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Nintendo blitzes GitHub with over 8k emulator-related DMCA takedowns

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Re: Nintendo blitzes GitHub with over 8k emulator-related DMCA takedowns

#111

Post by miohtama »

The solution is decentralised Github:

https://radicle.xyz

Radicle gives a decentralised Git network that is much more immune to any legal action.

This makes it much more difficult for Nintendo to take such action. Because it is a civil dispute, not a criminal one, the trick is to make it more costly for Nintendo to abuse the legal system (it is unlikely the legal system abuse will be fixed in long term, or ever). When DMCA and such laws were designed, it is unlikely the lawmakers intended it to be abused like this. There is no penalty for Nintendo to do as many takedown notes they want, whileas there is a headache for anyone involved in these projects to defend themselves.

Re: Nintendo blitzes GitHub with over 8k emulator-related DMCA takedowns

#112

Post by brigade »

humzashahid98 wrote: post #43
emodendroket wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emulators per se are not illegal. Most likely.

If emulators in general were illegal, Nintendo would be in trouble too and would be obliged to remove the emulated games it sells on the Virtual Console.

Well no, any theory of emulators being illegal would be under the DMCA, which bans DRM circumvention without the authority of the copyright owner. But Nintendo is selling games with said authority, so it wouldn't apply.

Re: Nintendo blitzes GitHub with over 8k emulator-related DMCA takedowns

#113

Post by ThatPlayer »

amelius wrote: post #70
pprotas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, it says it right there: No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201 Can the emulators remove the circumvention code to avoid the DMCA takedown?

Not even for research purposes?

There are exemptions that get updated by the Library of Congress every few years. The current one is from 2021: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-10-28/pdf/2021-2...

You get a few exemptions for research for security reasons, but it does require it to be on "a lawfully acquired device or machine on which the computer program operates solely". So an emulator doesn't fit the bill at all.

Video games are mentioned: you're allowed to circumvent DRM for games that no longer have their online servers running.

Re: Nintendo blitzes GitHub with over 8k emulator-related DMCA takedowns

#115

Post by anilakar »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #84
anthk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overriding DMCA it's legal for interoperation purposes.

IANAL; Afaik only in the EU, it even allows non-cleanroom reverse engineering.

EU resident here. Reverse engineering in general is allowed, but decompiling software adds a good number of restrictions[1].

Disclaimer: I have talked to lawyers. Our company makes industrial IoT loggers and during my career I have only been given appropriate documentation twice by manufacturers. Most of the systems have been reverse engineered through packet capture.

[1] https://vidstromlabs.com/blog/the-legal-boundaries-of-revers...

Re: Nintendo blitzes GitHub with over 8k emulator-related DMCA takedowns

#116

Post by stavros »

miohtama wrote: post #111

The solution is decentralised Github: https://radicle.xyz Radicle gives a decentralised Git network that is much more immune to any legal action. This makes it much more difficult for Nintendo to take such action. Because it is a civil dispute, not a criminal one, the trick is to make it more costly for Nintendo to abuse the legal system (it is unlikely the legal system abuse will be fixed in long term, or ever). Whe…

The solution is legal reform, because these laws are bullshit.

Re: Nintendo blitzes GitHub with over 8k emulator-related DMCA takedowns

#117

Post by edub »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #91
marci wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are probably talking about a "serverless" bittorrent. Some kind of Git-over-DHT. It would require this to be accepted: http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0050.html (Decentralized Mutable Torrent)

Ooh, I really like this idea! A decentralized form of pub-sub based git sounds fantastic. Of course, much of what makes github et.al. desirable, is the extras on top. Pull Requests, Issues, Wiki, search, etc. Making a “local first” decentralized GitHub would be much work.

Check out Fossil SCM, from the creator of SQLite.

Re: Nintendo blitzes GitHub with over 8k emulator-related DMCA takedowns

#118

Post by ThatPlayer »

weinzierl wrote: post #39
pprotas wrote: post #30

Why are emulators illegal? I understand that they are associated with piracy because people play pirates games on them. But it’s like banning BitTorrent because it allows you to pirate, or Windows because you can play pirates games on it as well. The article mentions that emulators “illegally circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and run illegal copies of Switch games.”. But which law makes it illeg…

This is a good question. In addition to an answer, if someone could give a high level but technical overview about how the Nintendo Switch encryption works and how the emulators work around it I'd be grateful.

DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent DRM. Whether or not it's good DRM is irrelevant. The classic example would be DVDs that are encrypted with CSS and 40-bit keys. Because you need to be able to decrypt the DVD to be able to play the video, if your software doesn't have permission to playback (encrypted) DVDs, you're circumventing DRM. A DVD ripping software maker has lost this in court: https://w.wiki/9yNu

So like how DVDs are encrypted, all Switch games are encrypted. Except with good AES encryption and proper key sizes. This started with games in the Wii/PS3 generation, so emulators for systems before that would be fine.

Also I've now learned that wikipedia has a URL shortener. Because Hacker News eats the period at the end of the wikipedia article title.

Re: Nintendo blitzes GitHub with over 8k emulator-related DMCA takedowns

#119

Post by filleduchaos »

unixhero wrote: post #78
josephh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you make this kind of claim, please make sure to 1) disclose whether you're a lawyer, and 2) your jurisdiction.

No. This is not legally binding. This is not the United States Of America where we speak officially, this is a random web forum.

I think the point is that the audience might like to know whether confident claims that something is legal or illegal are backed by actual expertise or just vibes, not that things people say on a web forum are legally binding.

Re: Nintendo blitzes GitHub with over 8k emulator-related DMCA takedowns

#120

Post by bloqs »

miohtama wrote: post #111

The solution is decentralised Github: https://radicle.xyz Radicle gives a decentralised Git network that is much more immune to any legal action. This makes it much more difficult for Nintendo to take such action. Because it is a civil dispute, not a criminal one, the trick is to make it more costly for Nintendo to abuse the legal system (it is unlikely the legal system abuse will be fixed in long term, or ever). Whe…

This is the same old story though, and nerds dont get this right: what about all the viruses/child porn games and other heinous shit people will host there? Decentralisation is only as good as its moderation and unpaid moderation is a hell of a weak link
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