Comment by radicalbyte
2 years ago
They're DMCA'ing code they have no right to DMCA - it was released under a permissive OSS license. Sure they own the copyright but they also gave everyone a license to distribute it.
Adhering to these fraudulent DMCA requests endangers all of OSS.
Nintendo aren't using the DMCA takedown process for copyright-infringing material (the thing people normally mean by DMCA). They're sending letters to GitHub about how Yuzu is, in their view, a tool for circumvention of technological protection measures and therefore illegal in itself (under different provisions of the DMCA).
Very good point.
The whole "technical protection measures" clause is in my view the most atrocious part of the DMCA, more so than the actual copyright stuff - because this communicates that the state is not just ok with vendors using their devices against their own users but actively endorses and encourages it.
This is basically the legal basis for Doctorow's "war on general computation".
if we had a github-like system outside of the US, would Nintendo be able to do anything since the DMCA does not apply?
To all intents and purposes every country in the world has an anti-circumvention provision since membership of TRIPS and the WTO requires you to have one.
The US one is actually pretty toothless compared to many.
You're effectively left with rogue states, who tend not be to very good hosting partners.
I've seen people post that the Yuzu devs had a Google Drive share that contained a bunch of pirate ROMs as well as a Nintendo Switch SDK, so it's possible that Yuzu did in fact have some Nintendo stuff in it.