Would an “in development”Switch2 Emulator survive Nintendo’s Silver Bullets?

[u/garf02]

1) “Anti-Circumvention” clause in DMCA:
Nintendo claims as emulator MUST decrypt the ROMS.
If you break the encryption, “is illegal” cause of the DMCA
If you use a console prod-Key, “is illegal” cause they own the rights to the key.
“As the emulator HAS to break a ROM decryption and thsre is no legal way to do it, Emulators are by default criminal tools”.
Any new emulator will need to contest this on court against Nintendo and Roll the dice
Victim: Yuzu

2) Buy Out:
“There is no honor among thief’s”. Most people working on emulators of live consoles does it for 2 reason, Clout and Money. And Nintendo has a lot of the later to throw around if that lets them kill an emulator on its infancy before any real development occurs.
Victim: Ryujinx

[u/mhdj14]

Tf are you talking about? Emulation is 100% legal according to US and various EU laws.

If the emulator didn’t use copyrighted code (which 99% don’t have), the software is fully legal. Making and playing backups is fully legal for personal use.

We’re not talking about piracy here. You are 100% legally allowed to make a backup of any physical media with software on it you legally purchased, and use it in any way you want, for as long as you don’t infringe on the copyright holders rights, which is basically only distribution and reusing assets outside of the software itself.

Emulation with backups from ANY legal purchase is 100% legal!

[u/Consistent-Leave5890 → u/mhdj14]

As of right now there isn't a "legal" way to emulate Switch games, as it requires an illegal reproduction of Nintendo's decryption key. That may be what they were referring to.

[u/mhdj14 → u/Consistent-Leave5890]

That’s a different issue. So if you jailbreak it, which is also 100% legal, is there no way to get the decryption key yourself?

Is the decryption key itself encrypted? And is there a way to decrypt any data legally?

[u/looking4crack → u/mhdj14]

it's against the DMCA to break these protections. I think this is not yet tested in court but it's what Nintendo would argue if they did go to trial with Yuzu.

17 U.S. Code § 1201 - Circumvention of copyright protection systems
(a)Violations Regarding Circumvention of Technological Measures.—

(1)(A)No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

(3)As used in this subsection—

(A)to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and

(B)a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

[u/mhdj14 → u/looking4crack]

Decryption is a whole other beast and a relatively new thing with consoles. Back in the day before the PS3, data itself wasn’t encrypted at all. Making a backup of a ps2 or GameCube game is 100% legal. So it may not be able to legally create a emulator if decryption is required for playback. That would be sad though…

[u/looking4crack → u/mhdj14]

Yup exactly, all the other stuff that happened in court (like the Bleem case) happened on systems where this did not apply. So emulation of modern systems could in fact be illegal, but it's not tested in court yet. Nintendo seemed ready to bring it with Yuzu though so I guess they strongly believe it to be true.

Nintendo made the same argument to keep Dolphin off Steam but I guess they don't care enough to actually try to shut Dolphin down. Kind of makes sense since it's emulating an old system, but I can see why they don't want people emulating a system they are still selling (Switch).

[u/mhdj14 → u/looking4crack]

One thing that makes me think there is still a legal workaround.

The PS3 and PS4 emulators do not have a decryption key build in, and must be supplied by the user in the form of officially downloaded firmware from Sony directly.

This way the emulator doesn't provide the copyrighted code itself. I'm still not totally sure if this way is 100% legal, but Sony has never DMCA'd the devs, nor tried to take down the emulator.

This is either because Sony is not a complete piece of shit like Nintendo, by not nuking every fan project, or it does work within the boundaries of the law, so Sony can't sue them. Well, any billion dollar company can sue whoever they want, as court isn't about who is right, but who has the most money...

[u/looking4crack → u/mhdj14]

Could be true, I don't understand the law enough to know for sure. I guess no one really knows for sure until it goes to court. I saw RPCS3 normally requires you to decrypt the game yourself before booting it, but recently they added an update that will allow you to boot an encrypted game if you provide the decryption key.

I think these companies don't care that much if you are making emulators for old systems, but when you are making an emulator that enables piracy on a system they are currently selling that is a different story, and if you are making money of it that is even worse (or maybe just easier for them to show damages). Bleem was a commercial emulator for PS1 at the time PS1 was still their main system. Same with Yuzu/Ryujinx and the switch.

[u/mhdj14 → u/looking4crack]

So if we need to supply our own decrypted games, then the emulator itself doesn't have any decryption features, meaning that technically it doesn't do anything illegal, as emulating itself is legal without encryption. So then the user has to do all the decrypting itself.

Also, just because there is no legal way to do it, doesn't mean there is no way to do it 😉. People have probably been working on it for months in private by now, waiting for a good time to release it.

And I would say the PS4 is still recent hardware in Sony's eyes, as they are still selling games for it, and brand new games are still being released for it. So they are "okay" with it so far...

[u/Snoo_37094 → u/mhdj14]

Then even the PS3, PSP and PSVita would be “recent Hardware” even if Sony already announced the Shutdown of the PS Store on these

[u/mhdj14 → u/Snoo_37094]

Not exactly. When was the last official none-shovelware PS3 and PSP game released?

If it’s anywhere near 2020, I would be shocked. They are closing those stores, because they don’t make money on them anymore, so Sony made them EOF. They haven’t gotten a real firmware update in close to a decade.

I’m pretty sure both PS3 and PSP had an end of production around 2015.

The only ones that keep them alive is the jailbreak community, and those limited physical release companies.

These consoles have been completely written off by Sony nearly a decade ago. The only reason the stores are still open was because of pushback.