Comment by pprotas
2 years ago
Why are emulators illegal? I understand that they are associated with piracy because people play pirates games on them. But it’s like banning BitTorrent because it allows you to pirate, or Windows because you can play pirates games on it as well.
The article mentions that emulators “illegally circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and run illegal copies of Switch games.”. But which law makes it illegal to circumvent such systems? And what about Wii-only emulators? Surely they have nothing to do with the safety systems of the Switch.
> But which law makes it illegal to circumvent such systems?
DMCA section 1201
You are right, it says it right there:
No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201
Can the emulators remove the circumvention code to avoid the DMCA takedown?
DMCA § 1201 makes reverse engineering modern consoles illegal.
Any modern game console has some form of decryption, which can be argued to prevent access.
This is when we run into the chicken/egg problem because you can't write emulation without violating 1201. It is also in part the argumentation Nintendo used in the yuzu case.
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Isn't the whole emulator a circumvention? It circumvents the hardware which "effectively controls access to a work", which is the console itself.
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> that effectively controls access
Not very effective, is it?
I assume this means something else in lawyer speak.
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Could "effectively controls access" be attacked here? The purpose of the hardware is not to control access.
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Not even for research purposes?
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In the US. The DMCA is only relevant because GitHub is operated by a US company. Nintendo would have to try to make the same arguments for EU law, e.g., if the software in question would be hosted in the EU. That might be more complicated.
Overriding DMCA it's legal for interoperation purposes.
IANAL; Afaik only in the EU, it even allows non-cleanroom reverse engineering.
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>> But which law makes it illegal to circumvent such systems?
> DMCA section 1201
...which is an unambiguous observation that DMCA section 1201 is in conflict with the 1st amendment.
Emulators per se are not illegal. Most likely.
If emulators in general were illegal, Nintendo would be in trouble too and would be obliged to remove the emulated games it sells on the Virtual Console.
Well no, any theory of emulators being illegal would be under the DMCA, which bans DRM circumvention without the authority of the copyright owner. But Nintendo is selling games with said authority, so it wouldn't apply.
You believe the sword is double edged, fair and cuts both ways.
It does not.
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There's a difference between if I try and sell you a digital copy of Super Metroid and if Nintendo does, right? Nintendo's argument would be that the emulator itself is no different.
some argue that emulation infringes on their patents, but i am not big on the concept of monopolizing ideas myself.
Well, yeah, the best precedent we have is the Sony and Bleem case. But the funny thing about common law systems is the precedents are really important until someone tries again and the precedent is suddenly thrown out.
This is a good question. In addition to an answer, if someone could give a high level but technical overview about how the Nintendo Switch encryption works and how the emulators work around it I'd be grateful.
DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent DRM. Whether or not it's good DRM is irrelevant. The classic example would be DVDs that are encrypted with CSS and 40-bit keys. Because you need to be able to decrypt the DVD to be able to play the video, if your software doesn't have permission to playback (encrypted) DVDs, you're circumventing DRM. A DVD ripping software maker has lost this in court: https://w.wiki/9yNu
So like how DVDs are encrypted, all Switch games are encrypted. Except with good AES encryption and proper key sizes. This started with games in the Wii/PS3 generation, so emulators for systems before that would be fine.
Also I've now learned that wikipedia has a URL shortener. Because Hacker News eats the period at the end of the wikipedia article title.
Yes, but how does that apply to the Nintendo Switch and Yuzu. Did they actually extract the AES key from real hardware and include it in the emulator?
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