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.
Fuck Nintendo. Get those repos duplicated.
Why is this a sigh of relief? Nintendo has bullied an emulator’s dev team and got $2.4 millions out of it. If I was an emu dev, I certainly would not be happy with this news.
Nintendo went after a emu dev team that was actively (and demonstratively) enabling piracy for something they are currently selling. On top of that, the dev team is making significant money off of that work, to the tune of 30k/mo. Every other dev is probably thinking “finally, the other shoe drops on this obvious outcome”, most avoid making money off it, and also avoid current systems, both for just this reason. The relieving part is Nintendo’s argument isn’t about the emulator specifically, there’s nothing in the injunction stopping yuzu from continuing, and a settlement means no legal precedent.
Edit: Read more, the settlement includes stopping development.
They were not actively enabling piracy at all. Piracy discussion was banned on all their platforms as well as any information on how to get software title keys illegally. They did everything right and were still bullied out of 2.4 million
Just because it wasn’t being actively discussed doesn’t mean that piracy wasn’t an intended use of the software.
It’s like the argument of, “this bong on my car’s floorboard is definitely for tobacco, officer.”
Yeah, bongs can be used for tobacco, but that’s definitely not their main use case. Same with emulators.
got $2.4 millions out of it
Did they really? I doubt their LLC had that much money. But honestly I don’t even know what or how much money they would have there, I guess it was used for the webpage and similar, maybe pay themselves from the Patreon… but I guess that would be gone monthly… Idk… Maybe they rented some office space??? Idk…
They will declare it bankrupt and that’s the end of it…and unless they owned something with it which I doubt there isn’t much assets if any to give Nintendo or sell.
FOSS emulator developers need to learn that since the DMCA was passed, the state is hostile to them. It isn’t fair and it doesn’t matter that the Sony v Bleep lawsuit set precedence that emulators are legal because the DMCA is so vague that a judge can rule can rule it is impossible to legally emulate copy protected games. Developers need to start exclusively contributing and maintaining their projects through a pseudonym with no ties to their real identity or move to countries where shit like this doesn’t happen.
The main link is to the motion paper. This is the link to the actual agreed-upon final judgment and injunction:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.56980/gov.uscourts.rid.56980.10.1.pdf
In short, Yuzu agreed to stop developing and distributing the emulator, cannot distribute source code, assign it to a new entity, encourage any IP violations, and must surrender their domain.
The findings also include admissions that the purpose of the Yuzu software was “primarily” designed to circumvent technical measures in violation of the DMCA.
So it appears Yuzu didn’t “win” in any real sense. Nintendo got a chilling amount of damages, effectively their full injunction, and also some agreed-upon “findings of fact” that may serve Nintendo in future litigation to justify claims that emulators are “primarily” designed to circumvent technical measures and circumvent the DMCA.
Someone mentioned this on Reddit, but I wonder how poorly discovery would have gone for Yuzu if the lawsuit had continued.
I can’t imagine they were super careful about not bringing up the piracy side of things in various internal and even external communications. I can’t help but wonder if they basically talked about or even bragged about how much money they get from adding support for games like TotK.
Its bad for Yuzu/Tropic Haze. But it is “not bad” for emulation as a whole because there was no legal precedent.
If nintendo decides to continue to strong arm emulator teams into shutting down that is going to be really bad. But that is ALSO when activist orgs tend to get involved and foot the bill/provide lawyers because they want the precedent that prevents those kinds of lawsuits.
You think Nintendo is just going to stop? They can get an easy couple of million now by going after anyone with an emulator. I’m sure they could even go after discontinued console emulators too now they have a shitty service to play their old games.
Interesting. Wonder what that means in terms of github. Yuzu isn’t technically distributing the source, is Nintendo taking ownership of it? What stops someone from forking the repo? Who is “yuzu” that’s paying this bill?
Presumably forks remain public on Github at their own risk, but Nintendo may shift to a DMCA removal policy now that are about to have a judgment.
The judgment has two sections, one for people who have “privity” and more direct relationships with Tropic Haze, and another for “all third parties acting in active concert and participation with” Tropic Haze. The latter enjoins only sharing code and decryption keys. So it certainly sounds like this was drafted to capture, in the Court’s order, people who don’t have a relationship but are code-forking.
Nintendo doesn’t have nearly as clean legal leverage for randos and individuals that don’t have a company built around this emulator, but I actually predict they’ll do GitHub DMCA removals on forks based on a broad reading of the injunction.
There is no judgement in a settlement, and settlements are not case-law. The court has little to do with the settlement as it is simply a binding agreement between the parties to resolve the dispute outside of the court. The judge must also agree and sign off but the settlement is only binding to the parties to the suit and does not create any precedent.
If Nintendo wishes to go after anyone else, it will require an entirely new suit. A quick google on the differences between judgements, verdicts, and settlements will explain a lot better.
