[HN Gopher] Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu
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Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu
Author : brandrick
Score : 296 points
Date : 2024-02-27 21:25 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (overkill.wtf)
(TXT) w3m dump (overkill.wtf)
| ramijames wrote:
| Can't say I'm shocked. Nintendo's lawyers are notoriously
| litigous.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| I think lawyers in general are very often, yes, litigious.
| Perhaps you meant to say their employer and/or client,
| Nintendo, is notoriously litigious.
| nicce wrote:
| Its not the lawyers but those who pay for them to do what is
| asked.
| robbiet480 wrote:
| I knew that Patreon would bite them some day. Any time money
| comes into a "offensive" open source project, whoever feels they
| are getting hurt can make a claim a lot easier. Somewhat
| surprised they haven't yet sued Ryujinx (the other Switch
| emulator project) for also having a Patreon.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I am not part of that scene, but I am sympathetic to emulation.
| Is there a notable difference between Yuzu and other switch
| emulators? I wonder if there are other reasons than Patreon (
| money changing hands ) or there were other considerations?
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Not particularly. But it's the biggest fish so it's the
| biggest target.
| deelowe wrote:
| Yuzu has amazing compatibility. I'm guessing it's getting too
| good for Nintendo. Their concerns with TotK are not without
| merit. I played it on Yuzu (on PC) because it was a much
| better experience than on the switch. Within a few days of
| the game being out, there were resolution and fps patches
| which made the game run much better. That said, I'm not sure
| how Yuzu can be blamed for TotK piracy. Guessing Nintendo is
| throwing a hail mary here and hoping they can connect the
| dots during discovery.
|
| I hope this doesn't spell the end of Yuzu, because I use it
| to play switch games that I own on my steam deck.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Yuzu can be blamed for TotK piracy
|
| But they can be legally blamed for not taking any steps to
| prevent it.
|
| Which means there are two avenues for Nintendo to attack
| this situation.
| deelowe wrote:
| Hrmm. Can you explain further? What sort of inaction
| would make them legally liable?
| skeaker wrote:
| Seems a bit silly. Could you sue Microsoft because they
| did nothing to prevent death threats from being written
| in Word or sent over Outlook?
| alickz wrote:
| i also played TotK on Yuzu because of performance reasons
|
| I would've paid full price to play the game on my deck
| natively, but Nintendo doesn't consider the PC market worth
| entering it seems
| phone8675309 wrote:
| > Is there a notable difference between Yuzu and other switch
| emulators?
|
| It's Nintendo. They sue everybody.
| tamimio wrote:
| Link is not working? Any archive link?
| goryramsy wrote:
| Same here... HN doing what it's best at...
| enzanki_ars wrote:
| https://archive.is/LvxxW
| theultdev wrote:
| This is a pretty big case to watch.
|
| Are there any cases of emulators being sued successfully?
|
| A user being able to provide keys and a rom from which they could
| own or be homebrew doesn't seem to violate copyright to me.
|
| edit: seems the consensus is once via legal fund attrition, but
| the case went to the emulator authors in the end.
| monocasa wrote:
| I don't believe so (the Sony v. Bleem cases mainly ended up in
| favor of Bleem), but also I don't think anyone has tried since
| the DMCA. It looks like Nintendo is taking a 'trafficking in
| circumvention device' legal strategy as opposed to a strictly
| anti-emulator legal strategy.
| xd1936 wrote:
| Sony vs. Bleem! in 2001. Sony lost, but the cost still shut
| down the project.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Yep, Sony "lost," but they still killed Bleem and forced the
| creator into an agreement to, among other things, not make
| any more Playstation emulators. So really, Sony 100% won.
|
| Bleem was a big deal, too. It let you just pop a Playstation
| game into a PC's CD-ROM drive and play it. When Sony finally
| nailed the coffin on them, they were working on a followup
| called "bleemcast" that would've let Playstation games be
| played on the Sega Dreamcast.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Some of it was released as individual emulators to play a
| single game. I played Gran Turismo 2 on my dreamcast using
| one of those.
| diggan wrote:
| bleem! (PlayStation emulator) was sued by Sony and was forced
| to close down because of legal fees, so I guess that counts as
| a success for Sony.
|
| I seem to recall a bunch of ROM sites disappearing as well, but
| not sure if that's because they got sued or for other reasons.
| Some must have been sued and consequently shut down, so maybe
| not a bad idea (for the companies) to at least try?
| dartos wrote:
| ROM sites are actually illegally distributing copyrighted
| content.
|
| Emulators are usually not stolen and are just reverse
| engineered.
| ender341341 wrote:
| ROM sites are different in that they are distributing the
| copywrited media
|
| The only 'emulator' cases I've seen be successful are due to
| the same, they didn't get in trouble for the emulator, they
| got in trouble for distributing ROMs. I wonder if there's
| some firmware code being distributed here? that's a common
| annoyance when it comes to using an emulator.
| Feorn wrote:
| I think ROM sites were an artifact of the internet speeds we
| had access to early on. Where it wasn't practical to just
| download an entire library for an older console. Downloading
| an N64 ROM over dialup still took a little longer than an
| mp3, whole collections of them were out of the question. Even
| early broadband in many areas was limited to speeds where a
| single ROM was more practical to download.
|
| Complete ROM collections were, and probably still are,
| available for most old systems as torrents and on usenet.
| gamepsys wrote:
| Downloading entire ROM collections quickly becomes too much
| data for local storage, starting with Saturn/PS1 and
| escalating from there.
| plussed_reader wrote:
| Nah, you just need to scale up your storage expectation;
| I think 8TB will cover most of a PS1 localization.
| pierat wrote:
| Sony Playstation NTSC-U dump is only 472GB.
|
| Oh, and they're available on Archive.org :)
|
| https://archive.org/search?query=Sony+PlayStation+-+%28NT
| SC-...
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| You don't need to do this. I bought a 1TB sd card because
| I heard that was enough space to store every retro game
| up to n64. I ended up copying over a small hand-picked
| selection of games rather than the full romset. We need
| some people to keep copies of the full romsets for the
| sake of preservation, but typical users only want
| certain, popular games.
| anthk wrote:
| Downloading N64 roms as ZIP files was not a daunting task.
| PSX ISOs, OTOH... those were badly ripped.
|
| But most of the time you would just get Tony Hawk 2/3, the
| Zelda's, Mario 64, Jet Force Gemini, FIFA's, Wave Race and
| a few more in less than a week and the fun lasted months if
| not years.
| theshackleford wrote:
| Plenty of large rom sites are still very actively used and
| trafficked today.
| johnny99k wrote:
| This won't matter. The goal will be to run them out of money.
| It's an open source project and they most likely don't have the
| capital to fund any sort of lengthy lawsuit.
| theultdev wrote:
| It matters for future precedence.
|
| It can be used to win cases against other emulators and even
| shut them down with limited legal action.
| johnny99k wrote:
| I suppose they could use Bleem VS sony
| theultdev wrote:
| Bleem won in that case (but ran out of funds), so it's
| useful for the defendant.
|
| If Nintendo loses, the next defendant would have even
| more precedence.
|
| If Nintendo wins, it's easier to go after future emulator
| projects.
| borski wrote:
| That's where approaching someone like the EFF comes in.
| teeray wrote:
| I really wish our system had some kind of financial handicap
| when it came to access to the legal system. Weaponizing the
| legal system to bankrupt people that would be found Not
| Guilty shouldn't be possible.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I always wondered what would happen if litigants and
| defendants could contribute to a common legal fund which
| would equally fund their attorneys. It would at maximum
| make litigation twice as expensive which may be worth it
| alone.
| theultdev wrote:
| If it's twice as expensive then the defendants would run
| out of money sooner right?
|
| You would have to somehow set a limit of legal expenses,
| which seems... difficult.
|
| You would have to win to get the common fund, you may not
| get that far if you have to pay into the fund and amount
| a defense.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| There might be a miscommunication.
|
| The litigants and defendants would not be compelled to
| _contribute_ equal amounts. Just the disbursement would
| be equal.
| theultdev wrote:
| Then why would the litigants contribute in the first
| place?
|
| If nothing compels them to, they won't, so effectively
| the status quo.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| What I'm hearing is that it _solves_ the problem of
| Nintendo being to outspend the defendant. If Nintendo
| brings a lawsuit and spends zero dollars on court cost,
| it should be rather easy for the defense to also
| contribute zero and the lawsuit is avoided. Problem
| solved.
| theultdev wrote:
| And if Nintendo spends $10 million dollars?
|
| And Yuzu spends $25,000 and maybe wins the first case but
| runs out of money during the appeal and defaults
| judgment.
|
| Nintendo gets the pot because they won right?
|
| As I pointed out to another user, this reverses the
| damage if they win, but does not solve the problem of
| preventing them from being able to win.
|
| Now if you make it where if you want to spend $5 on
| lawyer fees, you have to loan $5 to the other side and if
| the other side wins they don't have to pay it back, that
| may work.
| syockit wrote:
| It would be harder for big corpo to sue laypeople, but at
| the same time harder for laypeople to sue corpo.
| Solvency wrote:
| Easy. The defendant and plaintiffs each hire and pay for
| lawyers they can or are willing to afford.
|
| But all of that money goes into a prize pot, which gets
| distributed based on who wins the case.
|
| This would ensure either Nintendo doesn't try to
| financially grind out a poor small company because the loss
| would not be worth it to them.
| theultdev wrote:
| That doesn't solve grinding out the small company, though
| it does reverse the damage if they don't get ground out.
|
| The problem is not the end payout, it's the base cost
| can't be afforded.
|
| One side can keep appealing and escalating, the other
| can't pay for the cases themselves.
|
| They may not get far enough to get the pool.
|
| You would have to have the lawyers work pro bono or some
| common legal fund pay for it until the case is won to get
| the pool.
|
| As I pitched to another user, how about:
|
| > for lawsuits, if you want to spend $5 on lawyer fees,
| you have to loan $5 to the other side.
|
| > if the other side wins they don't have to pay back the
| loan.
| jrockway wrote:
| The legal system has sort of recognized this as a problem,
| which is why many states have anti-SLAPP lawsuits.
| Unfortunately, I don't think this strictly falls under the
| definition of "public participation", so there is no
| protection available. (And, big companies just try to sue
| you in federal court or states with no anti-SLAPP lawsuits.
| So anti-SLAPP is not the big victory it should have been.)
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| Unless the EFF or a similar org supports them.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| Looking over the legal document, realistically, their arguments
| are so damaging from a software perspective that they _should_
| lose. IANAL, but from skimming the legal document:
|
| The two major notions are that Yuzu violates Nintendo's copyright
| [1] by allowing people to play unauthorized copies [2]. In order
| to do so it allows for bypassing Nintendo's encryption (by taking
| in the keys, it does not embed the keys in the software) it falls
| under a violation of the DMCA [3]. Essentially, trying to argue
| that the keys are copyrighted. Additionally, they claim that
| every user that has either dumped Nintendo games they lawfully
| owned and play in Yuzu, or have pirated the roms and played in
| Yuzu have violated copyright and thus Yuzu should pay up [4].
|
| [1] "In effect, Yuzu turns general computing devices into tools
| for massive intellectual property infringement of Nintendo and
| others' copyrighted work"
|
| [2] "In other words, without Yuzu's decryption of Nintendo's
| encryption, unauthorized copies of games could not be played on
| PCs or Android devices. "
|
| [3] "Recognizing the threats faced by copyright owners like
| Nintendo in the age of digital piracy, Congress enacted the Anti-
| Circumvention and Anti-Trafficking provisions of the Digital
| Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), making it illegal to
| circumvent or traffic in devices that circumvent technological
| measures put into place by copyright owners to protect against
| unlawful access to and copying of copyrighted works."
|
| [4] "On information and belief, Yuzu users have (1) dumped
| Nintendo games they have lawfully purchased and copied the game
| ROMs into Yuzu; and (2) obtained Nintendo games online from
| pirate websites and copied those game ROMs into Yuzu. Each such
| reproduction constitutes a violation of 17 U.S.C. SS 501(a) for
| which Plaintiff is entitled to damages under 17 U.S.C. SS 504 and
| injunctive relief under SS 502"
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| "On information and belief" - legalese for "we have no
| evidence".
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Actually legalese for "by secondhand knowledge" so not "no
| evidence" but "no _direct_ evidence "
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| Secondhand knowledge - things we've heard, or suspicions
| formed based on things we've heard.
| monocasa wrote:
| I'm not sure they're necessarily claiming the keys are
| copywritten (which honestly would be a terrible strategy), but
| instead that yuzu's ability to injest keys and encrypted
| copywritten works (decrypting them on the fly as needed like a
| switch would) constitutes a circumvention device banned by 17
| US SS 1201.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201
| fzeroracer wrote:
| You might be right, I was connecting this with the Dolphin
| case which was making the argument that the keys are
| copyrightable. Essentially this is an extension of that,
| which is arguing that any circumvention is a violation of 17
| US SS 1201.
| withinboredom wrote:
| For the keys to be considered to fall under the DCMA, they'd
| have to be copyrighted.
| monocasa wrote:
| Not under 1201. They can form a copyright circumvention
| device without being subject to copyright themselves as
| long as they're used to protect an actual copywritten work
| (in this case the encrypted game images).
| withinboredom wrote:
| I'm going to assume the encryption is not custom. If it
| is "off-the-shelf" then they'll have a real hard time
| proving that without making every browser on the internet
| a "copyright circumvention device."
|
| But regardless, if they "distribute" (ie, can be freely
| read off the device without special tools) the keys in
| the clear, it isn't used to protect anything.
| monocasa wrote:
| They use AES, but a pretty custom key derivation scheme
| to get to the AES keys for a specific game given the
| game's metadata and pre shared root keys installed on the
| switch at manufacturing time. Yuzu implements that key
| derivation scheme so that you don't have to track down
| per game version keys.
|
| A browser does not have the code to decrypt a switch ROM.
| boolemancer wrote:
| Doesn't this use case fall squarely in the realm of the
| exception for the purposes of interoperability?
| nightpool wrote:
| I don't think that's the case. The _games_ are copyrighted.
| The keys only need to constitute an effective anti-
| circumvention scheme (any technological measure that
| "effectively controls access" to a work) to be illegal to
| code for.
| withinboredom wrote:
| If the keys are that readily available ... I don't think
| it is "effective" by any definition of the word.
| monocasa wrote:
| 'Effectively' had a different meaning than y'all are
| reading. It's not effectively as in 'an effective, well
| constructed lock', but instead as in 'for all intents and
| purposes'.
|
| The law doesn't say 'it's illegal to break a lock until
| it's been broken'.
| anthk wrote:
| That ability can be used as interoperaton in order to emulate
| the Switch properly for personal needs.
| boolemancer wrote:
| > [4] "On information and belief, Yuzu users have (1) dumped
| Nintendo games they have lawfully purchased and copied the game
| ROMs into Yuzu; and (2) obtained Nintendo games online from
| pirate websites and copied those game ROMs into Yuzu. Each such
| reproduction constitutes a violation of 17 U.S.C. SS 501(a) for
| which Plaintiff is entitled to damages under 17 U.S.C. SS 504
| and injunctive relief under SS 502"
|
| How on earth can they claim that the developers of Yuzu are
| responsible for copying done by their users?
| withinboredom wrote:
| Write a letter to your congress-person. Laws can say whatever
| they want them to say.
| dubcanada wrote:
| You can claim what ever the hell you want, doesn't mean it
| will last longer then 5 seconds in court. It's very common
| people make outlandish claims, these then get dismantled by a
| judge and jury into usually 1 that sticks. Even though you
| went in with 50.
|
| That's the whole point of court.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Agreed. Most law suits throw everything at the wall and
| then see what sticks. The first thing the defense will
| always do is file a Motion to Dismiss listing a reason that
| each count of the suit fails to state a claim.
| monocasa wrote:
| Because "trafficking in a circumvention device" has it's own
| special carveout in the DMCA.
| lenova wrote:
| Google Cache link:
|
| http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...
| Springtime wrote:
| > The legal document claims that over a million copies of last
| year's The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom were downloaded
| prior to the game's official retail release. As a result, the
| company is now seeking damages and is demanding that the Yuzu
| emulator is shut down.
|
| Quite the leap from existing as an emulator to inexplicably being
| held liable for some independent leak.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Not necessarily. It's fairly easy to prove that if the emulator
| did not exist, the leak would be fairly inconsequential; and
| considering how easy it is to show the percentage of pirating
| users versus legitimate users (probably 95%+), it's not a good
| look.
|
| There's also the issue that, unlike prior emulators, Yuzu risks
| running afoul of DMCA anti-trafficking provisions for
| circumvention devices and software that uses circumvention
| devices. So, while _per se_ emulating the Switch might be
| legal, _decrypting the games_ may be illegal (as would software
| that is useless if it is unable to do that decryption).
|
| Edit: Strongly recommend reading my follow up comment
| explaining historical precedent:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39530558
| bentley wrote:
| > Not necessarily. It's fairly easy to prove that if the
| emulator did not exist, the leak would be fairly
| inconsequential...
|
| Well, no. Pirated Switch games can be played on a hacked
| Switch or a flashcart with no emulation necessary. Common
| sense suggests emulation would be significantly more common,
| but can Nintendo prove that in court, or prove that the leak
| wouldn't have happened without Yuzu's existence?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Nintendo can't prove the leak wouldn't have happened
| without Yuzu. But they don't have to. They can simply show
| that Yuzu made it infinitely worse. Also, suing Yuzu does
| not preclude suing emulator makers or flashcart makers -
| they can all be sued as they all have culpability.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| So can companies of leaved PC games sue nvidia or
| windows?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| The law doesn't work on strict abstract principles.
| Windows has a million uses of which piracy is just one.
| Yuzu has two uses (playing legitimate backups and pirated
| backups), of which Nintendo may successfully argue, both
| are piracy (due to the circumvention of encryption in
| both cases). In which case, the only possible use in
| 99.9%+ of cases... is for illegal activity.
| tavavex wrote:
| I don't think it's likely that software developers can be
| sued on the grounds of "some people use it for illegal
| activity". Can IP rights holders sue any torrent tracker
| on that basis? Not to mention that playing backups of
| your own games is explicitly legal in many places, and
| I'd be shocked if it isn't in the US. Lastly, one can
| make an argument that the purpose of Yuzu isn't playing
| "Switch games", but emulating the Switch hardware stack,
| which is legal. For example, writing your own Switch
| homebrew and running it on Yuzu is permitted.
| resizeitplz wrote:
| With apologies for the pedantry, they didn't make it
| _infinitely_ worse. They may have made it _significantly_
| worse.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| What do you mean they just need to show that it made it
| worse ? What are you basing that on?
|
| I don't know of any similar cases where an emulator or
| say, a video player (for example Kodi) was held liable
| for increasing demand?
| qingcharles wrote:
| One thing to take into account is that civil trials don't
| require the absolute highest standards of proof, such as
| proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Usually much lower
| evidentiary standards such as "preponderance of the
| evidence" and other malarky.
| jsheard wrote:
| > Common sense suggests emulation would be significantly
| more common, but can Nintendo prove that in court
|
| Nintendo is making that argument on the basis that Yuzu's
| Patreon income skyrocketed when TOTK leaked online.
|
| https://graphtreon.com/creator/yuzuteam
|
| It checks out, TOTK leaked on May 1st 2023 and Yuzus
| monthly income rose from $19k to $45k throughout May,
| having never broken $25k previously.
| tavavex wrote:
| I'm confused as to how or why the Yuzu team would be held
| liable for this. Is it their responsibility to ensure
| that people don't donate money to them if the timing of
| that donation coincides with an unrelated leak of
| Nintendo's IP? If emulation is allowed and the Yuzu team
| itself isn't engaging in the promotion of piracy, I don't
| see what the case is here.
| ndiddy wrote:
| At the time Zelda leaked, it didn't work correctly in the
| release version of Yuzu. The lawsuit claims that the Yuzu
| team released a patched version that fixed the issue
| (before the game's official retail launch date) but they
| have some sort of exclusivity period (looks like one week
| as far as I can tell) where new releases are exclusive to
| their Patreon before they become freely available.
| Nintendo is arguing that the large boost in Patreon
| subscribers was due to people wanting to get access to
| the patch so they could play Zelda early.
| tavavex wrote:
| I think this would be a big issue for them if they
| specifically marketed it as "the Zelda fix" or insinuated
| that the only purpose of that update was to make this
| leaked game playable. Otherwise, they could just say that
| updates address the dissimilarities between the Switch
| hardware and the emulator. How can Nintendo prove ill
| intent here?
| Lammy wrote:
| They (publicly) blocked discussion of TOTK fixes until
| the game's release day, but that's still 0th hour and any
| build to include the fix would have been early access for
| a week or two weeks or whatever it is:
| https://github.com/yuzu-
| emu/yuzu/issues/10226#issuecomment-1...
|
| Prescient comment marked as off-topic:
| https://github.com/yuzu-
| emu/yuzu/pull/10234#issuecomment-154...
| rincebrain wrote:
| That's an interesting argument, but I'm not sure it'll
| hold water with the judge unless they can't show such
| arrangements are very common with donation-funded
| software and was in place well before this leak, e.g.
| yes, we made money off this leak, but not because we
| designed the model to profit off people wanting to
| pirate/cause loss of sales, it's just how this has always
| worked.
|
| We'll see. I'm not really sure there's anything they
| could have done better in that case as a positive defense
| if they had this in mind, though - like, releasing it not
| behind a timegate paywall could be an argument for
| actively destroy game sales even more, by that logic, and
| actively waiting until post-launch to release it could be
| argued to be around trying to extract more money from
| people to focus on it more.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| Ouch, releasing patch before official launch sort of
| proves they pirated the game themselves, which somewhat
| undermines defense that they don't encourage piracy.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Not necessarily. I don't know the context, but
| bugs/issues reported from users may have been sufficient
| to patch their code without touching the ROM themselves.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You can prove irrelevant correlation. They weren't even
| paid for TOTK. The fact that users may have intended to
| play TOTK is something Yuzu had no control over.
| rincebrain wrote:
| This feels similar to arguing that the Flipper Zero is a
| car theft tool because people went out and bought one
| after a video explaining how to use it to break some
| common car's lock was posted.
|
| I mean, yes, they presumably turned a larger profit
| correlated to people going and buying it for something
| illegal, but it's not solely or even primarily used for
| that, people would be doing this without it, and they
| didn't have any involvement or encouragement that people
| do anything criminal with it.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I'd say most piracy is people with an actual console that
| they have modded to load pirated games.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Impossible to say.
|
| Downloading yuzu and watching a YouTube video to get roms
| going is easier than obtaining a modded switch, that one is
| certain.
| withinboredom wrote:
| > It's fairly easy to prove that if the emulator did not
| exist, the leak would be fairly inconsequential
|
| That. Literally doesn't make any logical sense. That's like
| arguing that if computers didn't exist, the leak would be
| fairly inconsequential ... or if electricity didn't exist,
| the leak would be fairly inconsequential.
| UberFly wrote:
| Logical sense? I can't really just play the pirated game on
| my home electricity. Just like you can't sue the road when
| a car runs you down.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Well, let me put it this way. Why don't they sue Dell
| then? If Dell computers didn't exist, pirated games
| couldn't be played! Or sue themselves, because if hacked
| Switches didn't exist, pirated games couldn't be played!
| Zambyte wrote:
| I really can't just play the pirate game on a software
| emulator either. It needs an operating system to run on,
| hardware to run the operating system on, etc.
| Solvency wrote:
| Of course, it doesn't make sense. But Nintendo has infinite
| money and infinite lawyers compared to these people. That
| means they can do whatever they want with the law.
| withinboredom wrote:
| That's when you go to the judge and ask for a summary
| dismissal on the grounds that it is ridiculous (they
| should be suing the power companies instead!). Maybe they
| say yes and you walk away.
| monocasa wrote:
| I mean, the switch has been hacked to hell and back and is
| more than capable of playing pirated games without any
| emulators. It isn't necessarily easy to show stats on
| pirating users since they obviously work to cloak that
| behavior from Nintendo.
| summerlight wrote:
| > unlike prior emulators, Yuzu risks running afoul of DMCA
| anti-trafficking provisions for circumvention devices and
| software that uses circumvention devices
|
| This is interesting, it'd be great to have a link to explain
| this matter more deeply.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Sure. Just look up the DeCSS controversy which got the
| creator of a DVD ripping software arrested and barely
| avoiding extradition, or the 09 F9 controversy where the
| MPAA attempted to censor a number from the internet.
|
| This provision in the DMCA has been _most often_ used
| against developers of unauthorized DVD copying software,
| Blu-ray copying software, etc; and the force of the legal
| argument has been well proven previously. It nearly killed
| RealPlayer when they made unauthorized software for DVD
| playback.
|
| You can also see this law invoked in Apple v Psystar; when
| Apple sued Psystar for circumventing protections in macOS
| to allow running macOS on non-Apple hardware. That lawsuit
| was dragged all the way to the final appeal to SCOTUS - and
| Psystar was shredded the whole way. Expect Apple v Psystar
| to come up in a Nintendo vs Yuzu lawsuit; because running
| macOS on unapproved hardware _sounds awfully similar_ to
| running games on unapproved hardware.
|
| If Nintendo were to succeed invoking it here - emulation
| would be legal. Decrypting games would be illegal. Consoles
| before, say, the Wii (IIRC) would be free to emulate due to
| not being encrypted - but newer games, being encrypted,
| would be off-limits just like DVDs.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| That was one of the few times, when I can look back and
| feel like the user has won. It has been something of a
| steady decline since.
|
| I would love for some clear indication that we have some
| digital rights left, but I am not certain the same
| reaction would not be possible to be replicated today.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| I wonder if it would be possible to develop a Switch
| emulator without the ability to decrypt any games. Users
| would be expected to bring already-decrypted games, which
| they could decrypt via an "unrelated" program.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| There are other emulators besides Yuzu and they would still
| exist if Yuzu didn't.
| burnte wrote:
| When you file a lawsuit, you make it seem like the biggest
| thing since WW2, because it'll be cut down in court over time
| to a more reasonable level.
| realusername wrote:
| There's actually multiple arguments with zero proof there.
|
| - they didn't prove that Yuzu contributed to piracy (and since
| the amount of piracy tools on the Switch itself that's far from
| obvious that Yuzu is a first choice)
|
| - they didn't prove that the leak itself lead to a loss of
| revenue. And that's also very hard of an argument to make
| considering that this game was a huge commercial success.
| gknoy wrote:
| Does loss of revenue matter at all? It feels like it should,
| but I had thought that it didn't matter in courts.
| kevingadd wrote:
| If you want to get a lot of money from the defendant, you
| usually have to prove damages.
| inyorgroove wrote:
| From my podcast law degree, in civil action like this yes.
| To get standing you must show you were harmed in some way
| and that the court can remedy that harm. That is just one
| of many parts of the standing test that a federal court
| will apply.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law)
| bitwize wrote:
| If a device's only use involves copyright infringement, it's
| illegal to sell or distribute in the USA. That's how they
| went after cable descramblers and, less successfully, VCRs in
| the 80s.
|
| Since getting actual Switch game data necessarily involves
| violating the DMCA, Nintendo's lawyers will have an easy time
| showing that the only way yuzu can be useful is if the user
| violates copyright law, thus making the emulator itself
| illegal.
|
| That is if this even makes it to court.
| bitwize wrote:
| It's called contributory copyright infringement. The Supreme
| Court only ruled that the VCR was legal based on a very narrow
| use case: if a television broadcast aired once and only once,
| never to be seen again, and the user could not see it as
| scheduled, they were legally entitled to use a device to record
| the broadcast and watch it at a later time -- once, after which
| they would presumably have to destroy the recording. And there
| are legal experts who believe even that is a yard too far.
|
| Nintendo's case is a lot more airtight. To play anything on
| yuzu, you have to defeat the encryption on Switch games, itself
| a felony DMCA violation (irrespective of how good or bad the
| encryption is). Therefore, yuzu can _only_ be used to play
| pirated material, therefore it contributes to copyright
| infringement.
|
| "But muh homebrew" -- people who want to develop for Switch can
| get a development license from Nintendo. The fact that this is
| an option would weaken developing for Switch as a legitimate
| use for yuzu.
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| I really recommend folks watch this, from a lawyer:
|
| https://youtu.be/wROQUZDCIMI
|
| "Why Are Emulators Legal? Dolphin vs. Nintendo, and the Fate of
| Dolphin Emulator"
| gamepsys wrote:
| This is truly awful for the gaming community at large. If this
| case makes a ruling then it will most likely have an impact on
| all emulation projects. If Nintendo decides to sue your open
| source project, how do you mount a legal defense?
| bakugo wrote:
| I hope Nintendo loses because it would be extremely harmful to
| emulation and software freedom as a whole if they didn't, but at
| the same time, I hope this knocks the whole "for-profit emulator"
| practice down a peg for a while. I think this is the same
| emulator that at one point tried asking people to pay a monthly
| subscription to play online.
| lrvick wrote:
| I for one have exclusively used yuzu to play backups of games I
| legally purchased on a computer that can render them with higher
| frame-rates and quality than official switch hardware.
|
| This is my legal right, and Yuzu provided open source code to
| make this task easier for me.
|
| Nintendo is looking for a scapegoat here for their wasted
| investment in DRM technology.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Huh, guess I better go make sure the copy on my Steam Deck is up
| to date. Not that I've actually bothered acquiring a single
| Switch ROM, there's so damn many neat little mid-sized games on
| the thing.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If anything this lawsuit makes it difficult to morally justify
| purchasing Nintendo hardware and supporting them. Having really
| enjoyed the first Zelda game on an emulator I would otherwise
| have really considered it.
| favorited wrote:
| So you played their game on an emulator, and you "would
| otherwise have really considered" paying for their products
| (but you didn't). How are they losing out by alienating you?
| GrabbinD33ze69 wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Nintendo caught using an open
| source emulator for the switch, without any sort of credit to the
| authors after suing? If so, I have no empathy for them.
| TillE wrote:
| Canoe (their SNES emulator) is definitely their own creation,
| it's very limited and can mostly only run the games they've
| released with it.
|
| I think it has some similar bugs to ZSNES, but that's just
| because they're both crappy low-accuracy emulators.
| Mad_ad wrote:
| iirc they used a open-source emu on their snes/nes mini
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Maybe you're thinking of the 'Playstation Classic' ? That
| uses PCSX directly and got some flack for it.
|
| See: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/11/sony-using-
| open-sourc...
| sureglymop wrote:
| I recall something like that when they released those mini
| consoles like the mini NES (NES Classic). But looking into it
| now, it seems that only used OSS software (linux, busy box,
| alsa, etc.).
| lmm wrote:
| > Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Nintendo caught using an
| open source emulator for the switch, without any sort of credit
| to the authors after suing?
|
| Majesco Entertainment published some switch games made by
| Mistic Software, which used an open source emulator without
| credit and in violation of its license (and therefore were
| infringing copyright). Atari was somehow involved as well.
| Nintendo had no involvement, unless you consider them
| responsible for not doing a thorough enough license audit of
| every company that publishes Switch games or something.
| Lammy wrote:
| Speculating here but it feels like part of Nintendo's beef is the
| popularity of PC form factors that look like a Nintendo Switch.
| Most notably the Steam Deck but there are loads of them.
|
| In 2022 Nintendo starting taking down Youtube videos showing
| Steam Decks running Switch games:
| https://www.resetera.com/threads/nintendo-started-blocking-v...
|
| And last year went after Dolphin (GCN/Wii emulator) as soon as
| they announced plans to be listed on Steam:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36090755
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36100732
| jsheard wrote:
| Amusingly Valve themselves released an official trailer for the
| Steam Deck which showed Yuzu installed on the homescreen.
|
| It was quickly taken down and re-posted without any references
| to Yuzu, probably after a panicked email from legal.
|
| https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-edits-steam-deck-trailer-to-re...
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I can play Switch games on Steam Deck!?
| WithinReason wrote:
| Yes, better than on the Switch.
|
| (now I'm awaiting legal action from Nintendo)
| dev1ycan wrote:
| I mean Valve literally had a trailer with a nintendo emulator
| as an app installed... Valve doesn't need to do RND for its
| games because they can just use whatever is on steam that is
| _playable_ on the deck plus a ton of games from nintendo
| consoles via emulators as a selling point.
| codedokode wrote:
| > As a result, Nintendo ... is demanding that the Yuzu emulator
| is shut down.
|
| When corporations like Uber violate multiple laws, do they get
| shut down? When Amazon treats its employees poorly, does it get
| shut down? When Google forbids manufacturers to pre-install
| competitor apps, does it get shut down? Well, it seems that as
| long as copyright is not infringed, everything is ok.
|
| Also it seems to me that Nintendo might themselves violate
| antitrust laws by using their monopoly power on market of
| Nintendo-compatible games, and not allowing enough competition
| there.
| ambigious7777 wrote:
| Man, the US copyright system is broken :^(
| extheat wrote:
| Anyone can sue anyone for any reason at any time. Unless the
| lawsuit is in bad faith and meritless (only a court can make
| that determination), there is no argument to be had about
| "lawfare". The only difference here and in other companies is
| that Nintendo actually follows through with their legal threats
| instead of just filing complaints they don't intend to take to
| court.
| justinclift wrote:
| Yeah, it's a pretty stark illustration of "we have enough money
| to fuck you up, and are very willing to do so". "Might makes
| right" in action.
|
| Your monopoly point is an interesting one. Wonder if there's an
| actual legal case there, as Nintendo have done a lot of this
| bullying over the years.
| leshokunin wrote:
| I would love to see OSS communities like Internet Archive or
| founders who are pro open source support them.
|
| Emulators are legal. Defending your hobby project in court is
| infeasible without patrons.
|
| Nintendo has no leg to stand on legally speaking, and there's a
| precedent waiting to happen.
|
| As for the emulator itself, I don't see any argument that the
| Yuzu team used "illegal means" (internal SDKs, whatever their
| equivalent of a DLL is, etc).
|
| A thought for the Ryujinx emulator devs, who are also making an
| excellent Switch emulator (sometimes more performant than Yuzu).
| They must be having a really stressful day.
| kevingadd wrote:
| The last time I tried to use Yuzu or Ryujinx it was still quite
| difficult. I had to get out my switch and physical game
| cartridges and manually dump a bunch of decryption keys and
| game files. It is absurd that Nintendo is trying to claim these
| emulators are piracy tools or intended for piracy when they
| don't seem to do anything to make it easy to play a pirated
| game copy.
| theshackleford wrote:
| Most people just google for a dumped copy and your up and
| playing in minutes (as long as it takes to download.)
|
| Switch piracy is massive. Almost everyone I know is doing it.
| I'm not, but I still emulate because switch performance is
| poo. So I buy the game, and then emulate it in 4K/60, it's
| how I finally finished BOTW.
| wernercd wrote:
| I stopped emulating when my game crashed and I lost weeks
| of BotW. I moved back to the switch after that lol.
|
| Emulation was awesome. Until...
| causality0 wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. Botw keeps like five autosaves
| and they're all separate files which are never written to
| at the same time. You'd have to manually delete them to
| lose them.
| Brainspackle wrote:
| It took me 15 minutes from downloading Yuzu to playing Mario
| Kart on my PC. You're doing something wrong
| kevingadd wrote:
| Did you start from the Yuzu documentation? I installed it
| and walked through their official quick start guide. I
| didn't type "mario kart free rom" into google or anything.
| denkmoon wrote:
| That's the "legal" way, dumping your own copy of horizon
| OS, your console's keys, your carts and their keys. Of
| course it's quicker and easier to just download someone
| else's keys and dumps, and you're not protecting yourself
| from Nintendo by using your own stuff, you just get the
| peace of mind knowing it's your stuff you're using.
|
| It's also very quick if you're already set up with
| atmosphere & homebrew. Longest part was just waiting for
| my console's nand to dump.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Is Yuzu providing or linking to those dumps?
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| You forgot to mention whether you pirated the game or were
| playing it legally
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| My guess is that the number of people using Yuzu to play
| switch games they own is approximately 0
| kcb wrote:
| I use it to play my switch games at better than 640p
| 20-30 fps. Tranformative experience for games like
| Xenoblade.
| leshokunin wrote:
| You don't sound very knowledgeable about the space.
|
| The Switch has a vibrant modding and homebrew scene.
| People also like modding their consoles to dump their
| games.
|
| Lots of power users want to dump their games to play the
| top games on their PC. Tears of the Kingdom runs in 8k,
| at 60fps, with lots of QOL improvements on PC.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| > Nintendo has no leg to stand on legally speaking, and there's
| a precedent waiting to happen.
|
| Don't be so sure. From the article:
|
| > Emulator tools aren't inherently illegal, but the way in
| which Yuzu is being actively used and promoted is what Nintendo
| appears to be objecting to here.
|
| So it depends on what is actually in the case. At best, Yuzu
| needs to simply update some of its marketing material. At
| worst, they need to shut down and open under a new name / LLC,
| while also updating marketing material.
| jsheard wrote:
| > Nintendo has no leg to stand on legally speaking, and there's
| a precedent waiting to happen.
|
| IANAL, but my understanding is that while emulation is
| unambiguously legal in the US after Bleem vs. Sony, an emulator
| which _decrypts_ games is maybe not legal under the DMCA
| circumvention rules, and those have never really been tested in
| the context of an emulator. The Bleem case happened shortly
| after the DMCA was enacted, but PS1 games weren 't encrypted or
| otherwise protected from being read by anything besides a PS1
| so Bleem didn't have to circumvent anything. That seems to be
| the angle Nintendo is taking here, that Yuzu is the equivalent
| of something like DeCSS since it has the ability to circumvent
| their DRM scheme.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| AFAIK, the decryption keys to use the ROMs are not
| distributed with the emulator, and you need to retrieve these
| on your own from software licenses you possess.
| jsheard wrote:
| That's right, Yuzu doesn't include the keys, but wasn't the
| precedent set by the DeCSS case that circumvention code is
| illegal regardless of whether it comes with the keys? I
| don't recall a "bring your own keys" loophole being
| applicable then.
| catapart wrote:
| Nah, there's no circumvention here, on Yuzu's part. There
| _may_ be parties involved in circumvention, but the emulator
| neither aids nor publishes any aid for that. The emulator
| REQUIRES a user to first have a legitimate copy. If the user
| illegally obtained that copy, they didn 't obtain it via
| Yuzu, and they didn't use Yuzu to get around the encryption
| that is in the file. The emulator is just using the key on
| the file, the same way any application - including the Switch
| OS - has to. That's not "circumvention", that's "usage". If
| the key should not be able to be collected, for use on the
| file, then it's not the Yuzu emulator that collects the key.
| It's whatever ROM dumping/packaging solution a bad actor is
| using.
|
| If it ever made it in front a jury, it can be summarized as a
| big company trying to sue a little company out of existence
| because the big company doesn't like that the little company
| is executing the big company's code. But, unfortunately for
| the big company, executing someone else's code - even without
| their permission - is not illegal. Nintendo has the resources
| to sue torrent hosts and take on individuals involved in
| sharing networks. They have the resources to find the problem
| and fix it. But they're not using those resources to solve
| the problem; they're using those resources to scare lawful
| citizens into inaction because that's a cheaper target. There
| should never be a legal reward for that kind of scheme.
|
| But, honestly, this should never make it to trial. There are
| zero merits for argument, here.
| rasz wrote:
| >precedent waiting to happen
|
| no need, Sony already got us one. Bleem and VGS were a big
| business, Steve Jobs himself advertised VGS during Macworld
| 1999 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUfu-xOGr1U&t=9m0s
|
| Sony sued Bleem and lost in court
|
| Sony Computer Entertainment America v. Bleem
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Sony_lawsuit
|
| Sadly court case legal fees bankrupted Bleem, Sony later bought
| VGS from Connectix, and hired Bleem programmers.
| catapart wrote:
| Agreed. A sensible enough judge could throw this out on summary
| judgement, circumventing the opportunity for Nintendo's
| lawfare. All of Nintendo's points have been tried, so there's
| really no need to bring this into argument. Even if all of
| their claims were true, they're not alleging anything illegal.
| Take it to court, ask for summary, and strengthen the legal
| defense for this kind of stuff. I really hope they don't roll
| over, even if nobody can blame them for doing so.
| skupig wrote:
| _> (A)to "circumvent protection afforded by a technological
| measure" means avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating, or
| otherwise impairing a technological measure;_
|
| If this is what Nintendo alleges yuzu facilitates, does Nintendo
| have a case?
|
| Reimplementing the security measures seems like a _reaffirmation_
| of the security measures, not an impairment.
| russfink wrote:
| It feels like a claim against free speech. Yuzu makes an emulator
| and states it can play Switch games. That is a statement. If
| others illegally trade binaries, that's not the emulator's fault.
| By attacking them, it feels like the only thing "wrong" was
| making the emulator available. Caveat - IANAL.
| racl101 wrote:
| Of course they are.
| jamesear wrote:
| The only comment of someone saying they had used Yuzu for piracy
| has been flagged, and is no longer visible.
|
| This might HN readers a skewed perspective on how much Yuzu is
| used for piracy.
|
| I have many acquaintances/friends in different circles, with the
| means to pay, who use Yuzu for piracy.
|
| There are dedicated forums of people who coordinate on how to do
| this.
|
| Emulation is great as a means to study or play backups, but its
| also fair that Nintendo has legitimate business interest in
| curtailing this.
|
| IANAL, and have no idea how their case against Yuzu developers
| will go.
| tombert wrote:
| Yuzu is open source isn't it?
|
| Nintendo can't be completely incompetent here; if they get Yuzu
| shut down someone will inevitably fork it, and they have to know
| this.
|
| Presumably this is a play to try and establish precedent. They
| know that this lawsuit means nothing in itself, even if they win,
| but it can then be used to go after Retroarch or Higan or Mupen64
| or Dolphin. This is bad.
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