Their insistence on sueing the world of emulation ensures I’ll never buy another Nintendo console ever again. (And I’ve bought all of them so far). Their actions cause the opposite effect of what they want - they are creating pirates.
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
145 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
67050 readers
3742 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Ha! I haven't owned a Nintendo anything since the NES. I've never given them a cent and don't ever plan to.
Haven't they admitted that they had no power to really take down emulation since it is legal?
In theory it depends on if the emulator is using any proprietary Nintendo-owned code. In practice, it doesn't matter at all because Nintendo can just out-spend any emulation group in legal battles until they give up.
The DMCA takedown seems to be specifically about Ryujinx's ability to decode ROMs. Circumventing DRM is in fact illegal according to the DMCA so they appear to have a valid argument. However, in their takedown notice they assume that the decryption keys are obtained illegally. I'm wondering if the DMCA forbids extracting the decryption keys (without distribution) from your own legitimately owned Nintendo hardware for personal backup. If so, then the Ryujinx feature might also be defensible.
This also raises the question of whether an emulator could be made to work on already decrypted media and let you figure out how to do that yourself. Nintendo could argue that its main use is still to play illegally decrypted ROMs but the emulator would have a decent defense imo.
Unfortunately, DMCA takes an extreme stance when it comes to anti-circumvention. Even personal backup doesn't have a strong legitimacy case under it, especially not when it comes to the tools that enable it.
Very related to this, LockpickRCM is a tool whose entire purpose is to extract your own Switch keys for the titles you own, and in turn is far more useful for people who want personal backups than those who are pirating the games. Still got a DMCA takedown two years ago, and though it never went to court it's extremely unlikely any court would have ruled in their favor if it did.
I expect the usual game of whack-a-mole will now ensue, with the main repository moving to a new host or changing its name (or both). People sometimes forget that github isn't the only game in town. Eventually either Nintendo will get tired or the code will end up on a Russian or obscure-nationality server that ignores DMCA notices.
Honestly, does Canada have any incentive to respect DMCA requests at this point?
We're not at the point where we want to burn every bridge with our southern neighbours . . . yet.
Too late! They're going to have to go after the Ryujinx sporks now. When will they learn? There's just too much cutlery for them to compete!
Can't wait for ByuBinx to release.
Just don't host it with a USA company.
(Self-promo: https://git.ngni.us/mirrors/Ryujinx is still up, hosted in Canada)
Use Tor
I agree in principle but using Tor won't affect DMCA takedowns.
How will they censor a Tor onion service?
Just pick one of the many registrars and server hosts that don't care about takedown requests and host a website with them.
That way it stays more accessible to everyone.
They fail to do that too.