Switch emulator Yuzu responds to Nintendo's lawsuit

ardi60@reddthat.com to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 117 points –
Switch emulator Yuzu responds to Nintendo's lawsuit
eurogamer.net
35

The "response" is that they got a lawyer, that's literally it. Misleading title imo.

I’d like to read into it a bit.

It said they put a lawyer on retainer which tells me they are planning to fight it.

If they just wanted a lawyer to review the case, they would have just paid for legal research or a consultation.

So I think this tells us a bit.

Once Nintendo actually filed a lawsuit rather than just a cease and desist, you pretty much have to retain a lawyer. Removing the project doesn't end the lawsuit. You're at the point where even surrendering would mean negotiating a settlement.

They definitely should fight it. It's a horseshit suit and emulation is clearly not copyright infringement. But whether they do or not they need a lawyer.

I’m done with Nintendo. I’ll not buy their games or consoles moving forward.

I still have every Nintendo console back to the nes, not counting the virtual boy.

I buy their games. I know yuzu can be used for piracy but it’s not the only use. Nintendo should have gone after pirates instead of the emulator developer.

We are done for...

I don't think so.
But maybe Emulators need to change how they work.
Externalize a small, relatively simple tool to decrypt the ROM.
and a complicated, actively developed Emulator, that can only read decrypted ROMs.

With that, the Emulator shouldn't be attackable the same way yuzu was.

Maybe Nintendo should sue the power company for providing electricity for those people who played Zelda ahead of time.

While they're at it they should sue VMWare too and maybe reboot the API lawsuits of Oracle vs Google.

Not that I agree with the morality of what Nintendo is doing but their claim is that the emulator can't be used for anything meaningful besides piracy, whereas electricity is a general service that has lots of varying uses.

Until machines reach end of life and break, and nintendo won't offer any official way of playing the games that people own - because of course they won't. We already know they don't even allow savegame backups without a BS subscription fee.

Emulation and piracy are very important ways of keeping a historical record of digital works that otherwise would vanish. We have countless examples of abandonware being kept alive by piracy.

Also I'm considering jailbreaking my wii because the games I bought - including one just a couple of weeks ago - are becoming impossible to play because the discs just don't last. I've had to clean this second hand one off many times to keep playing it. It's piracy, sure, but without it the entire catalogue would just vanish. If nintendo had their way the only way to keep those games would be to pay them a subscription for the rest of time.

their claim is that the emulator can’t be used for anything meaningful besides piracy,

Which, mind you, the filed brief is explicit about calling ALL emulators as nothing more than piracy tools... Says the company whose own hardware (Switch) is running emulator software to play older games. There is no technical difference except the manner in which the ROMs were loaded. They shouldn't be able to have their cake and eat it too.

Not that I agree with the morality of what Nintendo is doing but their claim is that the emulator can’t be used for anything meaningful besides piracy

Homebrew, game modding, etc...

+ actual ownership and control over the purchased and owned hardware when Nintendo could randomly take away any software access they choose. These privateers are pirates too, stealing our purchases. The only way to fight them is with the right to pirate our citizenship's right to ownership in this thinly veiled faux democracy vernier over our neo feudalistic reality. Piracy is the roots movement of revolution.

As long as someone is just running ROMs backed up from their own Switch cartridges and not distributing those ROMs, Yuzu can be used entirely legally.

Yuzu decrypts the games with your prod.keys which already means circumventing anti piracy measures. Pretty much all countries that care about piracy (EU and US) have anti-circumvention laws that make this action illegal, even if its for your own use of your own games. No matter how stupid it may sound, there is no possible way to ever use Yuzu in a legal way in most of the first world.

Isn't this comparable to utilities you buy for smoking weed (talking about countries where it is still illegal) like a bong or a special grinder? They are only really used for doing something illegal but it is still legal to buy them.

I'm sure you're right, but IANAL. The only stuff that could be banned under this principle are precursors. Emulators aren't a means to piracy, they are a tool that could be used with pirated material.

I'm gonna just preface this by saying Nintendo suck and I don't agree with what they are doing.

But it's worth understanding what is happening here, nintendo isn't just throwing random legalize against the wall to find something that sticks. They are specifically going after yuzu via a fairly well tested part of the DMCA.

The DMCA allows them this, and if you don't feel like nintendo or anyone else should get to dictate what device you play the games you own on, you should be looking into whatever you can do to pressure your representatives to add to the many exceptions of that dmca clause for this purpose.

Oh, I mean there's nothing there.

A Court Document shows that Yuzu got a lawyer and will answer within 60 days of 2024-02-27.

The Answer will be the interesting bit. It may indicate if they wish to fight, or if they deem it not worth the effort.

The fact that they put the lawyer on retainer tells me that they want to fight it.

Otherwise they would have just paid for the consultation and shutdown the project.

They're paying for their own lawyer. Support them at https://www.patreon.com/yuzuteam]

Edit: They're not fighting it, don't donate

Joined the 5€ tier, hope it's at least a little help. I was also using the EA builds for free for quite a while, so it's good to actually pay for it.

I’m totally donating if they decide to fight it.

I was hoping here their answer was something like "feel free to contact our attorney, Cory Doctorow, and his legal team at the UN". Oh well, a free mind can wish.

I expected some sort of: "we have x and y to protect us behind when you sue us" but this seems like they either got nothing or don't want to show their hand.

But expecting this might be due to the title.

I tried totk on yuzu and after 3 days of struggling and playing a little bit, i went out to the nearest store and bought the zelda edition switch with totk.

Without yuzu i would not have made this purchase, but i understand that's not how everyone operates plus if yuzu ran better i would've just kept playing there.

I remember seeing a few studies suggesting that users who spend more money on media also pirate much more often. That might be how most pirates operate in reality.

Nintendo is stupid for trying to kill a FOSS project. It will never die...