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Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu

overkill.wtf

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Re: Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu

#211

Post by zerocrates »

boolemancer wrote: post #47
fzeroracer wrote: post #6

Looking over the legal document, realistically, their arguments are so damaging from a software perspective that they should lose. IANAL, but from skimming the legal document: The two major notions are that Yuzu violates Nintendo's copyright [1] by allowing people to play unauthorized copies [2]. In order to do so it allows for bypassing Nintendo's encryption (by taking in the keys, it does not embed the keys in the…

> [4] "On information and belief, Yuzu users have (1) dumped Nintendo games they have lawfully purchased and copied the game ROMs into Yuzu; and (2) obtained Nintendo games online from pirate websites and copied those game ROMs into Yuzu. Each such reproduction constitutes a violation of 17 U.S.C. § 501(a) for which Plaintiff is entitled to damages under 17 U.S.C. § 504 and injunctive relief under § 502" How on earth…

There's a concept of "contributory" infringement: while you're not personally infringing the copyright, you know about the infringement and you're helping it, encouraging it, and so on. This is what the studios sued Sony under for the Betamax. Of course, they lost, and that precedent is helpful for Yuzu, though not a total slam dunk: what they wrote on their website in terms of marketing and instructions and so on could matter here, what the devs wrote to each other or publicly that might reveal their knowledge and encouragement of infringement could matter, etc.

More significant is that the Betamax case is from the 80s and precedes the DMCA. The DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions are broad and have been interpreted broadly. The result is that the decryption is a problem all on its own, regardless of things like fair use that were a major factor in Sony's victory.

It's worth noting that Nintendo's first three claims are DMCA section 1201 anti-circumvention claims, with the other claims of personal infringement by the developers and contributory infringement (where the part you quoted is from) being kind of tacked on at the end.

Re: Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu

#212

Post by infotainment »

MyFedora wrote: post #184
jamesear wrote: post #139

The only comment of someone saying they had used Yuzu for piracy has been flagged, and is no longer visible. This might HN readers a skewed perspective on how much Yuzu is used for piracy. I have many acquaintances/friends in different circles, with the means to pay, who use Yuzu for piracy. There are dedicated forums of people who coordinate on how to do this. Emulation is great as a means to study or play backups,…

I don't think Nintendo's argument that Yuzu's primary use case is piracy holds any merit. Nintendo is quite literally a part of the reason why people pirate Switch games they already own. What do you have to do to legally play Switch games on Yuzu? Oh, idk... * Jailbreak your Switch. * Dump your decryption keys. * Dump your games. * Never update your Switch ever again. * Pray Nintendo doesn't shove an update down you…

I feel like you’re undermining your own argument here. Yes, it’s exceedingly complex to “legally” play your own games on Yuzu. This bolsters the argument that Yuzu is primarily targeting users of pirated content, because essentially no one would bother doing all those steps you listed.

Re: Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu

#213

Post by zucker42 »

Two paragraphs into the legal complaint[1], Nintendo says such BS as:

> A video game emulator is a piece of software that allows users to unlawfully play pirated video games that were published only for a specific console on a general-purpose computing device

[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/709016504/Nintendo-of-Americ...

Re: Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu

#215

Post by chungy »

Mad_ad wrote: post #124
TillE wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canoe (their SNES emulator) is definitely their own creation, it's very limited and can mostly only run the games they've released with it. I think it has some similar bugs to ZSNES, but that's just because they're both crappy low-accuracy emulators.

iirc they used a open-source emu on their snes/nes mini

Nintendo's NES/SNES emulators have always been their own in-house tools. The NES/SNES Classic consoles did run on Linux, and Nintendo published the operating system source code as required by the software licenses, appropriately. The emulators are not part of the source release, and very likely derived from the same ones used on Wii virtual console (possibly older, Animal Crossing had a NES emulator on the GameCube too).

There's a popular myth floating around that Nintendo downloaded Super Mario Bros. off the internet only to sell it back to players via the Wii virtual console, but I'm only comfortable with calling it a myth because it's based on the fact that the embedded iNES file in the VC release is identical to iNES files you can find online. There's only one standalone version of Super Mario Bros. on the NES, and you can trivially recreate an exact file on your very own if you have the cartridge and a ROM dumping utility. It's a pretty good possibility that Nintendo created their virtual ROM in exactly the same fashion. The iNES format itself is very simple, and Nintendo hired the iNES developer to work on their in-house software; he could have easily just brought that same format into their official projects. (EDIT: This last sentence appears to have been another myth I bought into, see the reply to this comment.)

Re: Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu

#216

Post by zucker42 »

jamesear wrote: post #139

The only comment of someone saying they had used Yuzu for piracy has been flagged, and is no longer visible. This might HN readers a skewed perspective on how much Yuzu is used for piracy. I have many acquaintances/friends in different circles, with the means to pay, who use Yuzu for piracy. There are dedicated forums of people who coordinate on how to do this. Emulation is great as a means to study or play backups,…

Hammers are used for theft, as well. Even if Nintendo's business would benefit from emulators not existing[1], it doesn't mean we should ban emulators (or create laws which allow multinationals to sue open source emulator projects out of existence).

[1] which is not necessarily true

Re: Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu

#217

Post by balls187 »

skeaker wrote: post #165
threeseed wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yuzu can be blamed for TotK piracy But they can be legally blamed for not taking any steps to prevent it. Which means there are two avenues for Nintendo to attack this situation.

Seems a bit silly. Could you sue Microsoft because they did nothing to prevent death threats from being written in Word or sent over Outlook?

That’s an argument to make.

Jennifer Crumbley was found guilty of manslaughter for doing nothing to prevent her son from shooting up his school.

That was criminal court with a much higher standard than a civil case.

Nintendo has consistently been one of the strongest protectors of their IP, and a defense that says “We tell users not to commit piracy” is about as effective as a sex workers disclaimer that “money is exchanged for time.”

Re: Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu

#218

Post by johnnyanmac »

toast0 wrote: post #105
johnnyanmac wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Does Nintendo benefit that much from the sales of the Switch hardware? It just all seems so wasteful given that every computer is basically the same nowadays. Yes? They have a closed down system that they market as family friendly and can be quickly docked to a tv or taken on the go. It's a device that didn't really exist at the time; its potential competitors in 2017 were Chinese hardware charging 2-3 times the pri…

> They have a closed down system that they market as family friendly How can it be family friendly when they sell Night Trap? [1] Night Trap was part of the content that resulted in video game ratings and was given a M rating contemperaneously, I'm not sure if the bar moved, or maybe there's some content change. Of course, in 1992, Nintendo said Night Trap would never be on a Nintendo console, so something has change…

Marketed as family friendly doesn't mean every single game on the system is rated E/PEGI 7. Disney has the same image and also technically publishes Deadpool, among a variety of R rated media.

But yes, in the beginning they were a lot more strict on that marketing. I'm guessing after 2-3 decades both companies can allow a few indirect exceptions as they expand past universal audiences and into niches.

Re: Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu

#219

Post by catwoe »

tombert wrote: post #146

Yuzu is open source isn’t it? Nintendo can’t be completely incompetent here; if they get Yuzu shut down someone will inevitably fork it, and they have to know this. Presumably this is a play to try and establish precedent. They know that this lawsuit means nothing in itself, even if they win, but it can then be used to go after Retroarch or Higan or Mupen64 or Dolphin. This is bad.

I honestly cannot wrap my head around the need for an LLC. It's an open source project, why would you need a company?

Re: Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu

#220

Post by earthwalker99 »

codedokode wrote: post #95

> As a result, Nintendo ... is demanding that the Yuzu emulator is shut down. When corporations like Uber violate multiple laws, do they get shut down? When Amazon treats its employees poorly, does it get shut down? When Google forbids manufacturers to pre-install competitor apps, does it get shut down? Well, it seems that as long as copyright is not infringed, everything is ok. Also it seems to me that Nintendo migh…

The definition of capitalism is literally a system of economic relations that prioritizes the right to leverage one's existing capital to accumulate more capital, above everything else and indefinitely.
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