this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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I'm sorry but how is using the actual keys from a legally purchased system circumventing anything? It's like saying using the actual key to your own front door counts as breaking and entering.
DRM is evil. Laws prohibiting circumventing DRM are also evil.
Nintendo's angle is more along the lines of:
It's a massive reach, but it's a plausible argument—or even a good one if the judge is a technologically illiterate luddite. Beyond that, Nintendo is the kind of litigant that will drag out a lawsuit until the other party is forced to settle.
A court in Germany has recently decided that reading the code of a software you legally purchased and finding plain text passwords there is illegal hacking.
The person was hired to do a security audit (by a third party) and disclosed the finding to the software developer, not even to his own employer.
The developer decided to sue him instead of fixing the problem.
At this point I have lost all trust in the technological capacities of judges out there.
There's a different kind of judge now than the technologically illiterate?
I can't quite remember the name, but there is actually at least one U.S. judge that takes the time and effort to learn about the technology in depth before making a ruling.
He's William Alsup, who presided over the Oracle vs Google case about Java API copyrightability.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Alsup#Notable_cases
Thank you. I need to bookmark this glorious man's Wikipedia page.
Then companies must go out of their way to avoid them.
Not sure it will ever get better. Maybe a single person being allowed to decide a case that requires a technical understanding should be consulted by experts in it. I guess a better lawyer probably should have made that happen (shouldn't have to). But, as the old geezers die off and the younger "tech savvy" people take over, they will no longer be young or tech savvy, technologywill keep progressing and pass us up too. And you don't want an actual young person as a judge. So... the system is just broken.
If I’m not authorized to use those keys, how do I use Switchy?
I guess all Nintendo games are illegal to play by that argument, even with their console
Because the dmca says so.
It shouldn't be illegal, but it is because the law about it was written by the industry 25 years ago because our lawmakers think the internet and indoor plumbing work the same way.
Hey man, IP, you pee, whatever.
Except of course anyone can manufacture and sell plug compatible pipes.
Yes, but the emulator doesn't circumvent any copy protection. It utilizes the decryption key from your own hardware (assuming you dumped it yourself) to run ROMs which have already had the DRM circumvented by whatever was used to dump them in the first place (which the emulator doesn't do).
This is generally the same reason why emulators such as Bleem (which works the same way as Yuzu with the decryption keys but for PS1) have been ruled legal in past court cases.
A good analogy would be that you're using their keys, on their locks, but put in a different door.
Honestly
It isn't, but when you are a small project the law is inconsequential if a massive corporation goes after you and you don't have the money for the legal battle.
I'm pretty sure the keys aren't a part of the actual game/download, it's a part of your Switch. So if you have an emulator with one of those keys built in, it's piracy.
I think what they should have done is prompt the user to put it in themselves and then we could just find keys on the internet and avoid this whole situation. But I'm no expert
That's exactly how it is... Yuzu does not distribute those files. They give you a guide on how to dump it yourself from your own Switch.
Oh... Huh, yeah then I'm with you lol, idk how they ended up winning that battle
Yuzu settled. They basically laid down and died. But I don't blame them. $2.4m is probably nothing compared to what they would have paid in legal fees to actually go to court. Even if they won.
They’re likely not going to win. Nintendo’s legal team is pretty strong as far as I know.
You didn't read the article did you?
Because you're using the system outside of its intended purpose to break the law. That's basically the definition of hacking.
I'm not sure why it being illegal to sell a tool to do that is a hard concept to grasp for so many people.
I'm not against emulation or pirating, but no shit this was going to happen eventually.
Okay, so no, it's not hacking. It doesn't fall under hacking laws. It's not illegal to sell hacking tools. Basically, everything you said is wrong.
In this case, it's all about copyright and the DMCA, which made it illegal to break the copyright protection systems companies put in place or to make or distribute tools to break copyright protection systems.
So, nothing to do will selling things or hacking. Everything to do with copyright and draconian dot come era laws.
Circumventing copyright protections by using encryption keys in an unauthorized manner is hacking.
This case might not be explicitly about hacking, but profiting off tools that use IP to circumvent protections is illegal.
It's not hacking. Sorry.
The electronic key I purchased and collected from my own hardware is "hacking" because Nintendo's doesn't intend it? Maybe the legality of selling a tool to get the key is a hard concept to grasp because the premise is objectionable. If a Switch makes a good doorstop then it will be doing it's "intended purpose" if that's what I intend for my property.
I'm against companies having unjust control over our own computing.
You might own the hardware, but you don't own the rights to the OS that runs on it. The encryption key is part of that software.
It's not a hard concept to grasp. If I was openly selling a tool to break the activation lock on Windows, I could expect the same result.
That's a ridiculous idea. If I buy a computer with an OS that has an encryption key to protect the hard drive, and later I need that key to remove my data to another system, I have an entirely reasonable expectation that I'm allowed to do so, regardless of how much the computer manufacturer doesn't want me to.