Nintendo's Legal Hitlist Grows | Hacker News Reader

Nintendo's Legal Hitlist Grows

fandomwire.com

The article implies that the emulator project lead may have received some sort of monetary compensation from Nintendo as part of the agreement. It would be interesting to verify that, because it feels like something quite new if they tried that tactic and it worked.

The article also implies that emulator projects are legal, but given that modern systems likely use encryption as part of their privacy prevention process, I'm not so sure about that anymore (see the DeCSS fiasco).

"privacy prevention process"

that's one of those typos that's also correct.

I think the source for this is their discord (via reddit [1])

It doesn't mention money, but certainly an agreement from someone that seemed to personally know the project lead.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Ryujinx/comments/1ftvi13/posted_via...

If so, that would open the door to various offensive legal tactics, primarily a similar legal claim as used against Google in maintaining a monopoly. It would require establishing that the relevant market is Switch game hardware, but we've seen evidence that the courts will accept such market definitions, e.g. Apple/iPhone.

[dupe]

More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711709

The main subject of the article seems to have come to an amicable agreement with Nintendo, but for all of the “copyright infringement enabling tools” that do get forcibly taken down, the way to avoid that just seems so obvious to me. The emulators, or DRM bypassing tools, or whatever, all seem to get tripped up by the marketing. Releasing emulators or DRM cracks is protected speech and not a copyright violation, but releasing the same tool and saying “this is a tool for enabling copyright violation, here’s how you use it to commit copyright violations” just makes you a party to the subsequent copyright violations that it might be used for. I’m paraphrasing, but that’s basically how a lot of them get taken down. Just releasing your tools without all the legally dubious explanation seems to be such an obvious risk avoidance strategy.

Did he though? What if the kind offer he got was along the lines of "please delete all of your stuff tomorrow and we won't destroy your life? Thanks".

It doesn't say what the agreement was, but I can tell you from experience that the prospect of being legally steamrolled is not pleasant.

Do not forget that the Switch ROMs have encryption on them, and Ryujinx seemed to have some way of decoding them.

And publishing software that decodes encrypted Switch ROMs is protected speech and not a copyright violation. Releasing it accompanied by a statement that said something to the effect of "here's some software that decodes encrypted Switch ROMs which you can use to pirate Switch games" makes you a party to the copyright violation. Just like I'm legally allowed to provide you with a hammer, but if I accompany that with the statement "here's something you can use to murder your neighbour" all of a sudden I'm a party to a crime.

That's not entirely correct.

DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent technological protection measures that control access to copyrighted works. Bypassing these measures can be considered a violation.

Court cases have often ruled against the First Amendment protections, ruling that publishing software to bypass encrypted is not encrypted. This is like handing someone a gun, and then watching them commit a crime. You're suddenly a party to it, even if you never encouraged or endorsed the illegal act.

Cases such as Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley and MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. have upheld the enforcement of the DMCA in situations where software was designed to circumvent encryption or other digital rights management technologies. These cases indicate that creating and distributing decryption tools for copyrighted materials (such as Switch ROMs) would likely not be protected speech.

So, there is precedence.

Also note that the decryption keys are not built-in. Not like they made it hard to work, but I think it's an important distinction.

or simply going dark and releasing updates along with a public key to verify authenticity of the author making the contributions as a torrent and not on any governed site that can receive take down notices.

Is www.NintendoHitlist.com not already a website that lists every lawsuit Nintendo has files with a dedicated section to threatened to sue company's?

Cuz that would be as good as that website that tracks every project google killed

Nintendo isn't just attacking emulators [video]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41762397

"reminder that Nintendo is made out of pure evil"

If that was the case, why do you want to replicate their walled garden so urgently?

There's so many YouTube videos on how to play ripped Switch games on SteamDeck that I would be truly surprised if that didn't affect cross-platform sales numbers. So maybe Nintendo is even being pressured themselves by their developer/publisher partners.

And those Yuzu people were happily looking the other way when people posted pictures of FTP servers and their ROM lists in the official discord. I wouldn't be surprised if this emulator had a similar type of users.

I'm conflicted about this because I want to see old games preserved. But "preserving" Zelda a few weeks before its official release painted a huge target on that crowd.

"Boohoo Nintendo is evil for not allowing me to pirate their current console and games" is such a ridiculous rationale, and I think it is very much counter productive to game preservation.

Once people started emulating their current console, Nintendo should absolutely use every legal mean to shut it down, and the awful copyright laws we have in place results in an outreach. More than any other company, they live and die by their IP, which is extremely valuable. What exactly people expected Nintendo to do?

The emulation scene had been going strong for a long time, but it was always older generation consoles being emulated, games that were not supported anymore, etc. The morons that went for current games, "emulating" (actually pirating) games that were recently released, and so on are the ones threatening all of that. Nintendo is far from wrong.

And I say all this as someone that loves emulation. I am a retro gamer at heart, even if I also play some contemporary stuff. Obviously I am someone that thinks game preservation is important.

I also hate copyright laws as they are. IMO, the laws should allow distribution of old games (and by old I mean 20+ years), and be clearer on what constitutes fair use.

Oh well.

Damn, poor Paco Gutierrez with his cardboard supermario game must be trembling now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com