Everyone in the emulation scene can breathe a sigh of relief.
Im not a lawyer, but is this really good news? Isnt this just setting a precedent that Nintendo can shake down any emulator developer for ~2.4m any time they feel like it? So small developers are basically screwed?
Isnt this just setting a precedent.
Not a legal precident, it was settled which means there was no ruling.
It’s good news in the sense that this won’t be setting a new legal precedent surrounding emulation. Nintendo’s case argued that the means by which cryptographic keys were obtained was in violation of the DMCA, which is an untested angle that could have dire legal ramifications for many other emulators if it were upheld in court.
On top of this, the Yuzu devs were a bit too brazen with their attitude towards piracy, and after consulting their lawyers they must have realized they have no legal ground to stand on. Any other emulator that runs a tighter ship in regard to copyrighted material (like most do) wouldn’t be in such trouble. Nintendo wouldn’t have a case with almost all other emulators, Yuzu in particular was giving them a lot to work with.
Yeah.
The Yuzu devs were basically going to lose unless they got the most tech savvy judge/jury in existence AND all of Nintendo’s lawyers had food poisoning for a few months straight.
But the Yuzu devs losing in an actual court case would create precedent that would be a lot harder for all the other, more cautious, devs to dance around.
So… yay for Goliath smacking the shit out of David? I guess?
Yeah, all things considered this might be the best case scenario for this to play out, short of Yuzu somehow winning in court. It sucks to see Yuzu shut down, but the risk of new legal precedent surrounding emulation was far more concerning. At least Yuzu’s source code will still live on.
I think this is the best outcome that could currently happen. If they got a ruling it’s very possible that Nintendo would win. That would probably cascade through the entire emulation scene and bring down countless other projects.
(Disclaimer: I’m not American and I’m not very knowledgeable in the American court system. Feel free to correct/inform me if I’m misunderstanding or missing information on this statement.)
Edit: just realized they had to take everything down aswell, that very much sucks.
Nintendo had a clear path to victory in this case, it wasn’t a new idea that needed to be tested in court.
The yuzu devs really fucked up by adding in decryption to it. Without that, the emulator was totally safe, and likely why nintendo didn’t try and do this years ago.
If you’re making an emulator, or anything dealing with copywritten work. Don’t add things that break the copyright protection, nintendo can come for you then. It’s that simple.
2.4 mil to settle, or paying your lawyers potentially for years to fight the lawsuit and maybe lose?
Sure, its probably the right thing for Yuzu, but whether its right for the emulation community as a whole? I guess we will see, at least there is no legal precident being set.
I think the ‘good thing’ here is that Yuzu isn’t going away (not that that would really happen with the way the internet works), but yes there is always the potential for more lawsuits. They surely based this off a cost/benefit for themselves and not for the rest of the country.
It’s because Yuzu was profiting off of their development with a Patreon. Keep emulators FOSS and there’s no profits to claim.
Also, because it’s a settlement and not a ruling, it’s not setting a precedent for future lawsuits. Courts historically put a lot of weight on legal precedent, to help make rulings consistent. If one court interprets a new case in a certain way, similar cases in the future will likely look to that first case’s ruling for guidance.
So if one ruling had decided that emulation is illegal, then subsequent lawsuits would have been much much easier for Nintendo. Because Nintendo could basically argue “we already proved emulation is illegal in that previous case, so now we don’t need to do that part again.”
I mean, small developers who set up a money-making pateron based on an emulator for a currently sold system, without providing a way to pull your own system info or games from carts (and is therefore heavily reliant on piracy of things currently being sold by the parent company to run) is basically screwed, but this isn’t news, and pretty much every other emu dev would run away screaming from such a setup.
They really put themselves in this boat, but since that money-making pateron is a thing, they’re probably wiping those tears with dollar bills.
The primary source for legal precedent is Sony vs Bleem.
I mean, small developers
Just like you told your girlfriend the other night, size doesn’t matter
who set up a money-making pateron based on an emulator for a currently sold system,
Bleem was a commercial product to emulate Sony Playstations that came out while the PS1 was still active.
without providing a way to pull your own system info or games from carts (and is therefore heavily reliant on piracy of things currently being sold by the parent company to run)
As long as they aren’t giving details on how to rip the games (which, funny enough, would be the dumper) they are in the same grey zone as system BIOSes and the like
is basically screwed, but this isn’t news, and pretty much every other emu dev would run away screaming from such a setup.
There are other nintendo switch emulators. And emulators like RPCS3 very much were active while their target consoles were actively sold.
