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Nintendo is suing the makers of the Switch emulator Yuzu, claims 'There is no lawful way to use Yuzu' (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 10 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Nintendo is suing the makers of the Switch emulator Yuzu, claims 'There is no lawful way to use Yuzu'::Nintendo of America is suing the maker of the Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu, saying it "unlawfully circumvents the technological measures" that prevent Switch games from being played on othe

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[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 27 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Nintendo is taking a new approach to this one, claiming it's a copyright protection circumvention product. There isn't any precedent for this yet, and it isn't protected by the interoperability exception in the DMCA.

This is actually a very scary and very important one to follow, and if Nintendo can successfully convince a judge that the primary purpose of emulators like Yuzu (which decrypt games on the fly) is circumvention, it's going to open the floodgates against emulators for any systems newer than the PS2.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

DeCSS wasn't precedent for this? How was it different?

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

DeCSS's creator was sued in California, under the state's trade secret law for disclosing the CSS key. Nintendo is suing under the DMCA for Yuzu violating the anti-circumvention provisions laid out in 17 U.S.C. §1201.

I follow emulator stuff pretty closely, and I'm not aware of any judgments for or against emulator devs going it from this angle. I hope I'm wrong, but this could set a very bad precedent if Nintendo is successful.

If you don't trust my word, the ArsTechnica article does a great job explaining why this is such a huge deal. In particular, this one quote at the end:

"Nintendo isn't attacking the core concept of emulation's legality. They are attacking the tools and techniques that you need to make emulation actually work. There's a whole chain of things you need to make emulation work and Nintendo doesn't need to destroy every link in the chain."

Nintendo isn't retreading old ground about emulators with this lawsuit as much as they're trying to kill or at least severely complicate the ability for emulators to actually emulate ROMs.

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

From the article:

Nintendo goes directly after this [personal archive copy] argument in its lawsuit, arguing that buying a Switch game only means you "have Nintendo's authorization to play that single copy on an unmodified Nintendo Switch console." Any other copy is by definition an "unauthorized copy," Nintendo says, even if it's made by the original purchaser for their own personal use.

What's more, Nintendo argues that using Yuzu as a way to play legitimate Switch purchases on another platform (e.g. an Android device or Windows machine) is also forbidden. "Nintendo has the right to decide whether or when to enter the market of games for platforms other than its own console," the company writes.

This part of the argument specifically needs to be smacked and shut down by the courts. (Edit: I'm not saying what the law/DMCA says about it, but I'm saying if the court has discretion they need to shelve this argument from Nintendo.) If I purchase a digital copy of a song from Sony, I don't want to only be able to listen to it on a Sony Walkman, and only where and when Sony wants.

Hopefully they can find someone with one arm that buys switch games and plays them on PC with a special controller to bolster their case.

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Agreed. That is an extremely far reach, and it would have really bad consequences for consumers if not smacked down.

[–] Archr@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

How possible would it be, if this lawsuit does work, that yuzu devs could remove the decryption portion of the code and only work on pre-decrypted roms?

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I don't have enough knowledge about the exact technical details behind the Switch's DRM, so I can't really say. Modern DRM involves multiple layers of cryptography, which makes it difficult to reason around unless you know exactly how it works.

If they win this one, I guarantee that workaround won't be feasible for future consoles. Nintendo could simply make on-the-fly ROM decryption part of the Switch 2/3 firmware to make it impossible to fully decrypt without actually running the game.

[–] BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

ho... Scary indeed. I hope yuzu has a good legal team. Would the ruling also apply to other software product in this category (outside of emulation) ?

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Probably not. The argument Nintendo is making is very specific and involves finding out if a rom-decrypting emulator's primary purpose is {some proclaimed legal activity like preservation} or if it's actually DRM circumvention.

If they get a favorable ruling, it will open the flood gates for console manufacturers to decimate the emulator landscape for anything newer than the PS2 era, however. Wii+, 3DS, PS3+, and Xbox 360+ all employed some form of encryption. Any emulators for those systems that don't exclusively load already-decrypted ROMs and firmwares would be prime targets in the coming years.

Outside of emulators, maybe it would make it easier to argue that any homebrew that creates decrypted game backups is a circumvention tool. Anything beyond that would likely be too different of a scenario for Nintendo v. Yuzu to be considered a precedent.

[–] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

I wonder if creating a test game and key would work. I.e. make a game you know works on the switch, then sign a new version just for yuzu.

Still it would be bullshit hurdle put up