this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2024
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I will always say this in these "Nintendo shuts down beloved fan project" threads: why don't the people working on these projects operate anonymously and release via torrent? I feel like I've been reading the same story for 20 years. It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone at this point that Nintendo will come after you.
Because emulation is legal. It shouldn't have to be hidden. This was taken through the courts in 2001 with the Sony vs Bleem lawsuit.
What appears to be happening is Nintendo is abusing its power and money to make threats of legal action that these groups just can't afford to fight, even though they haven't done anything illegal. It should be coming as a surprise that Nintendo is coming for them, because this is completely legal, and not some fan game using Nintendo IP (which is what they normally shut down).
Legal in the US. I think this guy is in Brazil.
Is nintendo the source of the "come to brazil" meme? 🤔
The Sony verdict didn’t establish emulation as legal
At most you find that it established using mods/creating derivatives is illegal
And on the low end it found that using pictures from competitors in advertising as comparison isn’t illegal
From what u understood It's a bit more complicated than that. Emulation is rather not illegal and in very thin ground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wROQUZDCIMI
That sounds like grounds for some kind of legal action. Antitrust? Class action? I don't know the specifics of the best strategy for approaching it, but if Nintendo is showing a pattern of using their legal team to harass legally operating emulator developers that sounds like something that should be actionable.
This is like if a pedestrian gets struck by a car while on a crosswalk. Yeah, they were allowed to be there... but they should have looked both ways before crossing the street.
This is a case of people being idealistic rather than practical.
Incidentally, this is a perfect example, because the automotive industry ran a series of ad campaigns to change public sentiment after cars got more common and children and elderly citizens started dying in the streets.
Nintendo is working equally hard to change public sentiment against the innocent.
Source: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
You're talking about blame assignment, but I am instead referring to the fact that in both the Nintendo and the automotive example that somebody got smacked because they weren't careful enough.
Somebody got smacked because they were told that this was a safe area to be in. Then they get hit, and are blamed for not being careful enough in the area they were told was safe to be in.
Like I said above, everyone coming through here is so obsessed with talking about blame and fault. That's not what I'm talking about at all. I'm saying that if Ryujinx wanted to avoid this outcome, they should have done things differently.
See, no mention of blame at all. How else do I need to spell things out for the extremely autistic and pedantic crowd here?
How do you not read this as blame? Or, is this not the same as "they had it coming, wouldn't have happened if they'd been dressed in armour or hadn't gone down that street alone" which is often known as victim blaming.
Oh, there's a wiki article on that. It has a section on the thing you're arguing about, with cars and pedestrians Neat. Maybe this is why people are talking about it.
I'm fully ready to get torn apart for this. I get victim blaming is wrong. But sometimes you can make better choices based on available information, regardless of whether it's your fault if something happens.
If there's a street called Drag Race Avenue where every person that lives on it drag races up and down it all day and every week there's a news story of someone getting hit using the crossing on Drag Race Avenue, maybe you shouldn't use the crossing on that street. Sure, it won't be your fault if you get hit, but how much comfort will that be when you're injured or dead?
It's possible to make choices that are objectively morally/legally/ethically right that are still stupid choices. Unfortunately we don't live in a world where as long as you do the right thing, so will everyone else and nothing bad will ever happen to you.
Hazards are a part of life. In many if not all workplaces there are hazards. Due to this there are hazard controls, along with a widely accepted list of most effective to least effective ways to deal with a hazard. First is to get rid of it entirely (stop people drag racing on that street) but if that's not possible, the next 2 are replace the hazard then isolate the hazard. In other words, if something exists that you can't stop from existing, your best course of action is to stay away from it / out of its way if possible.
These controls aren't about victim blaming, they're about making hazards as safe as possible. It's not illegal to carry a box that's too heavy for you, but you still may be injured by doing so. There's a reason workplaces have 100s of policies that aren't illegal but they decided you can't do there. Because there are many things that exist that you can do that are entirely legal but could still harm you.
Emulators might not be illegal, but Nintendo is a hazard to them that can't be eliminated.
I guess it depends on whether you care more about being right, or more about being safe.
These people could make the choice to be safer if they wanted to. They could be more anonymous if they wanted to. They could stay out of Nintendo's way. But if being right that they're not doing anything wrong is more important so be it. Maybe they consider it worth being shut down in order to draw attention to the issue. That's up to them.
Being right and being suddenly under a car are not mutually exclusive.
ITT: people not understanding the difference between BLAME and OUTCOME and downvoting you because of it. Incidentally, I also read a thread earlier today that talked about declining literacy in adults....
Emulation might be legal, but it's software specifically designed to run illegal copies of the games.
I dislike Nintendo, but I can't blame them for taking down that kind of software development. They're still selling many of their old games through their own store for their own emulators. They're perhaps charging way too much for it and/or lock it behind a subscription wall, even if you ever bought the original copies. Absolute garbage business practice, but from the corporate point of view I can see why they go after emulators. Especially since it's easier to take those down than trying to go after all digital emulator copies of the games (if not impossible).
They're probably gonna try and set an example to scare off others trying to make new emulators too.
Edit: lol people really are shooting the messenger here.
Also, the amount of excuses that people have to make backups of their already purchased games is very weak. You damn well know that a vast majority of people don't use it for such reasons, the amount of people that still own original copies, and also have the hardware to even extract software for personal use must be like less than a percentage of the entire community using emulators. They're just people pirating games they never paid for. It's very naive to assume otherwise.
That may be the main reason why people use or even create emulators, but there are still legitimate uses for emulators. It's like banning couples from riding the same motorcycle because two people on a bike is usually a robbery.
Nice metaphor, is it your original?
Is it illegal to copy your own Nintendo games?
It is not illegal to make backup copies for yourself of games you have purchased and own.
As shitty as it is, yes.
To be fair, it's software specifically designed to run digital backups of what's supposed to be personally owned media. It just so happens that it's very easy to obtain a copy otherwise, but there's nothing inherently illegal about it or the games.
Strong arming independent projects, and individual developers especially, that are very careful to not endorse that, effectively holding them accountable for others, is morally questionable at best.
From a theoretical point of view, emulators of modern consoles may actually be illegal. Under the DMCA, emulation for preservation is protected as a periodically-renewed exemption list defined by the library of congress. But, (paraphrasing) "creating or distributing any hardware or software device—or component of such—designed to circumvent DRM technology" is still illegal irrespective of any exemptions. A reasonable (and bullshit) interpretation of that means that any emulator which is capable of bypassing any DRM features (such as decrypting ROM using user-provided keys) is a violation under the act.
I say theoretical because it hasn't ever actually been tested in a court. Nintendo v. Tropic Haze LLC nearly gave us the answer, but the latter chose to settle instead.
Your not being able to blame them is completely irrelevant. Nintendo can not like stuff all it wants. The question is if it is LEGAL. If it is, and it is, your defense of their actions is a defense of the argument that they should be above the law because they don't like something, and that's an absolutely TERRIBLE position to take. You don't need to white knight for Nintendo. They have more money than God and taking up their fights for them against your own rights as a consumer is so far beyond Stockholm Syndrome that I don't think we even have a word for it yet.
Feel like you failed to read and grasp what I said.
Never said I agreed with what they're doing, I am not white knighting them. I frankly don't give a shit what Nintendo does and doesn't and what they'll lose over it.
I was just stating an observation from a business point of view.
It's also legal to own guns in some countries, doesn't make it legal to use it to just shoot at anything, and it's even more ridiculous to assume that everyone buying/owning guns has good intentions. There are many countries where owning a gun isn't legal, as well as making copies of products you've bought, even for personal backup.
And to believe that people use emulation exclusively for their own backups is insanely naive.
I gave you the benefit of the doubt that maybe I didn't grasp what you said, but reading your reply it seems like I grasped it fine.
Here's the thing. People use emulators for piracy. That is also COMPLETELY and totally irrelevant to the discussion. The right to developing emulators is well-established, and game preservation isn't even the most important consequence. The right to developing emulators is what allows virtualization that forms the backbone of server architecture, as well as running legacy code from old architectures on modern hardware, alleviating the need for thousands of man hours in rewriting tried and tested code. 20 years in the future, when the IoTs stupidity litters millions of homes with inaccessible, useless plastic garbage, emulation of no longer supported control units will be a panacea.
Nintendo is totally free to not like the law, but it is the law, and this pressure to shut down these projects is a flagrant violation of the developers' legal rights, which regardless of the morality of piracy is a disgusting flouting of the legal system.
People use guns to murder, yes. But whether you or I think it's correct or not, the law does not hold gun makers liable for the things their users do with them. We can't just DECIDE that there are exceptions to the law and begin prosecuting or acting as if they are liable. That requires either a new law or an interpretation by a court to set a precedent - not lawyers sending a cease and desist to Smith & Wesson. That is a slippery slope to an absolutely nightmarish dystopia.
There is no justifying this in a "Well, I can see why they did it..." sense any more than in a murder case. The law is clear. The established rights of the developers are clear. The right to make a Switch emulator is NOT Nintendo's right to give or deny like a trademark dispute or the ability to make a fan game. They don't GET a say. The right to make an emulator is explicitly YOURS by LAW. And a giant corporation has taken their money and used it to violate established rights with threat of bankruptcy in violation of that established law. If you believe in the rule of law, no matter what you think of piracy, that should be utterly haunting.
If guns are sold legally, it means that there is the assumption that everyone buying them has good intentions.
What do you think emulation is?
Copying your own copy of a game and using tools for compatibility is what we're talking about, is protected, and already has the case law demonstrating so.
It is made for various things like game development. When my company was working on remastering a GameCube game, Nintendo themselves handed us a devkit, and we used the dolphin emulator to play the original game and compare gameplay and performance.
Nintendo didn't put legal pressure on emulator devs for decades at this point, which made devs less cautious about preserving their pseudonymity.
Now it's too late and they can't stop Nintendo from finding out who they are and which mistakes they did at some point over the years.
Maybe a new generation of emulator developers will be more protective of their identity, by using hosting providers like Njalla or privacy networks like i2p. The latter would limit access (as it requires i2p), which isn't desirable for most users.
While that's true, it's incredibly reductive to a baseline of "nintendo should win because they are powerful and others aren't"
How many of these emulators were shut down through legal action or threat of legal action? I mean, the list goes on and on
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_2_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_3_emulators
https://www.ppsspp.org/
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/PlayStation_Vita_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_360_emulators
Oh right, this happened https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_Inc._v._Connectix_Corp.
Nintendo is using every action possible to stop switch emulation, because, unlike other console companies, they don't produce any advanced or specific hardware anymore, and they purely survive through their IP.
And because these are never finished projects. People can rant and rave about cloning the git all day, but without active, knowledgeable developers with the knowledge of the original dev team, these projects are dead. It's not about using the emulators as they exist today... it's about continuing to keep them working going forward. Anything that releases in the last year or two of the Switch's life is now at risk of being lost forever into Nintendo's archives.
Somebody will archive it, for two reasons: 1) data hoarders and 2) hacked Switches.
Sure, it will be as playable as it is right now, right as the project shuts down. Any updates or improvements? Any new games? Only if someone else takes up the mantle and risks having world police nintendo suing them
I assume emulator development will continue eventually. Who knows when that will be, though.
The thing that sucks is that I'm in the middle of a couple of games, so if something upgrades and Ryujinx isn't compatible, I'm hosed.
This is the first time they've been suing emulator developers.
Yeah! And they've been so cool and supportive of the gaming community thus far, <3 nintendo https://www.thegamer.com/a-snapshot-of-nintendos-convoluted-legal-history/