[HN Gopher] Yuzu emulator developers settle Nintendo lawsuit, pa...
___________________________________________________________________
Yuzu emulator developers settle Nintendo lawsuit, pay $2.4M in
damages
Author : ndiddy
Score : 372 points
Date : 2024-03-04 18:00 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| ndiddy wrote:
| Link to final judgement terms:
| https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.569...
|
| Basic summary is that the Yuzu developers agreed to shut down
| development, give their domain to Nintendo, and delete all copies
| that they posess of Yuzu and any other Switch hacking tools.
| thesnide wrote:
| I immediatly had a chain of questions:
|
| * how will they pay $2M?
|
| * why did they settle for that much?
|
| * isn't _strict_ emulation legal? Maybe not in the US...
|
| * is there something fishy that was hidden somewhere?
| KomoD wrote:
| > * how will they pay $2M?
|
| They actually made quite a bit of money, around ~$30k/mo from
| just Patreon, wouldn't surprise me if they had that much
| money.
|
| > * why did they settle for that much?
|
| Expensive to fight it, and if they lose they'd have to pay
| even more. Nintendo can go on forever, they have so much
| money and the best lawyers.
| waffleiron wrote:
| 30k a month is only (roughly rounded) 1 mill per 3 years.
| So that be 6 years income without spending, and it's likely
| their income wasn't always at this level.
| archy_ wrote:
| Taxes will also eat away at that
| aaomidi wrote:
| > * how will they pay $2M?
|
| Probably patreon
|
| > * why did they settle for that much?
|
| Because Nintendo will just ruin their lives otherwise
|
| > * isn't strict emulation legal? Maybe not in the US...
|
| Thank you DMCA for ruining this scene. The federal government
| should not be the one interjecting itself into this area, but
| here we are. Because of the anti-circumvention rules of the
| DMCA, right to repair is completely broken. Heck, WV was able
| to hide them lying about emissions because of it.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >how will they pay $2M?
|
| The same way Bowser did, I suppose. Wage garnishing +
| whatever Patreon money they earned?
|
| Apparently it's estimated to have made some $1.2 million from
| patreon so that may help
|
| >why did they settle for that much?
|
| Bad crooked lawyers that said they had no chance or very good
| lawyers that said they had no chance. IANAL, so I can't truly
| say which.
|
| > isn't strict emulation legal? Maybe not in the US...
|
| It is AFAIK, apparently the judgement's big argument here is
|
| >Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in
| its ordinary course functions only when cryptographic keys
| are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital
| Millennium Copyright Act's prohibition on trafficking in
| devices that circumvent effective technological measures,
| because the software is primarily designed for the purpose of
| circumventing technological measures.
|
| Again, I don't know how much water that holds.
|
| >is there something fishy that was hidden somewhere?
|
| Depends on if you think whether or not it would have cost
| more than $2.5m dollars to fight nintendo in a full battle. I
| imagine Yuzu doesn't have such funds nor means to. So this
| was the cheapest option for them.
| thesnide wrote:
| I guess the fishy thing was the Patreon, which I was not
| aware of.
|
| Hell, I just even knew about Yuzu because of that lawsuit.
| #streisand
| kevingadd wrote:
| The relevant precedent is Bleem, which was for-profit
| 1231232131231 wrote:
| Another case of Nintendo ruining peoples' lives [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/feb/01/the-man-
| who-ow...
| theshackleford wrote:
| Seems to me more like he ruined his own life through poor
| choices. Actions have consequences, I won't be shedding
| any tears.
| throwaway48r7r wrote:
| Won't somebody think of the multinationals.
| flykespice wrote:
| Nobody is thinking about the multinationals, they are
| thinking about what is morally correct.
| mcpar-land wrote:
| > As a part of that agreement, Bowser now has to send
| Nintendo 20-30% of any money left over after he pays for
| necessities such as rent.
|
| > Bowser has now managed to secure housing, and he thinks
| that after rent, he has a couple of hundred dollars
| leftover for food and other necessities. He assumes he'll
| be turning to food support services.
|
| Nintendo's not being compensated any meaningful amount.
| This is nothing more than a lifelong public flogging. And
| for what?
| indy wrote:
| "and for what?", the what is to send a message to
| everyone not to screw around with Nintendo. Whether
| that's morally right is another question.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| > Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that
| in its ordinary course functions only when cryptographic
| keys are integrated without authorization, violates the
| Digital Millennium Copyright Act's prohibition on
| trafficking in devices that circumvent effective
| technological measures, because the software is primarily
| designed for the purpose of circumventing technological
| measures.
|
| This seems like a massive stretch to ask a judge to sign
| off on, since it pretty radically expands what the DMCA
| covers. If were to come into force, you could slap some
| encryption on any piece of software and block anyone from
| interoperating with it.
| ipaddr wrote:
| They have paid themselves out already and will declare
| bankruptcy.
| OJFord wrote:
| If down voters want to explain their objection we'd
| probably all benefit - this may sound pithy but afaict
| parent is correct: Tropic Haize LLC is the defendant in
| TFA; LLC stands for Limited Liability Company. IANAL but
| this essentially means the company is on the hook for the
| damages, if it doesn't have that much then Nintendo
| probably becomes it's most senior creditor (gets paid
| first) in bankruptcy, but its directors (the emulator devs,
| presumably) are unlikely to be personally liable, at least
| wouldn't be in a judgement on _this_ case. Settling would I
| assume imply that Nintendo thinks it is getting paid (won
| 't bankrupt the company, or directors agreed to kick it in)
| though.
| throwaway48r7r wrote:
| They're about as likely to get paid as the poor sods the
| RIAA sued. It's just about using their legal muscle to
| shut them down.
|
| They will get the assets though. So $30k in patron money
| for the month, the domain, the trademark, and the
| copyright to the GPL'd code.
| OJFord wrote:
| They didn't win in court though, they settled, so the
| money would be a strange and arbitrary amount if they
| don't think they're getting it?
| throwaway48r7r wrote:
| As far as I know (IANAL) it was Tropic Haize LLC that was
| sued and is on the hook for the $2M.
| super256 wrote:
| > * how will they pay $2M?
|
| They most likely don't. Most of these settlements have
| another agreement made behind closed doors.
|
| I was alleged to do stuff related to video game cheats, and
| was in settlement talks with a company bigger than Nintendo.
| I didn't end up signing, so a quick overview of what such
| secret agreements include (the money point is the last one):
|
| - keep everything of the following secret
|
| - be truthful with us and tell us everything
|
| - hand over source code, server access, chats
|
| - shut down social media, websites related to the cheats
|
| - if defendant cant shut down the cheat site, defendant has
| to try to shut it down via other various means and email the
| plaintiff once every quarter for three years with the efforts
| made
|
| - plaintiff will make a public announcement that defendant
| owes 2.5 million USD (used by the plaintiff for marketing /
| scaring people off). After X years, the plaintiff agrees to
| file a full satisfaction of the monetary award (aka plaintiff
| files that the defendant paid the money and so their credit
| score isn't totally fucked), BUT in reality the defendant
| only has to pay the money if they breach any of the terms
| above.
| throwaway48r7r wrote:
| Was your name on the lawsuit or was it an LLC?
| super256 wrote:
| The complaint listed the company (a German
| Unternehmergesellschaft; which is basically an LLC), but
| my name and many others too.
| KomoD wrote:
| Lol, the engineowning lawsuit?
| Sammi wrote:
| Thanks for this insight. This honestly sounds like the
| reasonable solution for both parties. Everyone just walks
| away, and no ones life is ruined.
| SSLy wrote:
| some grapevine reports indicate yuzu paid reviewers with early
| access to some games for pre-retail dumps that were then used
| to have speedy day1 compat.
|
| it could be wrong, totk just leaked a week before release.
| jandrese wrote:
| This feels like a "so what" issue to me. Maybe the early
| release guys who sold their copies should be in trouble for
| breaking a contract, but the Yuzu guys should be in the
| clear.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Paying someone to break the rules still makes you culpable.
| futhey wrote:
| Paying someone to break the law makes you culpable.
| Paying someone to violate an NDA or other agreement with
| a private company you have no direct association with
| doesn't ordinarily make you culpable.
| favorited wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference
| crtasm wrote:
| That would be a strange thing to do considering it was shared
| everywhere anyway.
| choo-t wrote:
| > give their domain to Nintendo
|
| So, Nintendo will receive all future Yuzu's telemetry.
| iamjk wrote:
| plot twist: they leave it up, collect telemetry to match and
| understand the data behind pirating vs. owned emulation, find
| it useful to open the platform, focus on services, and build
| their business to 10x on software almost exclusively
|
| not probable, but that would be interesting to see
| erremerre wrote:
| would not be possible to send the domain to 127.0.0.1 in
| localhosts?
| choo-t wrote:
| Yes, but you can also opt-out to the telemetry in the
| settings.
| erremerre wrote:
| Sensible, but still would add the line to the hosts file.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| RIP Yuzu
| barbazoo wrote:
| I grew up with Nintendo being my "main" game console and to this
| day I play (Switch) but I'm starting to wonder, might this be a
| company that's worth boycotting? Sure I'd miss out on the
| exclusives but lots of games exist on multiple platforms or have
| similar games on other platforms.
|
| Nintendo's behaviour seems to be very much anti hacker and even
| anti-consumer in cases like this one. Anyone else have any strong
| feelings about this?
| mcphage wrote:
| Nintendo's disdain for historical preservation is frustrating
| and problematic. But this is an emulator for their _current_
| console, I'm not sure this is boycott-worthy. This is more,
| they've got a business to run, and Yuzu impacts their bottom
| line in a way that Dolphin doesn't.
| ejj28 wrote:
| While that's a fair point, I also have to wonder how much of
| that is actually lost sales, vs. people who wouldn't have
| bought the games otherwise, or didn't have a Switch to play
| on, or etc.
|
| Personally, I paid for a copy of Tears of the Kingdom when it
| came out, but only because I had a Switch I could borrow from
| someone to play it on - if I hadn't had that option, I
| wouldn't have bought a Switch just to play one game, and I
| just wouldn't have bought the game at all.
|
| Had they released the game on PC as well as Switch, I would
| have bought it for PC, but that's not an option. As it
| stands, either you have to own an overpriced and underpowered
| console, even if you only want to play one Nintendo game, or
| you can pirate the game and play it on PC, and have a much
| better experience than on a real Switch. Nintendo is somewhat
| bringing this upon itself in my opinion and I don't feel much
| sympathy for their lost profits, real or imagined.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Valve used the Yuzu emulator in some of its Steam Deck
| initial marketing, and emulating the Switch is one of the
| most popular uses for the Steam Deck, so there is
| definitely a measurable impact.
|
| Considering that the Steam Deck is _more expensive_ than
| the Switch, arguably every SD player using Yuzu is several
| lost sales for Nintendo.
|
| _Nintendo is somewhat bringing this upon itself in my
| opinion and I don 't feel much sympathy for their lost
| profits, real or imagined._
|
| This is why they are going after Yuzu in the first
| place...Because Yuzu makes it easy to pirate Switch games
| and the pirates feel entitled to play those games on a
| _more expensive device_ than the device they claim is too
| expensive.
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| Yes but the more expensive device is better in every
| conceivable way, it's a PC instead of a locked down
| walled garden that only exists as a platform for nintendo
| products. Just because someone owns a Deck doesn't mean
| they would otherwise own a switch, I own a Deck and
| haven't remotely considered buying any nintendo hardware
| since gamecube. If I couldn't emulate switch games I just
| wouldn't play them.
| prophesi wrote:
| Anecdotally, the friends that I know who have a gaming PC
| own a Switch as well. The one guy running TotK @ 4K/60FPS
| on their rig was also the first to preorder the game. But
| we're all in our 30's with decent salaries.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _If I couldn 't emulate switch games I just wouldn't play
| them._
|
| And Nintendo is okay with that. If you're never going to
| be a paying customer, _they don 't care what you think._
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| They didn't say they wouldn't be a paying customer.
|
| Regardless of that particular commenter, many paying
| customers of Nintendo have the same attitude that they
| will only emulate switch games.
| mcphage wrote:
| > If I couldn't emulate switch games I just wouldn't play
| them.
|
| Given this discussion started around whether to boycott
| Nintendo or not, it seems that you're not a Nintendo
| customer at all. So I'm not really sure what you would be
| boycotting?
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| I'm just chiming in to dispute the 'Deck owner with a
| switch emulator = lost sales' point that was made, but
| yes I've already been unconsciously 'boycotting' them for
| a while now.
| skyyler wrote:
| >this is an emulator for their current console
|
| >Yuzu impacts their bottom line in a way that Dolphin
| doesn't.
|
| Dolphin could emulate nearly all commercial Wii games by
| April 2009.
|
| That was sooner into the console's lifespan than where we are
| now with the switch. (29 months since the Wii's release vs 83
| months since the Switch's release)
|
| Maybe more people have gaming-grade computers sitting around
| now than they did 15 years ago?
| fmj wrote:
| >Maybe more people have gaming-grade computers sitting
| around now than they did 15 years ago?
|
| You don't need a very powerful computer to emulate a
| Switch. My M1 Mac Mini w/ 8GB of RAM (~$400) has been able
| to play every Switch game I've been interested in with
| equal or slightly better performance than the actual
| console.
| mcphage wrote:
| > Dolphin could emulate nearly all commercial Wii games by
| April 2009.
|
| > That was sooner into the console's lifespan than where we
| are now with the switch.
|
| I don't have any insight into why they didn't go after
| Dolphin in 2009, but I do think it explains why they're
| going after Yuzu _now_.
| bombcar wrote:
| Dolphin has _always_ been very precise about doing
| everything "on this side of the line"
| kevingadd wrote:
| Preservation isn't a matter of flipping a light switch on the
| moment a console isn't "current" anymore. The Switch came out
| in 2017 - that's a long time ago. If not for people
| preserving firmware updates and 1.0 builds of games, emulator
| developers and users would have nothing to start from when
| they start development on an emulator from scratch in ~2025
| like you suggest doing.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >Nintendo's disdain for historical preservation is
| frustrating and problematic.
|
| Nintendo themselves don't disdain historical preservation.
| They preserve their code, assets, games, etc themselves.
| ejj28 wrote:
| Nintendo's been a horrible company in this regard for ages.
| Personally I've never given them money besides for Tears of the
| Kingdom when it released - I don't even own a Switch, I
| borrowed one to play it. They make good games sometimes but
| that's the first and last time they're getting any money from
| me.
| Meninoyo wrote:
| Nintendo started with consoles and the quality sign to make
| sure you buy quality after people were disappointed with Atari
| and other systems
|
| And the target audience is still kids/family. Playing games
| doesn't need to be PC first or mobile first and it hinders
| quality.
|
| Nintendo has the same right as Sony and ms to sell their
| system.
|
| I would love to have it for PC, don't get me wrong, but
| families don't play games in front of a PC.
|
| I don't think this argument is fair.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >might this be a company that's worth boycotting? Sure I'd miss
| out on the exclusives but lots of games exist on multiple
| platforms or have similar games on other platforms.
|
| As far as I'm concerned, this is an issue of the DMCA more than
| Nintendo itself. In the strictest sense, devs really don't care
| about this and lawyers are only doing their job.
|
| Boycotting Nintendo may make sense in a moral sense, but not
| one that will change how the DMCA works.
|
| >Nintendo's behaviour seems to be very much anti hacker and
| even anti-consumer in cases like this one. Anyone else have any
| strong feelings about this?
|
| Anti-hacker, sure. 99% of companies are anti-hacker.
|
| Anti-consumer... First, I really think this is the worst modern
| cliche of modern media discourse. Just to remind people of the
| definition:
|
| > Anti-consumerism is concerned with the private actions of
| business corporations in pursuit of financial and economic
| goals at the expense of the public welfare, especially in
| matters of environmental protection, social stratification, and
| ethics in the governing of a society.
|
| I don't really see how luxury entertainment can ever meet the
| true philosophical meaning of the term that halts social
| progress and suppressing the flow of money to the populace.
|
| With all that said, the closest I feel Nintendo has gotten to
| anti-consumerism is the "vault" strategy done with Mario All
| Stars. Which they seemingly only did for that game and a few of
| those "100 multiplayer" style games. It's a strategy making use
| of false scarcity for a product that can be infinitely
| reproducible (and requires no servers on their end to operate)
| in order to increase urgency to play/buy said work. Not only is
| that morally repugnant, I'm not even sure if it's a financially
| sound decision for a company who's products are known for
| having a long tail in sales, unlike most video games.
|
| ----
|
| in the colloquial sense of:
|
| >not favorable to consumers : improperly favoring the interests
| of businesses over the interests of consumers.
|
| every business technically strides to be anti-consumerist. The
| act of charging money for a product is anti-consumerist. I
| don't see how Nintendo differs here, nor how they are the
| worst, in a world where almost every AAA company in the west is
| trying to rely on psuedo-subscriptions with battle passes and
| every company in the east are making millions on mobile off of
| the lootbox model.
|
| Nintendo seemed to dip their toes in indirectly a few times
| (reminder: they do not fully own any of the remaining IPs using
| Lootboxes) but mostly have pulled out, even removing the gacha
| from a few of their games. So they for the most part simply
| profit from an online service with "free" games and one time
| purchase of other console games.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Arguably, precedent (Bleem) supports yuzu here, the reality
| is that Nintendo doesn't really need a sound legal foundation
| to file a lawsuit against you, and their legal team can
| outspend almost anyone on the planet, so they can probably
| force almost anyone into a settlement, just like yuzu. The
| DMCA is a plague but I think this case would have resulted in
| a settlement even if the DMCA didn't exist, because
| Nintendo's resources dwarf the yuzu team's to that extent.
| CM30 wrote:
| The problem (as per usual) is that the legal system is
| horribly biased in favour of whoever has the most
| money/resources. When one side has millions/billions to
| spend on lawyers and legal fees and the other doesn't, then
| the former is almost certainly going to drive the latter
| into settling (or bankruptcy), regardless of whether the
| latter did anything illegal.
|
| There needs to be a way to fix the system so that both
| sides of any court battle are on (fairly) equal footing,
| and having significantly more resources than your opponent
| doesn't tilt the field in your favour in any practical way.
| kevingadd wrote:
| I stopped playing Nintendo products (on any platform, including
| my Switch) years ago and haven't really missed much. They put
| out good games, sure, but there are tons of good games
| available on other platforms where buying them isn't supporting
| a company that abuses the legal system to harass and imprison
| innocent people.
| theshackleford wrote:
| "Innocent".
|
| Reality (and the courts) disagree with you.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Just because something is a law doesn't make it just.
| kevingadd wrote:
| If you're talking about Bowser, the only thing they
| convicted him of is "conspiracy" to do things that
| shouldn't be illegal [1]. All the other charges were
| dropped. If you think "conspiring" to sell modchips is a
| crime worthy of prison I don't know how to convince you
| that we should have a fair and just legal system. It was a
| plea, too, and anyone who knows the legal system well
| understands that plea bargains are generally unjust and
| used to bully people into not defending themselves.
|
| 1: "Gary Bowser, 52, a Canadian national of Santo Domingo,
| Dominican Republic, pleaded guilty in October 2021 to
| Conspiracy to Circumvent Technological Measures and to
| Traffic in Circumvention Devices, and Trafficking in
| Circumvention Devices."
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| There's no point boycotting one company playing by the system
| rules. Boycott the system which enable this much centralisation
| of power and removes freedom from citizens.
|
| Copyright and patents are an artifact of the government being
| easily corruptible by media companies who make insane amount of
| money.
|
| Until we get rid of the government we'll always have laws which
| help the rich steal from the people.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| > There's no point boycotting one company playing by the
| system rules
|
| This is a bad attitude - every system can be gamed -
| social/market pressure is an important mechanism for shaping
| outcomes.
| ronsor wrote:
| Well, we certainly aren't getting rid of the government, and
| it's an up-cliff battle to change current copyright and
| patent laws, so the best we can do is starve the companies
| that abuse these systems. Then they will have less money to
| perform lobbying and other activities.
| grayfaced wrote:
| I disagree. The other platforms built their walls secure enough
| that they don't bother. Nintendo is aggressively defending a
| low fence.
|
| Most Nintendo cartridges will function a decade from now. Many
| discs for other consoles don't even have the full game on it...
| and many can't function without connecting to a service. I'd
| prefer the system that is possible to preserve (but gets
| aggressive with monetization) then the one that's impossible to
| preserve.
|
| Points to xbox for doing well with backwards compatibility and
| carrying libraries forward. But that could change in future.
| realusername wrote:
| > The other platforms built their walls secure enough that
| they don't bother.
|
| The other platforms have also way less exclusives. The PS5
| has a grand total of 12 exclusive games listed here https://e
| n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:PlayStation_5-only_ga... . Why
| even bother?
| catapart wrote:
| I've been "boycotting" them for a while now. Switch was cool,
| but they just cannot be reasonable when it comes to IP, so I
| just cannot stomach giving them any money. I'm not interested
| in applicable laws or "playing by the rules" or whatever other
| handwavy bullshit people will feed themselves to pretend that
| Nintendo is "in the right" here.
|
| It's pretty simple: don't target people who aren't doing things
| that are morally reprehensible, even _if_ it 's a systemic
| threat to your company (cue the laughter from the capitalists
| who can't understand anything beyond industrial machinations).
| Evolve and adapt to include them in your assets, or die while
| the fitter companies do. Someday, someone's going to have more
| money than Nintendo and they will force Nintendo to do whatever
| they want them to. I'm just hoping its sooner rather than
| later. They've earned every second of their demise. Fuck any
| company that thinks lawfare is excusable as 'might makes
| right'.
| ls612 wrote:
| Welp there goes emulation.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Not really... No actual court decision so not precedence yet...
| Someone can try to fight it and kill it.
| 1231232131231 wrote:
| Who has the money, time, and effort to protect emulation?
| anthk wrote:
| Yuzu has been forked since forever. Libre software is never
| lost.
| 1231232131231 wrote:
| Legally, I meant. Yuzu definitely isn't dead. I wonder
| where it will be hosted, though.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| tor/i2p romsites are already there
| moogly wrote:
| I'm surprised they have the monetary means to do that.
| janice1999 wrote:
| Their Patreon earns over EUR27,000 a month. I imagine that was
| factored into the amount. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.patreon.com/yuzuteam
| 1231232131231 wrote:
| $2.4 million is insane. That would take their profits + a lot
| more.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Did someone fork the GH repo before it was taken down?
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Seems to be up still...
|
| Edit: he's dead, Jim
| wingmanjd wrote:
| Repo URL is now dead.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Whoa, cloned it just in time, with literally minutes to
| spare!
| xingped wrote:
| Share if you can!
| sleirsgoevy wrote:
| ``` git clone https://github.com/irfanhakim-as/yuzu-
| mainline git fetch origin
| 537296095ab24eddcb196b5ef98004f91de9c8c2 ```
|
| It seems that GitHub still serves the commit history
| through the existing forks of the repo. According to
| archive.org, this commit corresponds to the last release
| of yuzu-mainline before the repo takedown: http://web.arc
| hive.org/web/20240304185516/https://github.com...
| kenmacd wrote:
| If you already have a copy of the original repo, add this
| as another remote with:
|
| ``` git remote add irfanhakim-as
| https://github.com/irfanhakim-as/yuzu-mainline git fetch
| irfanhakim-as 537296095ab24eddcb196b5ef98004f91de9c8c2
| ```
|
| Then if you want the commit to look like the latest one
| for the original repo edit the file `.git/packed-refs`.
| Mine now looks like:
|
| ``` # pack-refs with: peeled fully-peeled sorted
| 537296095ab24eddcb196b5ef98004f91de9c8c2
| refs/remotes/origin/master ```
|
| (Be careful with raw editing git files. There might be a
| more 'official' way to do it, but this worked for me)
| mmebane wrote:
| They started deleting repos a couple of minutes ago. I
| checked a lot of links and they were in the Internet Archive.
| I'm sure there are plenty of forks of the main repo.
| yuzufan wrote:
| Cloned it a couple days ago.
|
| When you find a mirror, you can look for this commit, and know
| that if the commit hash matches it is probably a legit copy of
| the repo up until that point at least commit
| dc94882c9062ab88d3d5de35dcb8731111baaea2 (HEAD -> master)
| Merge: 30567a590 fc6a87bba Author: liamwhite
| <liamwhite@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Tue Feb 27
| 12:26:26 2024 -0500 Merge pull request #13135
| from german77/hid-interface service: hid:
| Migrate HidServer to new IPC
| chatmasta wrote:
| FYI, forks don't survive DMCA purges. You need to clone a repo
| and then push it to a new repository.
| KomoD wrote:
| Yuzu deleted the repos themselves so all the forks still
| exist for now, just with another upstream. (in the case of
| the main repo: roblabla/yuzu)
|
| But yeah they'll be gone soon (making a repo without fork
| won't help either.)
| chatmasta wrote:
| > making a repo without fork won't help either
|
| It'll definitely get purged, but I think in this case the
| rightsholder needs to submit a separate DMCA request.
|
| Regardless, if you want the code, cloning it to a local
| storage medium is always the most robust option :)
| KomoD wrote:
| > but I think in this case the rightsholder needs to
| submit a separate DMCA request.
|
| No you can actually do multiple in one request.
|
| > Regardless, if you want the code, cloning it to a local
| storage medium is always the most robust option :)
|
| 100%, that is the way to go.
| KomoD wrote:
| Software Heritage has it archived.
|
| https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/search/?q=github...
| xingped wrote:
| Hadn't heard of this site before but thank you so much!
| Lammy wrote:
| Boom https://archive.org/details/yuzu.7z (archived by me from a
| git mirror; all git remotes removed before zipping)
| justinclift wrote:
| There look to be an awful lot of forks created in the last
| week:
|
| https://github.com/roblabla/yuzu/forks?include=active&page=1...
|
| Considering the ongoing attacks against GitHub whereby people
| are creating repos with malicious code, it's probably wise to
| be bloody careful of any of these yuzu forks. :( :( :(
| npteljes wrote:
| Just to add my two cents, software repositories like Ubuntu's
| still have the thing, with the source and the build readily
| downloadable. Not the latest, but still.
|
| https://packages.ubuntu.com/mantic/yuzu
| saidinesh5 wrote:
| This is sad. Yuzu was such a well polished emulator. I hope
| everyone backs up a copy of yuzu and hopefully someone some day
| would continue the development...
| meragrin_ wrote:
| > Yuzu was such a well polished emulator.
|
| I guess that depends on your definition of "well polished
| emulator". From what I hear, it is not well polished.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I am all for there being emulators for past consoles as a form of
| preservation as the hardware gets harder and harder to get. Has
| Nintendo ever gone after Dolphin except for the Steam thing?
|
| But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It
| just isn't. You can try to say it is, but no. Maybe, maybe you
| could argue that you are putting in the work now so it's ready
| when it's needed. But then be careful about putting it out there.
|
| Just go look at the steam deck subreddit and how often Switch
| games are talked about, I can't imagine Nintendo was very happy
| about that. This wasn't just some small project that people did
| not really know about or served a niche purpose.
|
| This as asking for trouble and I am surprised it took so long
| honestly.
|
| Edit:
|
| Don't get me wrong, I hate exclusives and I wish the practice
| would end. But that is the current state of things and the
| choices leading up to this were questionable at best.
|
| Edit Again:
|
| Hold up, Yuzu was an actual company and had a Patreon bringing in
| over $29k a month? Yeah um, Nintendo has been bad but that's a
| choice for a current console. It is no surprise Nintendo went
| after them.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| Obviously piracy plays a large (maybe the largest?) role here,
| though I wouldn't overlook the modding use case. I would be
| quite interested in running titles I legitimately own on more
| powerful hardware where I can play around with the resolution
| and framerate freely (and would have already used Yuzu for this
| purpose by now, but for laziness).
| ejj28 wrote:
| This is the only reason I have Yuzu installed - I own Tears
| of the Kingdom legitimately but the Switch is such a piece of
| underpowered, overpriced junk that I'll never replay the game
| on real hardware, when I can instead be playing at 1440p and
| 60fps with all kinds of enhancements on PC.
| nerdjon wrote:
| ok yeah that is valid.
|
| I just have a very hard time believing that, like you said,
| the majority of the use case is anything other than piracy.
|
| I mean almost every emulation software somewhere says that
| you should only emulate games you own, but how many of us
| actually still own our NES or gamecube games that we may have
| downloaded. But it's easier to justify given that stuff not
| being easily accessible anymore, we don't even have a proper
| eshop for emulation on the Switch.
| dns_snek wrote:
| > I just have a very hard time believing that, like you
| said, the majority of the use case is anything other than
| piracy.
|
| Even if this is true, torrent clients are predominantly
| used for piracy too and they don't get sued. Neither are
| explicitly designed to facilitate it.
|
| Can anyone explain why Yuzu's case is different?
| nerdjon wrote:
| I feel like the difference here should be fairly obvious.
|
| One is an open protocol, and one is proprietary
| technology. AWS even at one point supported the protocol.
|
| I don't know if it's still a thing but it wasn't terribly
| uncommon to find Linux distros and other legitimate
| things shared through that protocol.
|
| Here we are talking about proprietary technology by
| Nintendo. On a system that they are currently selling and
| making money on.
|
| Given how much money they were bring in on patrion, it
| isn't much different than if they tried to make a
| physical knock off switch that could run switch games.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > it isn't much different than if they tried to make a
| physical knock off switch that could run switch games.
|
| Over in computer land we would call that "IBM PC
| Compatible".
| mardef wrote:
| I think it'd be closer to a Hackintosh.
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| Anyone else old enough to remember Connectix Virtual Game
| Station [1] for, like, MacOS 9 I think?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix_Virtual_Game_
| Station
| pcwalton wrote:
| > Here we are talking about proprietary technology by
| Nintendo.
|
| x86 is also proprietary technology that Intel is
| currently making money on. Should Intel be able to sue
| AMD out of existence?
|
| NVIDIA's GPU specs are proprietary technology that NVIDIA
| is currently making money on. Should NVIDIA be able to
| shut down Nouveau?
|
| Flash is proprietary technology that Adobe still sells
| under the name Adobe Animate. Should Adobe be able to
| shut down Ruffle?
| nerdjon wrote:
| > x86 is also proprietary technology. Should Intel be
| able to sue AMD out of existence?
|
| AMD has a perpetual license from Intel to use the
| technology.
|
| Nouveau is different, you are still buying Nvidia cards
| just running an open source driver. Nvidia doesn't make
| money on their drivers, they make money on the graphics
| cards.
|
| Similar situation to Ruffle, Adobe never charged for the
| end user to download flash. It was free. Ruffle is an
| alternative to that. Also it is worth mentioning that
| flash is all but dead and this really just keeps it
| breathing.
|
| While both companies probably could make an argument to
| argue for a take down of both, they have no incentive to
| do it.
| pcwalton wrote:
| > AMD has a perpetual license from Intel to use the
| technology.
|
| AMD only managed to negotiate that because Intel lost in
| arbitration [1]. Intel's preferred option was always to
| eliminate AMD entirely. It's good for us consumers that
| they didn't succeed in that!
|
| > While both companies probably could make an argument to
| argue for a take down of both, they have no incentive to
| do it.
|
| NVIDIA absolutely has an incentive to get rid of Nouveau.
| Its existence discloses IP (their GPU inner workings)
| that they would prefer to keep secret.
|
| More examples: JavaScript was proprietary technology at
| the time. The fact that it was specific to Netscape
| browsers absolutely benefited Netscape's business model.
| The existence of Chrome depends on the fact that Netscape
| had no grounds to go after Microsoft for an independent
| implementation.
|
| SMB is a proprietary Microsoft technology. '90s Microsoft
| would definitely have preferred to keep that specific to
| Windows in order to sell more Windows licenses. It's good
| for the industry that Microsoft never felt they could go
| after Samba.
|
| Another fun one: The FBX file format, which Autodesk
| makes money on through Maya, has a half-hearted attempt
| at DRM in it to limit it to approved Autodesk licensees.
| Blender's FBX exporter breaks it with a pass-the-hash
| attack. Get rid of that and Blender can no longer talk to
| Unity. Obviously, the entire industry benefits from the
| fact that Autodesk can't go after Blender for this.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD#IBM_PC_and_the_x86
| _archite...
| nerdjon wrote:
| > AMD only managed to negotiate that because Intel lost
| in arbitration [1]. Intel's preferred option was always
| to eliminate AMD entirely. It's good for us consumers
| that they didn't succeed in that!
|
| OK? regardless of why or how it happened, it happened and
| it means that AMD is fine. If you knew that I don't know
| why you even mentioned it in the first place.
|
| > NVIDIA absolutely has an incentive to get rid of
| Nouveau. Its existence discloses IP (their GPU inner
| workings) that they would prefer to keep secret.
|
| Any articles to back that up? Seems counter to Nvidia
| offering support in publishing documents:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_(software)#History
|
| > Another fun one: The FBX file format, which Autodesk
| makes money on through Maya, has a half-hearted attempt
| at DRM in it to limit it to approved Autodesk licensees.
| Blender's FBX exporter breaks it with a pass-the-hash
| attack. Get rid of that and Blender can no longer talk to
| Unity. Obviously, the entire industry benefits from the
| fact that Autodesk can't go after Blender for this.
|
| Again would love an article on this. I can't find
| anything backing up that this ever happened. Not only on
| Audodesk's website do they mention third party software
| but they have an SDK for this file format for others to
| use. While blender does in fact not use that SDK, and the
| format is proprietary, I can't find anything backing up
| what you claim.
| pcwalton wrote:
| > OK? regardless of why or how it happened, it happened
| and it means that AMD is fine.
|
| AMD is only fine because Intel _wasn 't_ able to sue them
| out of existence. If Intel had managed to do in the 90s
| what Nintendo did to Yuzu just now, there'd be no Ryzen
| today.
|
| > Seems counter to Nvidia offering support in publishing
| documents
|
| NVIDIA only started publishing documents because
| Nouveau's success in reverse engineering meant that it
| was pointless trying to pretend that the genie could be
| put back in the bottle. Nintendo undoubtedly knows this
| too; lawsuits like this in 2024 ultimately aren't
| rational moves on their part, but big conservative
| Japanese companies have never been known to be
| particularly adaptable.
|
| > Again would love an article on this. I can't find
| anything backing up that this ever happened. Not only on
| Audodesk's website do they mention third party software
| but they have an SDK for this file format for others to
| use. While blender does in fact not use that SDK, and the
| format is proprietary, I can't find anything backing up
| what you claim.
|
| I found it myself when I was documenting the FBX file
| format (which I eventually gave up on because it was too
| horrifying of a format to motivate continuing) [1].
| Blender calls it "CRC rules", but I think it's actually
| an attempt to lock non-licensees out. The SDK is closed-
| source, proprietary, and comes with a whole bunch of
| restrictions in its EULA.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/blender/blender-
| addons/blob/main/io_scene...
| archy_ wrote:
| >x86 is also proprietary technology that Intel is
| currently making money on. Should Intel be able to sue
| AMD out of existence?
|
| AMD has a license to the x86 architecture, alongside Via
| (though I'm not sure if they even make x86 chips
| anymore). I'm sure Intel would love to take back AMD's
| license, but they're probably too afraid of antitrust
| actions to try.
| iamtedd wrote:
| Intel won't revoke AMD's license, because they themselves
| are licensing the 64-bit architecture from AMD. It's
| called amd64 for a reason.
| pcwalton wrote:
| Yep. It's a great example of how keeping clean-room
| reverse engineering legal is good for the industry. While
| Intel was stuck in Itanium hell, AMD was able to leapfrog
| them and create x86-64 because it had been legally
| successful with reverse engineering 32-bit x86 in the
| past. If Intel had been able to crush AMD in the 90s,
| there's a good chance x86 would be dead by now.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| A torrent client is data agnostic. It can be used to
| transfer any type of data over the internet.
|
| Yuzu is designed to play specific software which is quite
| difficult to acquire by legal means. Very little effort
| appears to have been spent on improving the UX of the
| legal process.
|
| (It is true that Yuzu can also play homebrew software. I
| think the situation would be different if Yuzu was tested
| exclusively on Homebrew, and only emulated features which
| homebrew software uses. But then no one would care about
| Yuzu. Yuzu has tons of game-specific fixes for commercial
| titles.)
| rokkitmensch wrote:
| Pretty great that you can still get functioning N64 THPS2
| carts for...sixty bucks on Ebay.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Folks. This is not about piracy at all. It is also not about
| copyrights or whatever.
|
| It's about the shitty part of DMCA's anti-circumvention.
|
| If you want to see how stupid this law is, look at the number
| of exemptions given for this:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...
| aaomidi wrote:
| I'll also go as far to say, if you support Nintendo here. You
| also are supporting Apple shutting down Asahi linux.
|
| All Apple will need to claim is that Asahi is bypassing some
| "client side protection", and Asahi is shut down.
| jamesgeck0 wrote:
| Apple Silicon machines have a "permissive security" mode
| which allows booting unsigned third party kernels. Asahi
| isn't circumventing anything, this is a officially
| supported feature.
| mcphage wrote:
| > All Apple will need to claim is that Asahi is bypassing
| some "client side protection", and Asahi is shut down.
|
| _Is_ Asahi bypassing some client side protection?
| veec_cas_tant wrote:
| I don't think preservation is an important argument. If I own
| an AppleTV, and I purchase a movie through their service, why
| should it be illegal for me to export that movie to watch on a
| different device? I own the hardware and the data, why would
| any law even care at that point?
|
| Obviously piracy should be illegal, but I just don't see any
| argument against emulation even if it is current.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| For this reason, most of the major studios are members of
| Movies Anywhere, which allows you to access movies purchased
| at any (participating) storefront on any participating VOD
| service. Amazon, Fandango, Vudu, Disney, are participants.
| veec_cas_tant wrote:
| True, but the example was just an example. Buying a game on
| PC and making it run on a PS5 - why would something like
| that ever be illegal?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| It's generally not, because you can run an OS on a PS5
| that can then run the game, and the DMCA allows for this
| (with some limitations) because, and this is a very
| important point: there is generally no DRM-hacking
| required. But...if DRM hacking is required to get a PC
| game to work on a PS5, it's illegal to do so under the
| DMCA. (Note: DRM is defined _very broadly for DMCA
| purposes.)
|
| Dolphin does require a bit of DRM hacking, but Dolphin
| (arguably) falls under one of the DCMA exceptions for
| archival use purposes. This is the second important
| point: the Dolphin emulates a system which has not been
| on sale for a decade. It's still _possible* to use it for
| general piracy instead of archival access, but the
| archival use trumps the piracy concern. (It would be
| different though if the Dolphin developers started
| offering Dolphin on a commercial basis.)
|
| But Yuzu is a commercial offering, for a console that is
| still on sale, and its use requires DRM hacking. So it's
| got 3 fatal flaws.
|
| The only surprise is that Nintendo let it live as long as
| it has. You can bet they won't make that mistake again
| with their next console.
| veec_cas_tant wrote:
| > ...and this is a very important point: there is
| generally no DRM-hacking required. But...if DRM hacking
| is required to get a PC game to work on a PS5, it's
| illegal to do so under the DMCA. (Note: DRM is defined
| very broadly for DMCA purposes.)
|
| Wouldn't Steam, MSTF store, Epic, etc. all count as DRM?
| Regardless, it's more of a philosophical argument than a
| legal argument. If I buy the Switch and the game, I don't
| see how there could be any argument that I should be
| considered a criminal for using the data on a PC.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _Wouldn 't Steam, MSTF store, Epic, etc. all count as
| DRM? _
|
| They could, which is why I was careful to point out that
| you can install an OS on your PS5, on which you can then
| run (some) games on it without having to circumvent DRM.
|
| _If I buy the Switch and the game, I don 't see how
| there could be any argument that I should be considered a
| criminal for using the data on a PC._
|
| Because U.S. (and EU) law doesn't have any exceptions
| that would cover that use, since the Switch is still
| being actively sold on the market today. (And as noted
| elsewhere, this is a large part of why SNES, N64, and
| Gamecube emulators haven't been targeted by Nintendo: the
| machines are no longer sold and so emulation allows for
| archival use/access to games on those platforms. This is
| generally a permitted use.)
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| You don't own the data, just a temporary right to use it.
|
| Of course it's completely bonkers and the result of massive
| corporations bribing governments to limit our freedom.
|
| As long as I don't sign a contract with an entity I should be
| able to do anything I want with bytes. Once I enter into an
| agreement not to share some data I received then I should be
| punishable - but no shortcuts, sue everyone in court with a
| due process and lawyer fees.
|
| Copyright and patents are the most retarded and culture
| damaging thing I've seen in my lifetime
| frameset wrote:
| If buying isn't owning then piracy isn't stealing.
| archy_ wrote:
| Pretty sure the TOS of AppleTV prohibits exporting the movie
| - you have a limited license to view it only under the
| circumstances Apple dictates, in partnership with everyone
| Apple has deals with. If you want to be able to watch it on
| other devices, you need to purchase a limited perpetual
| license in the form of a DVD/bluray.
|
| Now, of course, this depends on the movie having a physical
| release (which is becoming a bit of a rarity these days), but
| still, the MPAA has made sure to write ironclad contracts to
| prohibit watching streamed content the way you want.
| crtasm wrote:
| The ToS has nothing to do with if something is legal or
| not.
| bobajeff wrote:
| >emulating a current console is not about preservation. It just
| isn't
|
| So we should all just wait until they stop selling a console
| before working to emulate it?
|
| Just imagine if they had this attitude when it came to reverse
| engineering IBM PC's bios.
| nerdjon wrote:
| Did you... not even read the entire line that you decided to
| just quote part of?
|
| > But, emulating a current console is not about preservation.
| It just isn't. You can try to say it is, but no. Maybe, maybe
| you could argue that you are putting in the work now so it's
| ready when it's needed. But then be careful about putting it
| out there.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| IBM published the full BIOS listing and schematics. There
| wasn't much to RE.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| If it's still being actively sold, why would the emulator be
| needed or distributed? It's a bullshit argument for _current_
| consoles.
| throwaway48r7r wrote:
| >But, emulating a current console is not about preservation.
|
| Today's present is tomorrow's past.
| realusername wrote:
| Especially considering that consoles have a less than stellar
| support from manufacturers, they just move on to the next
| console and you can say goodbye to your games, especially
| nowadays with game servers.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >But, emulating a current console is not about preservation. It
| just isn't.
|
| I disagree in the general case. Sure, beware of litigious
| companies, but it isn't immoral.
|
| In the specific case of Yuzu bringing in cash from the
| endeavor, yes, I see why Nintendo did what they did.
|
| ---
|
| Totally off-topic, but I have never bought a Switch despite
| liking the idea of all the games on it, because I don't want to
| pay $600 for a gameboy, 2-4 real controllers and a copy of
| Mario Party. I can't understand how it or Steam Deck is
| popular. But that's just me.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > Hold up, Yuzu was an actual company and had a Patreon
| bringing in over $29k a month? Yeah um, Nintendo has been bad
| but that's a choice for a current console. It is no surprise
| Nintendo went after them.
|
| LOL
|
| Yeah, as much as I am an anti-fan of Nintendo, it sounds like
| this company was asking to get sued.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Making a big company angry is supposed to be legal.
| stavros wrote:
| It _is_ legal, and you can spend all your money (and more)
| on lawyers ' fees to prove it!
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| > But, emulating a current console is not about preservation.
| It just isn't.
|
| No, but it CAN be used as a tool to play legitimate copies of
| games on different hardware. A few people on this thread have
| said they do this. I haven't done it yet, but I'll probably
| dump the Switch games I want to play on my Deck instead of
| carrying the switch also.
| johnfernow wrote:
| So long as Nintendo doesn't end up going after emulators
| released before the Switch, then the de facto (not de jure)
| precedent is: don't release an emulator for their current
| latest console.
|
| Overall, that's a fine outcome for game preservation, and
| thinking about it more, it's probably much better for emulation
| and game preservation long term that Yuzu's devs settled
| instead of fighting this, as if they had lost and a precedent
| were set, many other emulators might have had to shut down or
| be hosted in countries where the DMCA doesn't apply. But with
| no precedent set here, emulators for consoles released before
| the Switch might very well be safe. Time will tell though.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| You can tell that this was about protecting their hardware sales
| more than any claims about fair use or copyright or other IP
| because there are literally hundreds of companies which actively
| sell handheld systems with thousands of Nintendo brand or
| licensed ROMs on Amazon and elsewhere and I haven't seen a single
| one shut down.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| I mean, yes? I'm not sure why you think you've exposed some
| kind of secret motivation. Yuzu is not the same thing as
| Dolphin: it's emulating a _current_ console and is very
| obviously primarily for facilitating piracy, not historical
| preservation; people arguing otherwise are fucking kidding
| themselves. Of course it 's about Nintendo protecting hardware
| sales.
| dtech wrote:
| Dolphin also existed when Wii was current. Switch is also
| pretty old by now, you have to start at some point.
| ajford wrote:
| Or it's for playing modern games on hardware from this
| decade. The Switch is now 7 years old, and was dated hardware
| from the outset.
|
| Plenty of people use Yuzu to play Switch games on hardware
| that can actually support modern resolutions, or so you can
| actually achieve decent framerates at modern resolutions.
|
| Dolphin was in development since the GameCube was the
| "current gen", on through the Wii's lifecycle. Hell, by this
| point in the Wii lifecycle, it was already on the way out and
| Wii-U was releasing.
| anthk wrote:
| Wine does the same with Windows binaries, and some forks I
| think they bypass Starforce and lots of DRM crap.
| TillE wrote:
| Indeed I suspect a large part of the motivation for this
| lawsuit is the upcoming Switch 2, which will be using
| essentially the same architecture. A huge part of the necessary
| work for emulating it has already been done by Yuzu and
| Ryujinx.
| GardenLetter27 wrote:
| Lines up with the Denuvo deal too -
| https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/denuvo-security-
| is-...
| xnx wrote:
| I was first in line to buy ToTK on release day, but also enjoyed
| playing ToTK in Yuzu. It's a shame that won't be an option
| anymore.
|
| What becomes of Ryujinx?
| npteljes wrote:
| Yuzu, as it is now, won't go anywhere, because it's an open
| source project. Whatever is working right now, kind of always
| will in the future.
| KomoD wrote:
| The repos are now disappearing, only managed to get a partial
| archive
| paol wrote:
| It's open source. If there are people interested in continuing
| development it won't go away. And even if there aren't the
| current version will still work fine, just maybe not for future
| games.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| You're assuming Nintendo doesn't file DMCA takedowns;
| especially considering they've literally just won a court case
| against it. And even if you are outside the US, I wouldn't be
| surprised if European service providers don't want to risk it
| because they are still under copyright treaties, of which the
| DMCA is just the US implementation.
| paol wrote:
| I don't think it's that simple. For one thing emulation has
| been ruled legal in the US. By all reports Nintendo had an
| unusually strong case against Yuzu because the developers
| behind it didn't sufficiently distance themselves from piracy
| uses - the opposite if anything.
|
| On the practical side, the fact that the developers were a
| for profit company also made Nintendo's job much easier.
|
| Taking down a more legally careful, decentralized open source
| project should prove harder.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > For one thing emulation has been ruled legal in the US.
| By
|
| Emulation was; breaking cryptographic locks under the DMCA
| never was. In addition, most of the pro-emulation lawsuits
| were decided before the relevant DMCA sections even came
| into effect (e.g. Bleem), and are quite possibly already
| obsolete.
| 1231232131231 wrote:
| What if it was forked and the code that broke DRM was
| separated from the codebase, preferably as a library
| (dll/lib)?
| chaorace wrote:
| In order to isolate one part of the software as "the bad
| bits", you need either clear specific language in the law
| _or_ a clearly established relevant legal precedent.
| Neither of these things currently exist in the context of
| DMCA 1201.
|
| If you're curious, here's the most relevant parts of the
| text:
|
| > No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the
| public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology,
| product, service, device, component, or part thereof,
| that [...] has only limited commercially significant
| purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological
| measure that effectively controls access to a work
| protected under this title;[...]
|
| > As used in this subsection--[...]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.
|
| FYI: I am not a lawyer, but you can listen to a lawyer
| explain the above at the following link
| https://youtu.be/wROQUZDCIMI?t=868
| colinsane wrote:
| assuming you aren't a defendant in the above case, then
| the only ruling which would affect someone who wants to
| do this is (4):
|
| > Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu,
| that in its ordinary course functions only when
| cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization,
| violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [...]
|
| so, first reading, no: just taking Yuzu and splitting out
| the DRM stuff isn't legal if Yuzu still _depends_ on that
| DRM to function. you could maybe come up with some thing
| where you do full Switch emulation, with the code having
| literally zero concept of DRM/cryptography, and can only
| play homebrew games. do that and some other party would
| likely come around and do the (likely illegal) work to
| convert Switch games into a format your emulator
| understands. quite a bit like MAME cores, really.
|
| fun speculating about how to bypass the spirit of this
| ruling though, huh? IMO if you actually want to do this
| don't bother with the roundabout. just do it directly and
| don't incorporate yourself in a state that cares about
| DMCA like a dumbass, and strictly distance your
| operations from your legal identity if you live under
| such a repressive regime.
| flykespice wrote:
| > Taking down a more legally careful, decentralized open
| source project should prove harder.
|
| Oh sweetheart, have you learnt about intimidation by legal
| fees? Doesn't matter whether it's legal or not, not many
| can bank up to take against dedicated Nintendo legal team.
| kevingadd wrote:
| They can probably also compel the original copyright holders
| (the yuzu team) to issue takedowns of forks
| GardenLetter27 wrote:
| On what grounds? They can't retroactively revoke the
| copyright licence previously granted no?
| kevingadd wrote:
| You could probably contest the takedown on the basis that
| an open-source license allows you to post a fork, but
| Nintendo got them to agree that the content is illegal,
| so it seems questionable whether they could give you a
| license to distribute something it's no longer legal for
| them to distribute themselves. I wouldn't want to go to
| court over it, personally.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| Nintendo did no such thing. They just settled out of
| court by owing enough money to bankrupt the company and
| agreeing to not distribute the work. It means nothing to
| other people that already have licenses to redistribute
| from earlier.
| wtetzner wrote:
| Given that it's under the GPL, I don't think they can do
| that.
| ip_addr wrote:
| I wonder if takedowns like this will make decentralized code
| tools popular, for example: https://radicle.xyz/
| expert700 wrote:
| They did not just win a court case though, they merely
| settled it outside of court; settling outside of court does
| not establish any legal precedent one way or another
| snvzz wrote:
| >especially considering they've literally just won a court
| case against it.
|
| Wait what? When did this happen? Doesn't this story (about
| devs settling) mean the opposite of a court case being won or
| lost?
| kube-system wrote:
| Out of court settlements are a thing, but this wasn't one.
| This was filed in-court. It's like the equivalent of a
| forfeit.
|
| > Plaintiff Nintendo of America Inc. ("Plaintiff" or
| "Nintendo") and Tropic Haze LLC ("Defendant" or "Tropic
| Haze"), by and through their undersigned counsel, hereby
| consent to judgment in favor of Nintendo, and jointly move
| the Court to enter monetary relief in the sum of
| US$2,400,000.00 in favor of Nintendo and against Defendant.
|
| Translation:
|
| "Hey court, we both agree that Nintendo wins, can we just
| skip the rest of this and mark this down as a win for
| them?"
| Kirby64 wrote:
| I wonder if Ryujinx gets the same scrutiny/lawsuits? Seems like
| Ryujinx is a good competitor to Yuzu and will easily fill the
| void here.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I'm surprised Ryujinx wasn't mentioned much at all or touched.
| They have the exact identical Patreon page except a shade of
| color i can identify.
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39530203 - Feb 2024 (678
| comments)
| KAdot wrote:
| The project is gone from GitHub already https://github.com/yuzu-
| emu/yuzu
| kadoban wrote:
| Anyone have a recent fork to grab from before it becomes harder
| to find?
| KAdot wrote:
| https://github.com/pineappleEA/pineapple-src
| bspammer wrote:
| https://github.com/SomeAspy/yuzu
|
| The most recent commit hash matches another comment in this
| thread:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39595014
| apt-get wrote:
| Considering the precedent in circumventing decryption issues by
| calling out to a library
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libdvdcss), what is the likelihood
| that someone just builds a libxcidecrypt and development of yuzu
| continues unimpeded on a fork (somewhere like Europe for example
| where the DMCA doesn't hold)?
| dbrueck wrote:
| It would be so great if Nintendo were just a software company.
|
| Over the years they have put out some really terrific games, many
| of which I'd still buy today if they sold them as software.
|
| But after the Wii I stopped being a Nintendo customer (and
| stopped buying PS/Xbox/etc. consoles altogether) and I don't
| think I'll ever go back.
| throwaway48r7r wrote:
| Personally, I will be boycotting Nintendo and will urge others to
| do the same.
| iamunr wrote:
| Nintendo is the worst, and your entire gaming experience will
| be better on Yuzu or Ryujinx.
|
| Sad to see this happen to the Yuzu squad.
| camdenlock wrote:
| <loves playing Nintendo games> "Nintendo is the worst"
| carleton wrote:
| I bet you thought you got him. My mans just learned that
| you can like a game without liking the company that makes
| the game
| antonyt wrote:
| I think their point is that you're not taking a
| principled stand by stealing. If it matters enough to you
| to "boycott" the company, walk the walk and don't play
| the games by any means.
| hn_acker wrote:
| There might not be copyright infringement involved, so
| "stealing" is an unnecessary assumption (on top of being
| a misleading term for copyright infringement). Since
| Nintendo isn't the only source for games that run on
| Nintendo consoles, Nintendo might not get money from the
| self-proclaimed boycotter. But since there's no guarantee
| that Nintendo won't get money from the self-proclaimed
| either, I can understand why people would view the
| following scenario as cognitively dissonant:
| A person only buys physical copies of non-Nintendo-made
| games which run on Nintendo devices from people reselling
| legally-distributed copies (legal in the US with the
| first-sale doctrine, which unfortunately doesn't apply to
| digital copies). The person plays those games by ripping
| the files and running them on third-party emulators. The
| person publicly states that they boycott Nintendo the
| company and that they play non-Nintendo-games made for
| Nintendo consoles. Resellers might or might not spend
| their money on more Nintendo games.
|
| By the way, iamunr didn't claim to boycott Nintendo.
| Perhaps iamunr buys Nintendo games but plays them on
| emulators. throwaway48r7r didn't provide any information
| about whether they'll continue playing non-Nintendo-made
| games for Nintendo consoles.
| hn_acker wrote:
| Rather, multiple companies make games for one console. If
| you buy those games not made by Nintendo from sources
| other than Nintendo's shops then you can boycott Nintendo
| without boycotting non-Nintendo game developers.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| I believe developers on consoles always pay the console
| manufacturer a fee per-copy, so not so much, but that's
| probably the way that pays Nintendo the least.
|
| EDIT: Just remembered the second hand market. Carry on.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _Nintendo is the worst, and your entire gaming experience
| will be better on Yuzu or Ryujinx._
|
| Is it a boycott if you are still playing the games?
| sotix wrote:
| Yuzu got me to start buying Nintendo games again. Two weeks ago I
| coincidentally decided to mod my Switch and extract all of my
| games to play on my steam deck because I hadn't touched my switch
| since getting a steam deck. Everything I am now running on my
| steam deck comes from my personal switch. I have been having so
| much fun and loving how my games look on an OLED screen. I also
| appreciate that I didn't have to generate any waste since I
| continue to only have my two devices rather than buying a new
| OLED switch. I was about to go on a shopping spree on the
| Nintendo store to buy more games even though I haven't bought a
| switch game in 2 years. This is disappointing to hear.
|
| The interesting thing to me is the Wii U was sort of like youtube
| premium. Everyone complains about youtube ads yey refuses to pay
| for the ad-free experience. Similarly, I see people complain
| about not being able to buy old Nintendo games, but the Wii U
| eShop provided an abundance of retro games for purchase. Most of
| the retro games I play come from my Wii U. Nintendo has
| disappointingly made it more and more difficult over the years to
| buy their older games, but I suppose when it was easy to do,
| nobody did it unfortunately. All of this would be solved if
| Nintendo simply sold their games and we were allowed to play it
| on whatever hardware we want. But I understand why Nintendo
| doesn't want that and also that many people seem to not want to
| actually pay for the games they play.
| rokkitmensch wrote:
| But in no world can I buy a retro game on arbitrary platform X
| and then also play it on arbitrary platforms P, Q or R.
| parl_match wrote:
| You can do this right now. For example, I have bought retro
| games from gog and humble that included multiple builds for
| different systems and platforms, and no restrictions on where
| you run them - just that you don't distribute them.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > But I understand why Nintendo doesn't want that
|
| This part I really don't understand. Nintendo has clearly got
| the technology at play to run everything at least prior to the
| GameCube on the Switch, ready to roll... but the only way to
| access those games is to pay for a subscription service which
| is already kind of annoying, only to then get a drip-feed of a
| few games every few months, selected by... somebody, no idea
| who, with no real consistency as to what makes the cut and what
| doesn't. It's, by all accounts, completely fucking arbitrary.
|
| I _love_ the Switch, it 's IMO, the best console Nintendo's
| turned out in actual decades, and if I was given the option I
| would buy the _shit_ out of a large library of games from
| previous Nintendo consoles, and given how many 3rd party
| projects have made playing those games on all manner of shit,
| chiefly desktop PCs, a possible thing, I struggle to really
| sympathize with Nintendo here. And again: the groundwork for
| this is already laid. I don 't know how much work goes between,
| for example, taking a SNES title like Super Mario RPG and
| putting it on the Switch's virtual SNES console, but given that
| their virtual SNES has essentially the same features that every
| bog standard SNES emulator has had for over 10 years... you'll
| have to forgive me if I don't think it's much? If any?
|
| I would absolutely understand if they want to playtest each
| game, make sure it's optimized, make sure there's no graphical
| oddities, etc. etc. but like... you can do that. I could do
| that. And hell, if a game made it through with some big glitch,
| give me the option to send your devs a fuckin email about it
| in-game with a dump of the memory at the time it happened so
| they can fix it.
|
| But no, instead, peacemeal releases of games, on a subscription
| service only, that range from absolutely S-tier iconic to...
| what the fuck is this in terms of cultural significance.
| Instead of just a bloody storefront, and let me pick what I
| want, and pay a reasonable price for it. I'd bet anything if
| they charged like $9.99 per game for the entire library of NES,
| SNES, and N64 titles, they'd be absolutely swimming in money.
|
| Like... the big corpos have never understood, this is what gave
| Steam the position they have now. Piracy is work. Hacking
| consoles is work. Installing and playing cracked games is work
| (and risk!). I don't want to work, I want to fucking play
| Donkey Kong. Give me a legal way to give you a reasonable
| amount of money so I can play Donkey Kong! And then I get
| Donkey Kong and you get money! It's the dictionary definition
| of a win/win scenario.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > Piracy is work. Hacking consoles is work. Installing and
| playing cracked games is work (and risk!). I don't want to
| work, I want to fucking play Donkey Kong
|
| It takes work on the side of companies like Nintendo to make
| piracy inconvenient. If Nintendo and others didn't spend
| their resources locking down their consoles and squashing any
| form of piracy that gets too convenient then the easiest way
| to play any game would be to pirate it via some community-
| maintained all-in-one cross-platform game installer and
| launcher with every game ever dumped available. Then Nintendo
| would have no hope of competing with convenience. At a
| minimum they would need some sort of payment and accounting
| system which would introduce friction compared to a free
| piracy frontend. So naturally, Nintendo is not interested in
| engaging in a convenience competition. They want to use the
| law to maintain total control of how their games can be
| played, and then use that granted monopoly to make as much
| money from them as they can. Why sell an older game for a
| reasonable price if you're the only game in town and can
| instead use it as leverage to get people to give you money
| regularly for the privilege of playing it? Even better,
| bundle the game they want with a bunch that they don't and
| several that they kinda-sorta want to play at some point
| maybe? The more you can dilute and confuse the value of a
| purchase the more you can make off it. Ideally you reach a
| point where subscribers feel some nebulous obligation to pay
| you regularly, and the actual service you provide only serves
| as to assuage cognitive dissonance should a subscriber
| consider cancelling. "Oh, but I played Earthbound for a few
| hours last week, and maybe I'll want to get back to that at
| some point, so I guess I'll keep my subscription"
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > It takes work on the side of companies like Nintendo to
| make piracy inconvenient. ... So naturally, Nintendo is not
| interested in engaging in a convenience competition.
|
| Oh, sure, but 9/10ths of that is already done. The eShop
| already exists and distributes purchased DRM-locked content
| to their hardware. That's my point: all the pieces for this
| already exist and are implemented. The only problem is the
| business side that insists on doing this so bizarrely.
|
| > Why sell an older game for a reasonable price if you're
| the only game in town and can instead use it as leverage to
| get people to give you money regularly for the privilege of
| playing it?
|
| I mean, without access to their data I can't say this for
| sure, but I feel like a monthly subscription for these
| games is substantially less money than just selling them as
| is. It feels distinctly like a loss-leader for Nintendo's
| subscription thing so they can buff the numbers of
| subscribers.
|
| > Even better, bundle the game they want with a bunch that
| they don't and several that they kinda-sorta want to play
| at some point maybe? The more you can dilute and confuse
| the value of a purchase the more you can make off it.
|
| I really don't think that rule is as hard and fast as
| you're making it sound. The bundle maybe, sure. But what's
| the value proposition for all the games _not available at
| all,_ purchase or subscription? That 's my real beef is the
| arbitrary and often nonsensical selection process.
|
| > Ideally you reach a point where subscribers feel some
| nebulous obligation to pay you regularly, and the actual
| service you provide only serves as to assuage cognitive
| dissonance should a subscriber consider cancelling. "Oh,
| but I played Earthbound for a few hours last week, and
| maybe I'll want to get back to that at some point, so I
| guess I'll keep my subscription"
|
| But again: just price the Earthbound game according to the
| work required to bring it to the new storefront. Then
| you're already in the black without needing to sell a
| subscription in the first place. And sure you aren't
| continuing to make money off of it, but who's to say you'll
| continue doing that with the subscription? People find them
| irritating and no matter what psychological shit you try
| and pull on them, at some point it's not bad odds they're
| just going to go "I don't need this" and cancel.
| dang wrote:
| Related ongoing thread:
|
| _Yuzu (Nintendo Switch emulator) is dead_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39594795
| schoen wrote:
| I just want to echo what a few people have mentioned here:
|
| The legality of emulation was strongly upheld _under pre-DMCA
| copyright law_ in U.S. court decisions where console makers lost
| against emulator developers.
|
| However, the DMCA gave plaintiffs a whole new set of tools to
| prevent interoperability. Lots of interoperability and emulation
| cases have been lost under the DMCA. The DMCA radically limited
| the prior legal norm that you could create a compatible
| implementation of a proprietary technology from scratch.
|
| If you agree that there should be a right to reimplement a third-
| party version of a proprietary system/technology/format/protocol
| (including one that uses some kind of secrecy to attempt to
| enforce DRM), you should oppose DMCA SS1201.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| The same as in John Deere's case. You can fix your tractor but
| you will break the software patents
| ronsor wrote:
| Reminder that the EFF is challenging section 1201 as
| unconstitutional: https://www.eff.org/cases/green-v-us-
| department-justice
| treyd wrote:
| Is there any updates on this case?
| ronsor wrote:
| A couple of weeks ago the EFF filed a reply brief:
| https://www.eff.org/document/appellants-reply-brief-3
| metalcrow wrote:
| Can you give examples of some of those lost cases? Specifically
| emulation related ones?
| favorited wrote:
| > The legality of emulation was strongly upheld under pre-DMCA
| copyright law in U.S. court decisions where console makers lost
| against emulator developers.
|
| SCEA v. Bleem was filed in 1999, and the DMCA came into effect
| in 1998.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Ah, but the DMCA Section 1201 took effect in 2000-2001. Many
| other DMCA sections were delayed to take effect in the years
| following the law's passing.
| monocasa wrote:
| But the DMCA's 1201 provisions didn't apply to Sony v. Bleem
| since the DRM scheme of the PlayStation didn't attempt to
| stop you from copying, but instead focused on stopping a
| legitimate PS1 from playing copies.
| omoikane wrote:
| I don't think SCEA started the lawsuit because they were sure
| they would win, I think the intent was to make Bleem run out
| of money. "Bleem!, financially unable to
| defend itself, was forced to go out of business."
|
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem%21
| ncann wrote:
| This is sad, but honestly the expected outcome. Not only did they
| receive money from people, which is like the #1 in the not-to-do
| list when you're offering a product in a legally grey area, but
| also they set up a company in the US (TROPIC HAZE LLC), which is
| like a giant target to be sued. An anonymous GitHub repo is by
| contrast much harder to sue.
| Dig1t wrote:
| I had never heard of this emulator before, but after all the news
| of this lawsuit, I looked at their compatibility list and am
| surprised at how many titles are supported and how well this
| seems to work! I'll definitely be giving this emulator a try
| soon.
|
| I think Nintendo is probably shooting themselves in the foot a
| little bit by giving this project more publicity than it
| otherwise would have received.
| Arnavion wrote:
| The /g/ thread about this linked
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240302031159/https://github.co... .
| Would be amusing if true, though it probably isn't.
|
| (It's an issue filed on the yuzu repo by someone claiming to be
| so upset about yuzu dropping Windows 7 support that they sent
| emails to Nintendo to bring it to their attention.)
| archy_ wrote:
| Big companies don't wait for some rando to complain to take
| these kinds of enforcement actions. Chances are it was already
| well underway by the time he typed up his message.
| Arnavion wrote:
| Yeah.
| ronsor wrote:
| We saw a similar and opposite situation with Pokemon fans
| bothering Nintendo to go after Palworld. Considering Nintendo
| released a statement that boiled down to "we already know",
| it's clear that whatever Nintendo does or doesn't do has
| nothing to do with people telling them.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I simply can't get used to the entitlement of gamers, it's on a
| whole nother level. This person writes as if the authors mugged
| their mother, but the problem is "your emu stopped working on
| my computer".
| codetrotter wrote:
| Probably was just a troll anyway that wanted to get a rise
| out of the devs, and never even sent any emails or anything
| in the first place.
|
| "Now I hear news of a lawsuit. Probably from my awareness
| effort, maybe not."
|
| This claim would've been more credible if it was made
| _before_ news about the lawsuit broke.
|
| Thankfully the devs knew how to respond: "Linux would have
| solved your issues just fine."
| neurostimulant wrote:
| So, are Yuzu developers actually have $2.4M lying around, or will
| they pay for it in installment like Gary Bowser?
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| It seems like it's $2.4M from the company Tropic Haze LLC which
| will probably pay what it can and then declare bankruptcy and
| close, so that the developers aren't paying $2.4M.
| honkycat wrote:
| This is a shame.
|
| The Nintendo consoles are JUNK. So much nicer on my PC and one
| less piece of trash I have to keep in my room.
| 1231232131231 wrote:
| I didn't really care for Switch games till the lawsuit. Yuzu runs
| pretty well!
| speps wrote:
| Let's see what'll happen to Ryujinx next...
|
| https://ryujinx.org/
| aquova wrote:
| Unless I'm mistaken, their sister project Citra, a 3DS emulator,
| is also gone now. https://github.com/citra-emu
|
| Only their website remains
| haunter wrote:
| Last official builds https://archive.org/details/citra-latest-
| builds-4th-march-20...
| TillE wrote:
| The installers don't actually work, because wherever they
| hosted the updates is gone.
|
| I see a lot of people on Twitter lamenting that 3DS emulation
| is dead, but Citra was more or less a finished product, and
| third-party builds will undoubtedly be up within hours.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the true reason behind this lawsuit was that the
| Yuzu people were running a company selling (on Patreon) "Early
| Access" to emulator features and access to a private Discord
| where there was A LOT of user-uploaded Switch ROM dumps floating
| around and the moderators (employed by the company charging for
| access) were extremely happy to look the other way.
|
| Also, doesn't Yuzu itself include pre-decrypted ROM dumps from
| the actual Switch hardware, like for example the OS bootloader ?
| It's one thing to build an emulator. It's a very different thing
| to run a company by facilitating piracy. Also, this judgement
| probably won't financially ruin the Yuzu devs, because they (as
| persons) were not sued. But it will probably tank their
| liability-limited company named Tropic Haze LLC. I have a strong
| feeling that if you'd post lossless rips of pre-release cinema
| movies to a private (but paid) discord, you'd get a rather
| similar treatment ;)
|
| EDIT: I mean even the name choice "Tropic Haze" kind of hints at
| sailing the high seas ;)
|
| EDIT2: Straight from the filing: "The lead developer of Yuzu [..]
| has publicly acknowledged most users pirate prod.keys and games
| online"
|
| EDIT3: "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was unlawfully
| distributed a week and a half before its release"
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Thank you for providing the sober explanation of what really
| happened here, I knew there had to be more to it, but didn't
| care enough to dig in.
| bakugo wrote:
| There isn't more to it, that explanation is wrong. See my
| other comments.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| So did they run a discord server where people shared ROMs
| or not? That alone is enough of a woopsie.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| They did, but indirectly by tolerating it, and some files
| are even still online:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39596261
| brookst wrote:
| I mean if you're in the emulator grey area, you can
| position yourself as righteously enabling people who have
| purchased the games, or you can position yourself as a
| way to play the games without paying.
|
| Anything less than a zero tolerance policy for ROM
| trading on the corporate discord server is pretty much a
| declaration of the latter.
| andix wrote:
| It's surprising that someone runs a business like you describe
| in your post from a jurisdiction where Nintendo can actually
| get to them.
|
| I really don't want to support piracy, but there are many
| countries where Nintendo could never get any access to the
| company. And all those countries have the internet too.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I don't think they started with that business model. It's
| more like their users pushed it onto them. And it's very
| difficult to say no once you've started getting used to the
| money flowing in. But they did say in their official
| statement that they "have come to the decision [..] piracy of
| video games [..] should end".
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/yuzu/comments/1b6jvar/end_of_yuzuci.
| ..
|
| But then again, posts like this certainly didn't help their
| case:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/yuzuemulador/comments/17fk9uf/prodk.
| ..
|
| Note that the now-defunct "prod.keys 17.0.0" pointed to a
| file posted in their discord (but not by them).
| bakugo wrote:
| They didn't start with that business model and they didn't
| end with that business model, either. Please stop spreading
| misinformation. The second link in your post isn't even on
| the main yuzu subreddit, it's just a random person on a
| random subreddit posting a link, and it's not from their
| discord.
| bakugo wrote:
| > Yuzu people were running a company selling (on Patreon)
| "Early Access" to emulator features and access to a private
| Discord where there was A LOT of user-uploaded Switch ROM dumps
| floating around and the moderators (employed by the company
| charging for access) were extremely happy to look the other
| way.
|
| This is completely false. The yuzu developers were in no way
| distributing games or keys to the public, and this was not
| stated in the lawsuit.
|
| They were, however, known to distribute games and keys amongst
| themselves in private discord chats for development purposes,
| and this could've been used as evidence against them if they
| tried to fight the case.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| "The yuzu developers were in no way distributing games or
| keys to the public"
|
| I agree. They did not distribute games themselves. But they
| provided a tutorial for ripping games and they were managing
| the discord where the ripped files were uploaded. And they
| were very unsuccessful at removing obviously unauthorized
| game ROM dumps from their discord.
| bakugo wrote:
| > they provided a tutorial for ripping games
|
| Yes, because that's how you legally play your own purchased
| games.
|
| > they were managing the discord where the ripped files
| were uploaded
|
| They were not. You weren't even allowed to mention that you
| pirated a game on their discord, much less post links to
| pirated games. Hell, even posting an emulator log file
| containing a game path pointing to your downloads folder
| was enough to get you warned.
| metalcrow wrote:
| > include pre-decrypted ROM dumps from the actual Switch
| hardware, like for example the OS bootloader
|
| Is that known to be illegal currently? Or is that currently
| still a grey area in the law?
| ronsor wrote:
| Distributing copies of the system bootloader is definitively
| copyright infringement, even without the awful DMCA section
| 1201. That aside, reimplementing the bootloader is legal. I
| haven't dug into the code to see if Yuzu actually is
| redistributing anything.
| Osmose wrote:
| I believe that Yuzu includes a standalone implementation of the
| Switch firmware but can run user-provided firmware because a
| few games have compatibility issues, and it doesn't run
| Nintendo's own OS software (you can't run the Switch system
| menu on it, for example).
|
| But to your larger point: Nintendo being mad about people
| sharing Switch ROMs or Yuzu funding their work shouldn't have
| any bearing on the actual legal question of whether Yuzu
| violates the DMCA anti-circumvention clause. Dolphin argued
| after legal consultation that inclusion of these keys qualifies
| under exceptions for interoperability; Yuzu doesn't include the
| keys at all. It doesn't appear to have been a question tested
| in the courts yet.
|
| That point _does_ matter if you're making a moral argument
| about whether Yuzu crossed a line, but given that emulation has
| been commonplace for almost the entirety of Nintendo's video
| game business and it has done very little to stop them from
| staying on top of the game industry, but has enabled millions
| to experience and be inspired by games they would've otherwise
| never have been able to play, I'm not terribly convinced that
| $23k a month in donations is wrong for people putting in
| serious engineering work into a project that enables that.
| echelon wrote:
| > I'm not terribly convinced that $23k a month in donations
| is wrong for people putting in serious engineering work into
| a project that enables that.
|
| That's not it.
|
| Say what you will about "sales lost to piracy are not sales",
| but Netflix and Steam suggest otherwise.
|
| Kids playing Zelda for free might be spending their
| opportunity cost money on Xbox instead because of what Yuzu
| enabled.
|
| I support hardware and software emulation. The stuff Kaze [1]
| and others do is both amazing and inspiring. It's the correct
| kind of emulation.
|
| Yuzu wasn't acting in good faith. The team saw abuse
| firsthand and embraced it.
|
| [1] https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCuvSqzfO_LV_QzHdmEj84SQ
| rahkiin wrote:
| Netflix, Steam, and Spotify show that the best deterrent
| from piracy is easy access.
|
| Eg I would love to play Zelda or Mario but I do not feel
| like getting a whole switch for it that is just another
| console in the closet used a couple of times per month at
| most.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Netflix, Steam, and Spotify show that the best
| deterrent from piracy is easy access.
|
| Right, and the problem is that piracy in Yuzu is easy.
| Piracy on a real Switch is much harder (you have to track
| down an early model Switch if nothing else).
| Osmose wrote:
| > Kids playing Zelda for free might be spending their
| opportunity cost Money on Xbox instead.
|
| ...I don't follow? You're suggesting businesses have a
| right to attention?
|
| > But Yuzu wasn't acting in good faith. The team saw abuse
| firsthand and embraced it.
|
| As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, they had rules
| against ROM distribution and some of the links shared as
| evidence that they didn't have been by unrelated people.
| echelon wrote:
| > ...I don't follow? You're suggesting businesses have a
| right to attention?
|
| Companies should be able to be paid for their products.
| You have the freedom of taking your money and attention
| elsewhere, but the illicit piracy of these products is
| not good for the labor and capital that went into making
| the product.
|
| In a market of entertainment choices, there are a limited
| number of dollars that can and will be spent. Certain
| people are cheating the system to get free entertainment
| and to double dip.
|
| A gamer that enjoys both Xbox and Nintendo games can get
| two for the price of one by pirating the latter. Even if
| there is equal demand for both products, the supply side
| has been illegally distorted. This doubly lowers the
| competitive fitness of the latter company.
|
| If I bought and paid for the game, I should be free to
| emulate. But that's not what's happening here.
|
| > As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, they had rules
| against ROM distribution and some of the links shared as
| evidence that they didn't have been by unrelated people.
|
| As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, Yuzu embraced
| piracy. They knew it was happening and focused their
| energies on enabling new releases and getting users to
| pay for early access builds.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| > EDIT3: "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, was
| unlawfully distributed a week and a half before its release"
|
| The game was leaked. How is that the fault of the yuzu devs?
| fxtentacle wrote:
| https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/402241866935828490/47.
| ..
|
| That's a list of dumped ROMs. (Posted in 2018, BTW) Notice
| the "402241866935828490" in the URL? That's the ID of the
| #support-dumping channel on the Yuzu Discord. Like I said,
| the Yuzu moderators were very happy to look away when people
| discussed ROM piracy.
| Osmose wrote:
| "Someone posted a screenshot of a separate torrent's
| contents in their server 5+ years ago", with no context
| into why someone posted it or what moderation actions were
| taken in response, is poor evidence to your accusation.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| There's a lot of stuff in that discord that can cause
| trouble for the moderators. Also, how do you think a
| lawyer would interpret this:
|
| moderator: "Since April 29th, we've had about 50,000
| members join"
|
| random person: "Let's be honest, 40k of that was the
| zombie horde who rushed the gates when TotK leaked"
|
| moderator: "The support we've been receiving has been
| incredible Very happy with our community, and we're all
| honored to be able to provide great software to all our
| users."
| nfriedly wrote:
| Wait, "#support-dumping" sounds like it's for helping
| people dump the games they have physical copies of.
| Basically the opposite of piracy.
|
| The screenshot looks like it's of the Internet Archive, but
| all the files are marked as not available for download.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| Also worth noting is that while the "Early Access" changes were
| not kept secret, the Yuzu team went out of its way to make it
| harder than necessary to replicate an equivalent build from the
| public Git repo (there was no public EA branch, just a bunch of
| PRs with a specific tag) and aggressively disapproved of anyone
| actually forking the project or providing unofficial builds.
| They couldn't actually stop anyone under the license, but
| anyone doing so risked being blackballed/banned from official
| spaces, and in one case a Yuzu developer allegedly even altered
| the copyright notice on a contribution because it referenced a
| provider of unofficial EA-equivalent builds [1].
|
| [1]
| https://old.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/ljxnvi/yuzu_stol...
| KomoD wrote:
| > I mean even the name choice "Tropic Haze" kind of hints at
| sailing the high seas ;)
|
| Can you explain how?
| bena wrote:
| A lot of what we think of when we think of pirates is heavily
| influenced by the "golden age of piracy" which was mainly in
| the Caribbean region.
|
| So it's like a second or third order reference, but it's
| there-ish. Pirate -> Caribbean -> Tropical
|
| But there's also likely another explanation that would fit
| just as well, if not better.
| jondwillis wrote:
| Sounds more like a strain of cannabis to me.
| 0x_rs wrote:
| Yuzu developers didn't put themselves in a favorable position
| from the community perspective by doing DMCAs and cease-and-
| desists on people redistributing "early access" builds.. of GPL
| licensed source code. And the CLA drama, and so on. Ryujinx
| isn't affected by the self-proclaimed "necessity of
| productization" of emulation software, and the recent events
| are not surprising. Some might even say they painted a target
| on their back.
| dancemethis wrote:
| It's double as funny because Discord knows of the piracy going
| on (since they have direct access to all user data and
| metadata), but the "rights owners" don't pay them enough in the
| back door to catch them.
| Osmose wrote:
| Shoutout to every Nintendo employee who grew up playing Nintendo
| games on emulators because they couldn't afford them or they
| weren't available anymore having to stay silent while their
| employer ensures that never happens again.
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| How hard would it be to create a gitea repo under a .onion
| address and carry on development in a place outside the control
| of nintendo?
| bakugo wrote:
| Not hard at all, development will definitely be continued to
| some degree but likely not by the original developers, since
| most of them didn't do a great job of obscuring their
| identities and won't want to take the risk.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I hate to say it, but I'm mostly on Nintendo's side here.
|
| I love emulators. I love being able to play old games on my PC,
| and I love being able to play modern Switch games at higher frame
| rates. However, I just don't think we should ignore the fact that
| 99% of Yuzu users are pirating the games they're playing.
|
| Maybe _you_ are personally in the 1% of people who dutifully buys
| every Switch game they play in Yuzu. _You are in a tiny
| minority._
|
| I would feel _very_ differently if Yuzu, say, partnered with a
| company to create Switch game cart readers that connect via USB,
| and the software would only load games which were actually
| plugged in.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I honestly don't think it's 99%
|
| And shutting down development is the wrong thing to do no
| matter what.
|
| > and the software would only load games which were actually
| plugged in
|
| That screws over anyone with a laptop or handheld, who can't
| just put all their games on a nearby shelf.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > That screws over anyone with a laptop or handheld, who
| can't just put all their games on a nearby shelf.
|
| It does. That's life. You don't have an inalienable right to
| play Nintendo games, and this just isn't such an extreme
| inconvenience. It's far _more_ convenient than the current
| actually-legal process of tracking down an early model switch
| and taking the time to mod it and transfer games over, which
| everyone totally pinky swears they actually do.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > That's life. You don't have an inalienable right
|
| You made up this idea. So no it's not.
|
| > taking the time to mod it and transfer games over, which
| everyone totally pinky swears they actually do.
|
| Downloading versus ripping yourself is a dumb technicality
| that most people don't care about. The important part is
| whether you own the game. That's the part Nintendo actually
| cares about too.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > Downloading versus ripping yourself is a dumb
| technicality that most people don't care about. The
| important part is whether you own the game.
|
| Agreed. I just don't believe that the number of people
| doing this is more than a rounding error.
|
| Imagine: You hear that a recent update has made Tears of
| the Kingdom playable in Yuzu! You consider going to your
| favorite piracy site to grab a copy, but you remember
| that you need to actually buy a copy first. It would be
| _morally wrong_ to hit the download button without first
| ordering your $60 piracy-absolution ticket from Amazon: a
| box you will never open as you don 't own a Switch.
|
| I think there are some people who really do this, but I
| think it takes a special type of person. I wouldn't be
| surprised if there were _more_ people who buy Switch
| games to dump them than buy Switch games as piracy
| absolution tickets, because at least in the former case,
| you are physically _using_ your purchase for something.
| Human psychology is relevant here.
|
| There _may_ be a substantial number of people who bought
| Mario Odyssey on release to play on their Switch, and
| downloaded a rom years later to replay in Yuzu. This
| situation cannot apply to new releases.
|
| > That's the part Nintendo actually cares about too.
|
| Nintendo probably cares that people can play their games
| without buying their hardware, regardless of whether the
| game was purchased. But that's their problem. Adversarial
| interoperability is good.
|
| ---
|
| Also, you know what, fine, this theoretical USB cart
| reader doesn't have to stay plugged in. Just plug it in
| once while running Yuzu, and you can play the copied rom
| on that machine indefinitely. Put some cryptographic
| system in place that makes it reasonably difficult to
| transfer the game validation between machines.
|
| The system does not have to be foolproof; if Yuzu's
| developers did this, I'm sure there would still be
| modified builds floating around without that requirement.
| Yuzu's moral responsibility is merely to ensure that
| playing a legitimately purchased game is _substantially
| easier_ than playing a pirated one.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| Yuzu was GPL licensed. Where there was one Yuzu, there will now
| be 100 Yuzu's.
| favorited wrote:
| And 0 of them with any Tropic Haze developers.
| syspec wrote:
| From the "Final Judgment" and "Permanent Injunction" documents
|
| > [yuzu]
|
| > yuzu, in its current form, will cease to exist.
|
| > Their settlement with Nintendo prohibits any distribution of
| yuzu in built and source code form. Development must also stop.
|
| > The yuzu website and related services will also be shut down.
|
| Source:
| https://twitter.com/OatmealDome/status/1764715696250843321
| privacyking wrote:
| If you're backing up stuff, you should also clone / grab the
| latest releases for TegraRcmGUI, Hekate, Atmosphere,
| Lockpick_RCM, NDDumpTool, nxDumpFuse, and TegraExplorer - all of
| which are also scheduled to be deleted
| comex wrote:
| Source?
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