Nintendo Switch emulator, Yuzu, developers settling lawsuit from Nintendo with $2.4M payout, handing over its domains, and agreeing "Yuzu [is] primarily designed to circumvent [DRM]".
Nintendo went after them for using (not distributing) prod.keys to decrypt game titles and system firmware under 17 U.S.C. 1201 (2), which sidesteps having to challenge the legality of emulation directly. I guess Yuzu doesn't have the funds to fight them in court on that.
Is it piracy to play my legally purchased and backed up games on an emulator?
Edit: a lot of people responding to this are accidentally answering the question above. Yes, those are the things they would have fought if they had the money to go up against Nintendo.
To those saying that it is indeed piracy -- pretty sure the law has disagreed up to this point. Note that Nintendo didn't win this suit, Yuzu settled. No legal precedent set (yet).
Every few years, more things are added as exceptions to the DMCAs circumvention clause. There's a whole host of exceptions, and they are all exceptions in favor of people over companies. Those exceptions came about because people who care fought for them.
Do you have any specific examples and how long it took, or how much it cost? It seems farfetched to think it is feasible to counter the "anti circumvention technology" aspect of the DMCA.
Wikipedia has an entire list of anti-circumvention exceptions under the page for the DMCA. I have no idea how those exceptions came to be or how much money and time was involved to make it happen, but it does seem to be changing in our benefit over time.
How is it far fetched when there's a literal bunch of examples you can go find right now? You're basing your estimation on zero evidence and doomerism.
Does it matter? I suspect that if that's what you did, you were one of very few people doing so, and the law doesn't require the absence of any possible legitimate use. In this case, something is illegal if it
is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
has only limited commercially significant purpose or use
It's a use case, but I would argue that it's not a significant use case.
Emulators are still legal in theory, but I doubt that it is in practice possible to make an emulator for a modern video game system without violating some other part of the law.
It's a use case, but I would argue that it's not a significant use case.
And that's the answer to your question about what Yuzu would have fought if they had the money to take on Nintendo.
Emulators are still legal in theory, but I doubt that it is in practice possible to make an emulator for a modern video game system without violating some other part of the law.
That's exactly what hasn't been determined, since Yuzu settled and it didn't go to court.
They agreed to delete, “all circumvention tools used for developing or using Yuzu—such as TegraRcmGUI, Hekate, Atmosphère, Lockpick_RCM, NDDumpTool, nxDumpFuse, and TegraExplorer,” and hand over any “physical circumvention devices” and “modified Nintendo hardware.
They know what their emulator was primarily used for. Key word here. Primarily.