute-forcing the
| keys to decrypt DVDs because you don't have a license is
| not.
|
| The same applies to AACS, which protects Blu-ray Discs.
| It's actually published publicly - you can just go
| download the spec for that copy protection right now. But
| getting a legal, unique device key will require
| contracts.
|
| Stupid? Yes, but that's where the law is drawn right now.
| musicale wrote:
| What about Sony vs. Connectix? That case seems to have
| established that US copyright law does not confer a
| monopoly on devices or software to play commercial games.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment
| ,_I....
| monocasa wrote:
| They was both A) a case decided before the DMCA was law,
| and B) the DRM system of the PS1 is pretty much solely
| focused on legitimate PS1s only playing legitimate discs;
| there's nothing in most games stopping other systems from
| reading everything off the disc freely in cleartext.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Video games have had digital rights management since the
| first Nintendo game system in the mid 80a
| ksec wrote:
| You do realise the developer who develops for Gamecube
| and Wii, also developers for Switch, right?
| KomoD wrote:
| That is not relevant, this is about dolphin any not any
| other thing made by the dev
| ksec wrote:
| I think you should read my parent and Grand parent's
| comment.
| wtallis wrote:
| Why are you ignoring the issue of games being re-released
| on newer platforms? Even if the Gamecube and Wii are more
| or less dead platforms, that doesn't mean the games are
| no longer valuable IP that the studios want protected in
| any way possible.
| LocalH wrote:
| That is not an answer as to "how to play old games".
| Quite often, games are modified (besides
| remastering/rereleasing) in the process.
|
| "Protected in any way possible"? Why should copyright
| holders with money get that benefit, but those without
| money are screwed?
| p1necone wrote:
| Imo if a publisher wants to retain rights to a game, they
| should have to make it available for sale. If you don't
| provide some legal way to acquire a game for some number
| of years (5? 10?) it should go into the public domain
| (the game itself, not the related IP).
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| Your opinion is irrelevant. It's not your property. You
| don't own it and you don't get to dictate how the owner
| chooses to sell their own content.
| LocalH wrote:
| It's not the rightsholders' property either. It's the
| _public 's_ property. We just give the rightholders a
| _temporary_ monopoly on distributing such work.
|
| First of all, despite the legal handwaving around the
| topic, copyrights and related works _are not property in
| and of themselves_. They can _manifest_ in physical
| property, but they are not property themselves. I reject
| the use of the term "intellectual property", as it is a
| complete misnomer.
|
| Secondly, copyrights are not _absolute_. There are acts
| that the rightsholder would not want you to do, but that
| are still legal.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Your opinion is also irrelevant. People will find ways to
| do what they want.
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| Piracy is an entirely different issue than compelling
| publishers to adopt arbitrary rules around republishing
| their content on new platforms.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Sure, so I download it somewhere. Their loss, not mine.
| wtallis wrote:
| The comment you're replying to used the word "should"
| often enough to signal to you that it was expressing an
| opinion about what the law ought to be amended to, rather
| than commenting on the current state of the law. So your
| comment reads like you're denying that a member of the
| general public deserves any stake in determining the
| extent of copyright protection, which is _very_ wrong:
| copyright is a social contract codified into law, where
| creators /authors get the (time-limited) benefits of
| certain exclusive rights and the use of the public's
| courts to enforce those, in exchange for the eventual
| passing of that work into public domain. It is entirely
| fair for the public to debate what the extent and
| duration of those exclusive rights should be, and to
| question whether the current deal is excessively one-
| sided. It is not correct morally _or_ legally to act as
| though authors are the sole arbiters of how their works
| may be used.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| I think you're misreading the parent comment or
| reinterpreting the intent behind it.
|
| Someone made a thing. They get to decide who they share
| it with. It's very smug and entitled to then go to that
| person and tell them "actually no. the thing you
| created.. its not yours anymore. It's now ours - and
| we're going to use it how we want to use it".
|
| It's cool you like to play my game and you had fun - but
| that doesn't mean you suddenly have a right to play it
| whenever you want - unless we came to that agreement. I'm
| not a creator myself, but I could see how that just feels
| incredibly violating. I frankly feel this copyright-
| reform sentiments come from people that have never
| created anything that they felt personal ownership over.
|
| I'd argue that copyright expiration is not at all about
| some imagined exchange of legal protections for .. the
| use of courts (since when is the use of courts treated as
| a privilege?) and is more about historical preservation
| and the fact that ownership is often eventually lost.
| Most copyright provisions are so long that by the time
| they expire there is noone left to feel robbed, slighted
| or taken advantage of. It's a fuzzy line but at some
| point graverobbing becomes archeology
| LocalH wrote:
| >It's very smug and entitled to then go to that person
| and tell them "actually no. the thing you created.. its
| not yours anymore. It's now ours - and we're going to use
| it how we want to use it"
|
| That is the entirety of copyright in a nutshell, though.
| There comes a time when it _really isn 't_ entitlement to
| say "you don't get to control this work anymore", and
| that time has to come before copyright expiry in a
| _practical_ sense, or there would be no works to enter
| the public domain, in a very real physical sense.
| Copyright owners are _horrible_ stewards of their work,
| _thousands_ of works have been lost due to gross
| mismanagement of archives (if the company even decides to
| give a shit about archiving anything).
|
| Today's pirates are tomorrow's preservationists. Without
| the works that are being pirated, _right now_ , they run
| the risk of being lost to time.
|
| If used game sales actually resulted in money going to
| the copyright holders, I might have some more sympathy
| for that argument. But whether I pirate a copy of game X,
| or buy it from a secondhand seller, the original
| copyright holder sees _zero_ of that money, and that 's
| actually a _good_ thing, and protects _actual_ property
| rights, those of the person who buys a physical copy of a
| piece of media.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| If you're worried about things being lost to time, then
| maybe that's a valid concern and could be addressed in a
| more direct manner than entirely removing/limiting
| copyright. If I put a copy in a special box that opens in
| 50 years, would you allow me to retain control of my own
| work/words for longer? Or is that somehow still not good
| enough?
|
| But I have a larger issue with the premise. So say I
| write a book - it seems to me you're saying I have a
| moral obligation for that book to be preserved for future
| generations to read. How about if I actively don't want
| that to happen? Should the cops come to my door and take
| it away?
|
| Or if let one other person read it, now they inherit some
| right over my work to reread it?
|
| I just don't find the whole anticopyright argument
| cohesive and coming from a clear moral premise
|
| A lot of it kinda boils down to companies mismanage their
| IP and it's annoying. And the weird particulars of the
| medium of exchange. Okay, SNES/PS1 games came on
| cartridges/CDs, so you can physically introspect and
| extract the data... you feel entitles to circumvent
| whatever protections there are. In the future its likely
| games will be streamed and played in the cloud. You will
| never have physical access to the actual executed bits.
| Does that mean your rights as a user are different now?
| Or should you send the cops to seize the code on the
| servers at some point?
| wtallis wrote:
| > So say I write a book - it seems to me you're saying I
| have a moral obligation for that book to be preserved for
| future generations to read. How about if I actively don't
| want that to happen? Should the cops come to my door and
| take it away?
|
| You're always free to not publish your work, and you'll
| never be compelled to publish your work. But at some
| point, you (or your heirs) will lose the right to use
| copyright law to prevent other people from publishing
| your work.
|
| > Or if let one other person read it, now they inherit
| some right over my work to reread it?
|
| https://xkcd.com/294/
|
| Copyright only gives authors/owners a limited set of
| exclusive rights over their works, mostly concerning
| physical copies, derivative works and public performance:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106 Copyright
| law is not about ideas or knowledge in your head. Reading
| a book is not an activity that copyright law is concerned
| with.
|
| > In the future its likely games will be streamed and
| played in the cloud. You will never have physical access
| to the actual executed bits. Does that mean your rights
| as a user are different now?
|
| Being a user isn't what gives you rights under copyright
| law. Being a legal owner of a copy of a game is what
| matters. If you only use a streaming service, you
| probably have never purchased a copy of the game. You may
| have purchased a license authorizing a hosting provider
| to run their copy of the game on your behalf (commercial
| software vendors like to use contract law to try to wield
| powers that copyright law doesn't grant them).
| wtallis wrote:
| > I'd argue that copyright expiration is not at all about
| some imagined exchange of legal protections for .. the
| use of courts (since when is the use of courts treated as
| a privilege?) and is more about historical preservation
|
| Well, you're simply wrong on that score. The US
| Constitution empowers Congress to establish copyright
| laws thus:
|
| > To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by
| securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
| exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
| Discoveries
|
| It's not about archeology, it's about promoting the
| development of new stuff. To that end, at some point it's
| better to free a work for others to build upon than to
| allow continued profiteering by the existing
| author/owner.
| [deleted]
| techdragon wrote:
| The first sale doctrine would beg to differ. Which is
| modulo regional/national regulations and restrictions on
| certain kinds of products... basically globally
| recognised.
|
| As would the legal recognition of format shifting in
| multiple jurisdictions around the world...
|
| I bought it and the hardware stops working... I still
| have the legal right to do what I want with the data on
| that disk.
|
| If I'm a legitimate customer and you sold not licensed me
| the software... fuck you Nintendo I have the right to
| emulate your hardware (which I also own thus providing a
| right to whatever software was sold on that device, so
| that angle isn't a solid argument either.)
|
| The only question that _should_ be legally argued over is
| do the documented infringement cases of people recording
| themselves doing this on streams, have a legal defence
| for the allegations Nintendo could level at them. They
| are innocent until proven guilty by law and it would be
| more effort for Nintendo to bring charges...
|
| So they took the morally reprehensible cheaper action of
| going after the legal emulator software rather to save
| themselves time and money attacking developers not in a
| position to fight back because while they are standing
| firmly in legal territory making the software, you would
| have to be very optimistic to think the arguments
| Nintendo could make with their expensive lawyers about
| "facilitating crime" wouldn't be persuasive.
| [deleted]
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| The concept of owning ideas is, and has always been, on
| shaky ground. Whether we continue to play along with it
| is indeed up to us. And it's perfectly reasonable to make
| that cooperation contingent on the behavior of those who
| would own the ideas.
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| Try and stop me :)
| trinsic2 wrote:
| Yeah Im going to chime in right there, his opinion is
| relevant. You cant just cut off a release an expect
| everybody to stop experiencing it. IMHO this is similar
| to books that go out of print. People might go to
| different methods to obtain copies. It's the
| publishers/developers fault if they loose out on money if
| they are not making their works available. Plus many
| developers let works expire deliberately to attempt to
| force people to other options that serves only ulterior
| motives. Copyright was only valuable to protect a work
| for a limited time. Many publishers and developers are
| using the extension of copyright way past its public
| benefit. People forget that commercialism is meant to
| serve the public good, not the other way around. Rights
| as a commercial enterprise are limited by operating a
| private enterprise under strict guidelines that serve
| common good, hence the reason why we have charters. The
| fact that charters are no longer honored under the
| principals they were created for in the first place is
| another matter.
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| > You cant just cut off a release an expect everybody to
| stop experiencing it.
|
| Yes, you can. You own the product, you may choose to stop
| selling it.
|
| You also can't mandate what formats a publisher makes
| their media available on.
| wtallis wrote:
| > Yes, you can. You own the product, you may choose to
| stop selling it.
|
| "Stop selling it" isn't the same as making everybody
| "stop experiencing it". A publisher can choose to stop
| selling more copies, but they can't undo what they've
| already sold, and they have limited powers to control
| what people do with the copies they previously bought,
| and those powers have an expiration date--which may need
| to be moved closer to the present.
| replygirl wrote:
| most games are available on amazon. popular games like
| rayman raving rabids for wii, motorstorm for ps3, and
| underground 2 for ps2 are still available new. more niche
| games like frequency for ps2 and older gen games like
| crash warped for ps1 are still available refurbished.
| pretty much any console game from the last 25 years that
| didn't totally flop is available in good condition from a
| major retailer. the rest are around at boutiques and on
| the used market.
|
| we get public domain in 70 years just like everything
| else, and i can't think of an argument for any game being
| more of a public good than works of other types like
| lolita, the search for animal chin, or paul's boutique.
| wtallis wrote:
| > we get public domain in 70 years just like everything
| else,
|
| Nitpick: video games are almost always a work-for-hire,
| so it's 95 years after publication (or 120 years after
| creation, in the unusual event that publication gets
| delayed long enough for this deadline to expire first).
| andrepd wrote:
| Incredible that this is normalised. When a law is "you
| can enjoy cultural creations of 2007 in 2102", disobeying
| it is legitimate.
| ta34719586_1 wrote:
| Your logic is flawed.
|
| You may already enjoy that creation by paying for it,
| just like you would for many other cultural items.
|
| Or was it just sarcasm?
| danaris wrote:
| If there is no legal way to obtain the game, or no
| practical way to obtain the system to play it on, then
| you _can 't_ enjoy it.
|
| This is one of the most important purposes of emulation:
| it allows for digital archival of otherwise-obsolete
| hardware and software.
| [deleted]
| makomk wrote:
| By the time these games enter the public domain, there'll
| be no way to play them except via an emulator and no way
| to develop an emulator if there's not one already - the
| flash holding the OS on all the Wiis out there will have
| long bitrotted away. Hell, a lot of the newer Wii Us are
| already dying due to flash failure just from being
| switched off for a few years. Strict copyright and DRM
| enforcement would most likely lead to this era of games
| being lost forever, just like many older films from a
| century or more ago have been lost.
| asveikau wrote:
| > Hell, a lot of the newer Wii Us are already dying due
| to flash failure just from being switched off for a few
| years.
|
| I thought I heard that this is actually a specific brand
| with chip defects.
|
| Googling found: https://hackmd.io/d12Fq9g-QlCjN2HJp7Yvew
|
| Its mostly the hynix flash chips.
| jrm4 wrote:
| 70 years AFTER THE THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR. Still sound
| reasonable?
| musicale wrote:
| > is available in good condition from a major retailer
|
| I don't think Nintendo gets a cut of used game sales; +he
| first-sale doctrine should still apply.
| ksec wrote:
| I dont know since when but for some strange reason HN has
| turned into anti IP, anti patent ( good or bad, software
| or not ) or basically everything should be free, that
| type of ideological mentality. And it has been going on
| for more than few years. Just want to say a big thank you
| for continue to comment and contributing on HN. Hopefully
| I get to read more of your work on Anandtech.
| bsder wrote:
| Metroid Prime: Remastered just got released on Switch and
| sold a million units.
|
| Anybody who thought that was a good game is now looking
| for the second and third installments in the trilogy
| which Nintendo offically said they weren't going to
| develop (oops). So those are effectively only available
| on Dolphin/Wii.
|
| Yeah, Nintendo got caught with their pants down (Metroid
| Prime sold _way_ better than they expected) and are
| losing future sales for every person who pulls up Dolphin
| and the next two Metroids.
| xnyan wrote:
| >Other publishers get mad if Nintendo can't keep piracy on
| their platform under control
|
| Maybe, but if that mattered we would have seen the
| consequences already because Nintendo since the gamecube has
| been uniquely abysmal at anti-piracy, the worst by far of any
| console maker. Most recently their blockbuster game Tears of
| the Kingdom was playable for free for anyone with a decent
| video card, more than 10 days before the game was officially
| released.
|
| That's not an aberration, they are just extremely bad at
| securing their hardware platforms. they still seem to be
| doing OK.
| gs17 wrote:
| >Nintendo since the gamecube has been uniquely abysmal at
| anti-piracy, the worst by far of any console maker.
|
| I'm still amazed at the 3DS piracy that was done through
| downloading from the official eShop.
| Fgehono wrote:
| Switch was broken through a Nvidia tegra hardware bug.
|
| And Nintendo Fokus on gameplay and not doing the hardware
| race makes emulation much easier for current games (switch
| is also really old by now)
| surgical_fire wrote:
| My impression is that Nintendo doesn't really care about
| piracy. It doesn't seem to affect them meaningfully, and
| their actions to stop piracy are always in the "too little
| too late" fashion. I have a Switch, and I don't pirate its
| games because I like the company. It wouldn't be hard to do
| it if I really wanted to.
|
| What they _really_ seem to care about is their brands and
| IPs, and seem to go after about people using those - for
| example, the draconian rules on streaming, shutting down
| Smash Bros competitions, etc.
|
| I can understand their actions. More than any other game
| company, Nintendo lives and dies on their brand and IPs.
| Sony and Microsoft are larger than their gaming divisions.
| Nintendo only has gaming to save itself, and their IPs are
| major console sellers.
| peanuty1 wrote:
| I think a big part of the issue may be that the Switch is
| extremely weak (compared to competing consoles like the PS5
| and Xbox Series X) so its games can be emulated very
| easily.
| ZiiS wrote:
| The Switch is extreemly week vs a PS4 I don't think this
| is what they are competing with.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > they are just extremely bad at securing their hardware
| platforms
|
| Frankly, though I hate to defend them; this is wrong and an
| insult to Nintendo.
|
| The Nintendo Switch was _so, so close_ to being a
| masterpiece of security. Nintendo even built their own OS
| from scratch for it based on a microkernel. It is so secure
| that an open-source developer who reimplemented it
| (SciresM) has said we very likely may never have a kernel
| exploit on future Nintendo systems, ever. The entire kernel
| is so compact there's almost nothing to attack. Everything
| else from graphics to USB runs in sandboxed usermode and
| can't run homebrew. This thing is _intrinsically more
| secure_ than the Xbox One and PlayStation 5 in design.
|
| Nintendo's software was, according to him and other
| developers looking at it, downright almost flawless in
| security. The problem was NVIDIA, who had a bug in their
| recovery mode allowing unsigned code; and NVIDIA again for
| releasing a chip with inadequate protections against
| glitching. Nintendo did everything they could almost
| perfectly, but their chip supplier didn't.
|
| Both of those are one-time plays though. The next chip will
| almost certainly contain glitch protection; and the
| recovery mode bug has already been patched on newer
| Switches. Combined with Nintendo's (literally) impeccable
| OS design, and the Switch 2 may not be broken for a very,
| very long time.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Hasn't emulation been tried in court many times? I guess
| corporations will never stop trying to push their luck.
| trollied wrote:
| It has. But this is not about emulation, this is about dolphin
| shipping encryption keys. https://github.com/dolphin-
| emu/dolphin/blob/34527cadcce49a9a...
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Weird, I'd think that all ROMs would he pre-decrypted by
| whoever dumped them.
| selimnairb wrote:
| What did they think was going to happen?
| dingledork69 wrote:
| They release the software they created on steam, same as any
| other indie developer. Its not like they are distributing roms
| or making emulators is illegal.
| balls187 wrote:
| Was dolphin planning on selling on steam?
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