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Nintendo is suing the creators of Switch emulator Yuzu (news.bloomberglaw.com)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by to c/games@lemmy.world
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Nintendo's full case filing

https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/1762576284817768457/

"NEW: Nintendo is suing the creators of popular Switch emulator Yuzu, saying their tech illegally circumvents Nintendo's software encryption and facilitates piracy. Seeks damages for alleged violations and a shutdown of the emulator.

Notes 1 million copies of Tears of the Kingdom downloaded prior to game's release; says Yuzu's Patreon support doubled during that time. Basically arguing that that is proof that Yuzu's business model helps piracy flourish."

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[–] [S] 88 points 2 years ago (3 children)

What's more, is that from these passages, it sounds like Nintendo even wants backups of games you have lawfully purchased to constitute copyright violation and made illegal (because they have to bypass encryption, therefore violating DMCA). I'm not fluent in legalese though, so correct me if I'm misinterpreting:

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  • [–] 54 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    These passages imply the writers of them lack basic computer literacy and don't even understand Nintendo's own systems.

    • "copied the game ROMs into Yuzu" Yuzu is not a VM or other container and the ROMs are simply stored on disk in their original dumped form... Yuzu doesn't "store" or "contain" any games.

    • "any copy not on an authorized cartridge" LOL! What about games downloaded from your own digital marketplace, then?

    What about a game you downloaded from Nintendo eShop and stored on an external SD card, which is a standard and well supported storage method on Switch? Is that SD card an "authorized cartridge"?

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago*

    The authorized cartridge thing would hopefully be ignored due to several other times Nintendo tried to stop developers like Tengen from bypassing their licensing system and developing their own carts for the NES (you know those weird ones that were usually blue or black? Those were "illegal" in Nintendo's eyes but they lost every single case they took against them to try and stop them from being made).

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    “copied the game ROMs into Yuzu” Yuzu is not a VM or other container and the ROMs are simply stored on disk in their original dumped form… Yuzu doesn’t “store” or “contain” any games.

    ROMs are indeed copied "into Yuzu". They must be loaded into Yuzu's memory in order for Yuzu to execute their code or render their assets. In copyright law, even loading something to memory constitutes a "copy".

    Also, almost every emulator is a VM; do you think those ARM instructions are running on your x86 processor and its desktop OS kernel natively?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I thought Yuzu was actually a dynamic recompiler? I remember this practice started in the days of N64 emulation, and these tools are more like debuggers than like VMs. So in this case, ROMs may only be copied "into Yuzu" byte by byte, not stored as a block in memory. At this point it's really semantics, but that's what the lawyers are supposed to figure out, right?

    Unlike older emulators, Switch emulators don't even support saving the emulator state, and their savegame data is stored right on the native filesystem. I believe they are actually more like Wine, and remember, Wine Is Not an Emulator.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yuzu does recompile some parts during runtime by using a JIT, but the rest is still emulated.

    You can't compare them to Wine, since Wine acts as a compatibility layer by translating OS specific calls, but it does not translate between instruction sets.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Thanks for clarifying, I only have a casual knowledge of Yuzu internals and had been led to believe the ARM was translated rather than emulated.

    The performance is honestly incredible for software emulating a different instruction set.

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Ah corporate Lawyer BS, pointing out what they want to be true and not pointing out the other. ROMs are legal under existing Copywrite laws under archival laws in the USA (117) and backup laws in Canada (29.24). The Americans have a bit more of a restricted way of using their archives, but that's not needs to be argued here, as it appears that Nintendo is blaming Yuzu for actions of the general consumer. It'll be like blaming your Network provider for allowing a user to download a movie, both legally and illegally, thus they should be punished for both actions.

    I also love that Nintendo isn't not stating it's illegal here, just that it's infringing because it's not authorized.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Nintendo is blaming Yuzu for actions of the general consumer

    If you read the dmca, that's something you can do. Making tools that enable others to break copyright protection is specifically disallowed. Which is why it's one of the more insidious copyright laws

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    However, the thing is that Yuzu doesn't do that. Yuzu doesn't include any form of tooling that breaks encryption, facilitates ROM dumping or offer downloads of Nintendo Copyrighted software. They aren't facilitating it, the user has to provide all of that chain of the emulation on their own. Hopefully this would be obvious to a judge.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yuzu doesn’t include any form of tooling that breaks encryption

    You cannot state that with certainty. That's the problem.

    Yuzu does indeed include a method to use the Switch's production keys (which you must dump yourself) to decrypt the games. Whether this constitutes effective DRM is not a question that can easily be answered and must be decided by a court on a case-by-case basis.
    This will be what the case will hinge on: Is Ninty's scheme effective DRM?

    I would say no because symmetric encryption with a publicly known key may aswell be no encryption at all but that's not my decision to make.

    They aren’t facilitating it, the user has to provide all of that chain of the emulation on their own.

    Um, no. The emulator is doing the decryption on its own. All the user does is provide the prod keys and unmodified ROM.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Yuzu itself doesn't provide tools to dump keys and Roms from the Switch. The user has to procure them, or the means to dump them, themselves. Thus Yuzu doesn't facilitates DRM circumvention. The user has to solve that part on their own. They do provide guides for how to do it on their website. But Yuzu themselves don't make or distribute the tooling, and Yuzu the software is incapable of doing it.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    The dumps are just that: Dumps; 1:1 copies.

    The tools don't decrypt anything; that happens within Yuzu. Why else would users need to provide the prod keys to Yuzu?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    To dump the keys, third party tools rely on DRM circumventing sploits. You essentially have to hack your own device, certain versions of Switch and certain software updates are no longer susceptible. But it remains that Yuzu doesn't do any of that. Those tools and sploits were developed by others.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    it decrypts games using your console keys though? i've seen mention of that in their docs so i'm not sure, but yeah if it does that, it's similar to things that decrypt blurays. feasibly against the dmca because of how broad the dmca is.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    I remember a video of SomeOrdinaryGamers talking about a case where a company (I think it was Nintendo) was arguing that making a copy of games you own yourself should be illegal. The whole case was just that. Probably something from the last 4 months or so.

    Anyway, regarding 124, a judge with a working brain would say "There's nothing here stating that it was Yuzu who allowed, or facilitated, anyone to obtain said reproductions."

    1. The copies were not obtained through Yuzu. Yuzu is not a site where the roms are, or even links to any of them. Sure, it exists solely to emulate nintendo's current hardware, but that's not the problem.

    Sigh. If only law and justice worked based on factual evidence and logic, instead of interpretative contortionism...

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