Comment by superchroma | Hacker News Reader

Comment by superchroma | Hacker News Reader

This isn't software development, it's a war, and people need to get militant about guerilla software distribution because Nintendo and friends aren't stopping (this applies to fangames, hacks, tools, etc.). They have more lawyers and money than anyone has time to rightly fight using conventional means, and hitting people with casual lawsuits continues to work as a deterrent due to America's utter disinterest in protecting the rights of the individual against corporations.

Release software anonymously.

Use torrents. Avoid GitHub and mainstream services. Use usernames you don't associate with. Don't use your real name or link it to your real life. If you're desperate for attribution, divide it up so a library is on your GitHub but the app is not.

People need to examine what matters more to them, credit or doing the thing they're doing, and adjust accordingly, because in such cases it seems like you can either have the latter or neither at all of the two.

Even better, publish info and torrents on I2P.

I would like to remind everyone reading this that we're mainly talking about playing certain video games without paying for them.

My thought exactly.

The freedom of individuals clearly stops at illegal acts.

are you just saying this tautologically or is it a statement about civil disobedience or about your personal beliefs relating legality vs. morality

Playing a game you haven't bought is illegal, there is no grey area here.

"Here, take this I have played enough"

What about playing a game that you have bought, but emulated on a different platform?

Illegal acts are the source of most freedoms derived in our modern world. When a law is unjust, it is not only acceptable, but duty to ignore or even publicly trangress.

Sure, but playing a game you haven't bought is clearly illegal, there is no grey area there.

The very tools that Nintendo is trying to take down with these DMCA requests can also be used to play games you bought on other platforms. Much of the Switch homebrew scene now is focused on making the emulators work well on platforms like the Steam Deck and PCs more generally because Nintendo’s hardware is so insanely dated that its first party games run better on other devices.

> Nintendo’s hardware is so insanely dated that its first party games run better on other devices.

Of course, you could say exactly the same thing about Microsoft or Sony's hardware - the only difference is the Switch is more dated and its games run better on more devices.

This is is certainly not true for Sony. Ports for PlayStation games to the PC are notorious for running horribly and often never get fixed.

No, we're talking about tools that can be used for piracy. There's a difference.

But we are also taking about tools that are used for piracy >90% of the time.

Which, dangerously, can place things in legal danger. There are legitimate uses for, say, nitroglycerin - but >90% of uses will be illegal and it’s illegal to possess for that reason. Same could be argued for being the approach of some countries to guns. Same in some states for car radar scanners.

I think the emulator developers really do need to consider actually doing something to combat piracy in the long-term, or Nintendo may actually be successful banning it.

One could have said much the same about the iPod.

Or YouTube, if we're picking examples.

> But we are also taking about tools that are used for piracy >90% of the time.

guessing guns manufactures should be liable given the mass shootings in certain trigger-happy places.

> I think the emulator developers really do need to consider actually doing something to combat piracy in the long-term,

surprised that nintendo has not attempted to get dolphin shutdown, with all past attempts of negotiation between third-party developers and big companies [e.g nintendo] have gotten nowhere what do you suggest?

"guessing guns manufactures should be liable given the mass shootings in certain trigger-happy places"

What? What an off-base analogy.

I feel like it's an apt analogy if you're not from the US.

> surprised that nintendo has not attempted to get dolphin shutdown

My guess is that they care about Switch emulation because it's their current console. A Switch emulator actively harms sales of new units and games - and keep in mind, in comparison to Sony and MS, Nintendo is small. They live and die by their IPs and by selling consoles and games.

Dolphin emulates old hardware, that is not produced anymore. They also don't seem that worried about NDS and 3DS emulation and jailbreaking for that matter.

> Dolphin emulates old hardware, that is not produced anymore. They also don't seem that worried about NDS and 3DS emulation and jailbreaking for that matter.

dolphin was able to boot and play some wii games relatively in the middle of commercial sale [2009-2010] so not a rule either.

Someone else's intent to use something illegally should not preclude me from using it legally.

Nor should the creators of said thing be responsible for the misuse of others.

If Nintendo doesn't want their games pirated, they should go after people distributing and downloading the ROMs for those games.

People emulating games they own is a huge market, even if technically they violate things by not ripping it themselves.

> I think the emulator developers really do need to consider actually doing something to combat piracy in the long-term, or Nintendo may actually be successful banning it.

Emulator developers already scrupulously avoid providing any copyrighted game files or even purely functional firmware. On their forums and comment sections, they prohibit asking for or providing links to copyrighted content. For current systems like the Switch, they provide step‐by‐step instructions for how to dump personal copies of legitimately licensed software.

What “something” do you suggest they do? Because Nintendo has openly stated in their copyright FAQs for decades that they consider even creating one’s own personal backups to be unauthorized and illegitimate use of their exclusive intellectual property.

The reality is, there is no step they could take that would make Nintendo happy. Instead, emulator developers do the next best thing (rather, the better thing): keep their actions generally within the confines of current law.

There's no chance these tools would exist if they didn't enable piracy. Almost nobody would care. The other applications are excuses we hide behind.

They're not going to stop pursuing this long after the games are out of print, based on previous experience.

Just want to play the games I own at better than 540p.

expanding: I played Metroid Dread on my Switch, and being a fan of the series, enjoyed it through the end.

A while later I saw a streamer playing the game at 4X resolution, and was blown away at how much better the game looked. I watched them play the whole thing just to experience how good the game looks without jaggies everywhere.

I wish my Nintendo Game License included a clause that allowed me to use an alternative rendering path for their game code. I already paid for the license; just let me run it on better hardware if I have the opportunity.

Reposting from a thread down below, but how are you drawing this conclusion? I've never really understood the close tie between emulation and piracy.

With the exception of the new switch emulators, most emulators are emulating gaming experiences that existed decade(s) ago. I don't know a single person who would download a gamecube emulator to pirate a game they've never played before, people use emulators to re-experience the games they played(and owned) a long time ago.

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