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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

#151

Post by bilvar »

jMyles wrote: post #103
bilvar wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, what an absurd notion they have that they must get paid for their (excellent) work.

If their work warranted the prices they want to charge, they wouldn't need an elaborate state apparatus to buttress their business model. The same is true of the west Nashville music-finance complex. And of Hollywood. And of every industry rent-seeking around the restrictions on speech and press which are branded as "intellectual property". This just happens to be a transparently egregious example, as they are litera…

Can you elaborate how not wanting you to pirate the games they spent tons of money and labor in making is "rent-seeking" and a restriction on free speech? It seems like a stretch.

"This just happens to be a transparently egregious example, as they are literally trying to censor a FOSS project and make its contributors' speech invisible / illegal"

Give me a break. The only reason this software was FOSS, was for the creators to receive protection from useful idiots like you. We all know that the purpose of this project was to profit from piracy.

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

#152

Post by jMyles »

bilvar wrote: post #151
jMyles wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If their work warranted the prices they want to charge, they wouldn't need an elaborate state apparatus to buttress their business model. The same is true of the west Nashville music-finance complex. And of Hollywood. And of every industry rent-seeking around the restrictions on speech and press which are branded as "intellectual property". This just happens to be a transparently egregious example, as they are litera…

Can you elaborate how not wanting you to pirate the games they spent tons of money and labor in making is "rent-seeking" and a restriction on free speech? It seems like a stretch. "This just happens to be a transparently egregious example, as they are literally trying to censor a FOSS project and make its contributors' speech invisible / illegal" Give me a break. The only reason this software was FOSS, was for the cr…

At some level, isn't the whole exercise of characterizing the copying of bytes as "piracy" just a way to justify invasive state policy?

We can observe that the nature of information is that it is free to copy. This is not a new observation; the myth of Prometheus tells us of this nature, and of the power that the gods foolishly attempt to shore up by pretending that it can't be copied.

Of course I agree that solid games are worth money, but if you have to avert your eyes to the entire evolution of the way information propagates in the universe in order to achieve that, you've gone down an incorrect path.

And yes, building entire media empires designed to leverage your right to distribute bytes as you see fit, while prohibiting others from distributing them under threat of violence, is most certainly rent-seeking.

The silly fiction that someone "owns" that information because of a previous historical event is not in keeping with any part of nature that I'm able to observe.

What makes anyone think that on sufficiently long time scales the internet will continue to abide this?

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

#153

Post by vegetablepotpie »

fuu_dev wrote: post #77
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?

DMCA § 1201 makes reverse engineering modern consoles illegal. Any modern game console has some form of decryption, which can be argued to prevent access. This is when we run into the chicken/egg problem because you can't write emulation without violating 1201. It is also in part the argumentation Nintendo used in the yuzu case.

One argument that I’d like to see made is that DMCA takedown requests, which are intended to enforce copyright is the wrong enforcement mechanism because the 9th Circuit, in SONY v. CONNECTIX said that the functional aspects of emulation can only be protected under patent law.

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

#154

Post by bilvar »

jMyles wrote: post #152
bilvar wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate how not wanting you to pirate the games they spent tons of money and labor in making is "rent-seeking" and a restriction on free speech? It seems like a stretch. "This just happens to be a transparently egregious example, as they are literally trying to censor a FOSS project and make its contributors' speech invisible / illegal" Give me a break. The only reason this software was FOSS, was for the cr…

At some level, isn't the whole exercise of characterizing the copying of bytes as "piracy" just a way to justify invasive state policy? We can observe that the nature of information is that it is free to copy. This is not a new observation; the myth of Prometheus tells us of this nature, and of the power that the gods foolishly attempt to shore up by pretending that it can't be copied. Of course I agree that solid ga…

Ah I see, you've created an entire ideobabble to justify free-riding, on an absurd premise as well that "We can observe that the nature of information is that it is free to copy". This is the equivalent of "We can observe that the nature of animals is to kill each other for calories, so it's morally justified to murder other people and eat them."

I'm done.

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

#155

Post by plg94 »

why over 8k??? The linked [dmca notice](https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2024/04/2024-04-2...) lists exactly 12 repos, not 8000. Where did they get this info from?

edit: ah, the number of 8,535 is in the beginning of the notice itself, but due to the large number they did not list all of the forks, I guess the listed ones are the only non-forked repos.

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

#156

Post by vundercind »

filleduchaos wrote: post #119
unixhero wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There’ve been lawsuits. Anything can happen in court, but emulators are currently about as settled as “legal” as anything. Including commercial ones. Sure, in the US.

Can’t distribute games or other copyrighted software with them, though. Of course that’s still highly likely to get you in trouble. And with the same caveat as anything legal in the US: it’s as legal as your ability to weather a series of failing lawsuits against you.

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

#157

Post by fidelramos »

TheNewAndy wrote: post #124
fidelramos wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just" a slow database that allows coordinated writes in a decentralized way, effectively solving the Byzantine Generals problem. That's what made Bitcoin a novel idea.

How does it solve the Byzantine generals problem?

By proof-of-work consensus. This makes attacks costly, basically they have to spend more resources than half the network, hence the name "51% attack".

The Bitcoin whitepaper [0] is a very accesible read, but the revolutionary ideas are not immediately obvious.

[0] https://www.bitcoin.com/bitcoin.pdf

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

#158

Post by malka »

bilvar wrote: post #150
malka wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh they deserve it. But, as a player, I feel deeply hated by them. And i Do not give money to people who hate me.

It's a perfectly reasonable position to not give them your money. I thought we were talking about pirating their games though, which is worlds apart from voting with your wallet.

They are not getting my money anyway.

However, I do not see any good reason to not enjoy their games. Yeah, if everyone does as I do, they go bankrupt. I do not care. Try not to be hated by people using your product, I guess.

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

#159

Post by weinzierl »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #118
weinzierl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Yes, but how does that apply to the Nintendo Switch and Yuzu. Did they actually extract the AES key from real hardware and include it in the emulator?

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

#160

Post by amelius »

fuu_dev wrote: post #77
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?

DMCA § 1201 makes reverse engineering modern consoles illegal. Any modern game console has some form of decryption, which can be argued to prevent access. This is when we run into the chicken/egg problem because you can't write emulation without violating 1201. It is also in part the argumentation Nintendo used in the yuzu case.

Ok, what if the emulator that is distributed is not functional, but to make it into a functional emulator, you have to (1) compile it, OR (2) make small modifications to it (that are distributed through a different channel), or both.
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