171–180 of 186 posts
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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.
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https://radicle.xyz/
close but it does not use Bittorrent for the P2P part?
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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.
Not just modern consoles. Nintendo has had ‘security’ hardware built in since the NES (the CIC chip)
A NES clone without a CIC will play games fine.
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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?
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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.
The reason might be that you are being a complete hypocrite?
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Isn't the whole emulator a circumvention? It circumvents the hardware which "effectively controls access to a work", which is the console itself.
Not exactly. Clean room reimpmentations are fine, and has been upheld in court. I think the copyright office even has a published exemption for it. The issue is when you bypass encryption keys and systems.
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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 menti…
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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?
> that effectively controls access Not very effective, is it? I assume this means something else in lawyer speak.
i.e. you cannot put a piece of paper in the box with the words "this is a technical protection mechanism" and claim it is.
But it doesn't mean that what you do has to be infailable, or meet some arbitrary level of doing it's job well, no.
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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?
That didn't get tested in court, but I suspect it would have succeeded (this is not legal advice).
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US copyright tends to be less restrictive and more relaxed than many other countries.
The DMCA is crazy though, you can just request a takedown and the onus is on the host. And then if it turns out you didn't actually have the right to do that... well that has to be sorted out later.