• VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          By going after the encryption and decryption part rather than the hardware and software emulation part. And having a massive amount of money to spend on lawyers.

        • smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de
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          7 months ago

          Having much greater lawyer force than a couple of developers. Nintendo would win even if they are not right. Or even if not win, those developers would go completely bancrupt for the rest of their lifes because of lawyers costs.

          • LittleBorat2@lemmy.ml
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            7 months ago

            Couldn’t they outsource that decryption part to someone who is more grey area and incognito than the emulator devs?

            Just make it possible to add this to the Emu and focus their development on the emu itself

            • AnyOldName3@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              Circumventing DRM is illegal under the DMCA, but the DMCA has an exception saying you’re allowed to ignore parts of the DMCA if it’s for purposes of interoperability between different computer systems. It’s that exception that makes emulators legal in the first place. However, there’s no case law setting a precedent as to whether the DRM circumvention prohibition or interoperability exception wins when both apply.

              That means that the decryption is in a grey area if it’s part of an emulator, but definitely illegal if it isn’t.

              We also don’t know if this is an argument Nintendo relied on to stop Yuzu. Their initial court documents claimed things like emulators being totally illegal and only invented for piracy, which weren’t true, and they settled out of court, so the public can’t see what the final nail in the coffin was. It could simply be that they’d make Yuzu’s position expensive to defend with spurious delays until they were bankrupt or shut down and gave them all their money, which doesn’t require Nintendo to be legally in the right.

              Not long before this, Dolphin’s Steam release was cancelled because Nintendo asked Valve to block it, so the Dolphin team double checked they were entirely above board with their lawyers. Despite Dolphin containing the decryption keys from a real Wii, and using them to decrypt Wii games, they were confident it wasn’t at risk. The keys are an example of a so-called illegal number, but they’re generally believed to not actually be illegal (hence the Wikipedia article about them featuring several examples). The decryption should be safe as the lawyers thought that if push came to shove, the interoperability exception would beat the DRM circumvention prohibition.

        • macniel@feddit.de
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          7 months ago

          They didn’t. Nintendo and Yuzu came to an agreement and settled out of court.

          • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            They settled because they used an illegal key instead of making their own, which is the only legal way to do this for game preservation.

            • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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              7 months ago

              Incorrect. You had to rip that key for yourself. They never distributed it.

              They settled because there’s no winning for them. Even if they’re correct (and they really are) it will be years of litigation… and costs.

              They were forced to settle because they publicly talked about playing shit [pre-release] on discord too…

              Edit: Found a typo. My bad.

              • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                The key they used to make the base engine was ripped from online, not made by them that’s the nails in the coffin right there. They also provided means to publicly available bios keys. They did distribute it, you just had to dig into discord or other means to find it, but it was there.

                They were forced to settle because they publicly talked about paying shit on discord too…

                So they were forced to settle because they did this thing illegally, yet you say they didn’t…? What…?

                • Saik0@lemmy.saik0.com
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                  7 months ago

                  The key they used to make the base engine was ripped from online

                  Proof please. Since it never went to court, nothing like this would have been “found” through the process of discovery. I suspect you’re just making shit up.

                  They also provided means to publicly available bios keys.

                  Nope, you had to rip your own to use the software.

                  They did distribute it, you just had to dig into discord or other means to find it, but it was there.

                  Users chatting on discord != yuzu doing it.

                  Nothing about Yuzu itself as a program was illegal. Period. How some of the developers talked in their Discord shows that they were using it for illegal things, which fucked them. Not the application itself.

                  • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                    7 months ago

                    https://twitter.com/Zetta_330/status/1765081419687371165

                    Look for yourself, they used someone else’s code, it’s technically not illegal according to the CLA of GitHub , but that’s not relevant to DCMA. It requires them to reverse engineer the code for an emulator, which they didn’t do.

                    The dev provided the means in discord themselves, they also had a google drive with a ripped key, they also had files on discord of roms to test their gamesc which were acquired illegally.

                    Please tell me what they did right to claim game preservation…?

                    The fact that it didn’t go to discovery when other cases have is damning in itself, and you want it in your court? Okay….

                • msgraves@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  7 months ago

                  They were forced to settle because they pirated TOTK ahead of its actual release to allow yuzu to support it, then sold that version that supported it on patreon -> “Made money off it” in nintendo’s eyes. I think it’s fucking stupid that they’re gone, but I’m not surprised, Nintendo happily goes after anything.