Nintendo sues Switch emulator Yuzu for ‘facilitating piracy at a colossal scale’
Nintendo sues Switch emulator Yuzu for ‘facilitating piracy at a colossal scale’
Will developers give up or go to court?
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It was bewildering to me in the moment that when TOTK was leaked that they didn't restrict themselves from working on the emu to handle TOTK. It was some nod and wink "breath of the wild" improvements coming in all of a sudden.
Like... for real? If I were the project lead I would've banned discussion and development about it until after launch. And part of the legal filing from Nintendo is that Yuzu's own telemetry shows that Yuzu devs must be aware of piracy because they can see games being played on the emulator pre-launch. Make of that what you will.
I don't see how that is the Yuzo teams problem though, it's the same argument people use with firearms, just because the emulator can be used to emulate contribute piracy doesn't mean that it was made with the intent to. How would you recommend the Yuzo team actively block non-released games/restrict it down to only legal use? They used the telemetry data that they recieved to better improve their own platform, honestly it doesn't really matter what that data is. The issue is fully at the user who used the tool illegally, not the developers of the tool.
God I hate current copyright law, in my opinion they need to do seething similar to the legal systems "when acting as an official" law and just have them exempt from copyright/privacy suits. This happens with every emulator and it's generally used as a scare tactic to make the devs close shop.
I'm no lawyer, but it seems to me when it comes to legal cases you want as many facts stacked in your favor as possible, and as few facts stacked against your favor as is possible. Because at the end of the day some jury or judge will decide one way or another, based on facts and prejudices.
I fully agree, a project should have as little ties to illegal content as it can, and yes the current system goes off of current legal law or at least how the judge/Jury interpret it. And that's where a lot of this issue comes to play.
It's quite clear in existing law that you are legally allowed to reverse engineer a piece of equipment that you have physically purchased, there is no argument on that. The issue occurs when you are reverse engineering something that has DRM because at that point you were breaking a security standard. This is also why most emulators are legal however ROMs are not, because while it's completely legal to reverse engineer a switch for example, the ability to bypass the DRM on the game itself in order to play the game is breaking a security standard which is not referenced in existing laws or backup laws.
This, in my opinion is the biggest issue with current laws, it makes no sense for me to be allowed to make a digital Archive of something that I have, but not be allowed to circumvent the security on the item itself in order to actually use the archive. Due to this it also means that ripping 4K and Blu-ray discs also are breaking a DRM which means you are legally not allowed to make a digital copy of movies that you own. Which directly contradicts the intent of these laws.
Of course I'm talking about in the US, other countries have a more lapse ideology for a data retention and archival purposes. Maybe someday as the younger Generations get older they will reapproach current dmca and copyright law and give exemption for personal use to allow breaking DRM, but until that happens expect every emulator is going to have this same exact claim every time
Due to this it also means that ripping 4K and Blu-ray discs also are breaking a DRM which means you are legally not allowed to make a digital copy of movies that you own. Which directly contradicts the intent of these laws.
Yes, this has been a long-standing point of stupidity in my mind. It's clearly inconsistent.
Woah. Imagine defending piracy and gun ownership on the same breath... and equating the two, no less. You just banned piracy in every civilized country, congratulations.