To be expected. Yuzu isn't large enough to deal with an extended legal battle and they made an error when advertising with Tears of the Kingdom before its launch date. It seems Nintendo waited for...
To be expected. Yuzu isn't large enough to deal with an extended legal battle and they made an error when advertising with Tears of the Kingdom before its launch date. It seems Nintendo waited for a slip up like that, considering that Yuzu launched in 2018, and ended up serving them with a lawsuit specifically around TotK only recently.
Shame. It sets a bad precedent for suing emulators, whose existence is important in my opinion when you think of the right to do what you please with something you bought. If I were to buy a Switch game and I want to dump it and play it on another device, I should be able to.
Yep, no legal precedent. That being said, 2.4m is well over what the Yuzu patreon made in total, so the developers effectively spent all those hours of labor for negative money. It'd definitely...
Yep, no legal precedent. That being said, 2.4m is well over what the Yuzu patreon made in total, so the developers effectively spent all those hours of labor for negative money. It'd definitely make any other patreon-funded Emulator developers think twice - maybe it'd be better to just get a normal job
The settlement can do whatever the two parties want it to, since it's a settlement. If it went to trial, and the judge did not allow Nintendo to "pierce the corporate veil", then compensatory and...
The settlement can do whatever the two parties want it to, since it's a settlement. If it went to trial, and the judge did not allow Nintendo to "pierce the corporate veil", then compensatory and punitive damages could only come from the LLC. In a settlement, well, you can agree to do anything you want.
So we don't know, in the end. The settlement may have required payment of 2.4m to be accepted - after all, Nintendo doesn't need to agree to any particular settlement if they felt like they have yuzu devs checkmated.
No you're right, and reading into it some more the settlement is rather clear about Yuzu agreeing it's piracy because they facilitate prod.keys being available (which they do not, it really seems...
No you're right, and reading into it some more the settlement is rather clear about Yuzu agreeing it's piracy because they facilitate prod.keys being available (which they do not, it really seems they're just rolling over completely). Even if it did set precedent, it doesn't change the fact that emulation by itself is legal as long as you do not incorporate, facilitate, or host any bios files.
But... Why not go after the others too for the same thing? Nintendo's money pool for legal things is endless, emulators do not have this capability and Yuzu is clearly not fighting this for the same reason.
What Yuzu got dinged for was that you could supply it an encryption key and it would be able to decrypt encrypted switch files. While that didn’t get tested since it immediately went to...
doesn't change the fact that emulation by itself is legal as long as you do not incorporate, facilitate, or host any bios files.
What Yuzu got dinged for was that you could supply it an encryption key and it would be able to decrypt encrypted switch files. While that didn’t get tested since it immediately went to settlement, that means whatever lawyer yuzu hired told them they were so incredibly fucked that they should take the first settlement agreement and run with it, probably means that this will be a no go for emulators in the future.
It doesn't need to be tested, and no precedent is needed. This is well established law: You cannot circumvent technical measures. This has been in place internationally in WIPO since 1996, in the...
While that didn’t get tested
It doesn't need to be tested, and no precedent is needed. This is well established law: You cannot circumvent technical measures. This has been in place internationally in WIPO since 1996, in the EU since 2001, in the US since 1998.
Here's the US DMCA line: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title"
Right, which is why everyone who's ripped a DVD or Blu-Ray is a criminal. Probably also everyone who's taken a screenshot of media while watching it on Netflix (this is bypassing DRM, even though...
Right, which is why everyone who's ripped a DVD or Blu-Ray is a criminal. Probably also everyone who's taken a screenshot of media while watching it on Netflix (this is bypassing DRM, even though it's through analog means) and used it to make a meme.
It's a law that can be enforced selectively. Which applies to a lot of laws, I suppose. But this is one of those vague laws that could be used to go after a large subset of the population.
technically, yes. In reality, it's not worth suing every small fish over breaking the law. Don't aim for the consumer, aim for the distributor. It's not a convient truth, but technically all...
which is why everyone who's ripped a DVD or Blu-Ray is a criminal.
technically, yes. In reality, it's not worth suing every small fish over breaking the law. Don't aim for the consumer, aim for the distributor.
everyone who's taken a screenshot of media while watching it on Netflix (this is bypassing DRM, even though it's through analog means) and used it to make a meme.
It's not a convient truth, but technically all fanart is a gray area. Companies simply allow it because it's free advertising for them. But if Netflix wanted to strike any workaround content that isn't fair use, they can.
Except there's a whole big list of exemptions, including for jailbreaking general-purpose computing devices (which frankly anything that can run code should be considered IMO). In absence of...
Except there's a whole big list of exemptions, including for jailbreaking general-purpose computing devices (which frankly anything that can run code should be considered IMO).
In absence of encryption keys, it would be 100% legal to copy your purchased Nintendo game and run it on emulated hardware. The same way it's perfectly legal to format shift your CD collection. Encryption keys do not need additional protections. They are trade secrets and should be treated as such: Once the secret is leaked...too bad it's out there.
The only big problem is the anti-traffiking rules for circumvention measures, which don't have relatively easy exemption procedures. You'll notice that this is the core complaint that most companies need to lean on...not anything surrounding the actual emulator or backup software itself.
Which should be struck down for a few reasons, but my personal reason is that it places undue burden on people whom desire to do exempt activities but lack the technical skills to circumvent themselves.
The end result is that anti-circumvention rules are mostly anti-consumer, and will hopefully be struck down over time as the harms become more and more apparent.
Just because you can run Doom on a Pregnancy test doesn't mean it's a general purpose computer. It depends a lot of the advertised functionality and how they facilitate apps into their envionment....
anything that can run code should be considered IMO
Just because you can run Doom on a Pregnancy test doesn't mean it's a general purpose computer. It depends a lot of the advertised functionality and how they facilitate apps into their envionment.
Game consoles felt like they were going that direction in gen 7, but since then they have mostly closed off a lot of features for security's sake. No Other OS, no custom theming, many general purpose apps outside of streaming services aren't on later consolves, not even a(n accessible) web browser these days.
Just because it's a pregnancy test, doesn't mean it's not a general purpose computer. I don't think there's a reasonable arguement that the pregancy test needs anti-circumvention measures either....
Just because it's a pregnancy test, doesn't mean it's not a general purpose computer. I don't think there's a reasonable arguement that the pregancy test needs anti-circumvention measures either.
That's the reality of computers, if it's turing-complete, it's a general purpose computer...or could be converted to one by someone sufficiently dedicated.
The only barriers are what others erect in the way of that.
Just because Sony dictates the PS5 can't have a browser doesn't mean it's not possible. And I'm sure general consumers would love to do those things if it were permitted by law.
If absolutely needed, I guess I would define a general-purpose computer as any device that can run authorized 3rd party software (with a clause to prevent "all software compiled by publisher and thus is first-party" loopholes). And that there should be no legal barriers to preventing running unauthorized software.
Actions speak louder than words. I simply don't think anything that has a CPU in it is subject to be called a general purpose computer. And it'd be hard proving a pregnancy test to be considered...
Just because it's a pregnancy test, doesn't mean it's not a general purpose computer.
Actions speak louder than words. I simply don't think anything that has a CPU in it is subject to be called a general purpose computer. And it'd be hard proving a pregnancy test to be considered as such due to that.
or could be converted to one by someone sufficiently dedicated.
I suppose you are free to take apart that test, extract the CPU, and build your own general purpose computer with it, but that seems to be covered more under right to repair than DMCA. The interest in such stuff is more in the software than the hardware anyway. And we can't always do whatever we want with the software. Apple is the most obvious example here.
The only barriers are what others erect in the way of that.
Like any piece of software, yes. Some are natural (you don't need to send your raw assets to let people play your game, so there's low incentive to share source code or PSDs), some are artificial like DRM. Reverse enginering such stuff has various up and downsides. Sadly, there's enough downsides that it's better to protect against it than enable stuff like mods or plugins.
Right to repair is 100% the counter-movement to the DMCA anti-tamper provisions. They are not seperate things. What I buy is mine. Doesn't matter if I use it as intended, smash it with a hammer,...
right to repair than DMCA.
Right to repair is 100% the counter-movement to the DMCA anti-tamper provisions. They are not seperate things.
What I buy is mine. Doesn't matter if I use it as intended, smash it with a hammer, or hack the BIOS and run alternative operating system. And it shouldn't be illegal to share how (or the tools) to do these things.
It doesn't matter if it's hardware or software. If you buy it, that copy is yours.
They have to be separate things, though. The damages of stolen hardware is limited and can usually be curtailed. The damages of stolen software is infinite and permanent. And can all be done by...
They have to be separate things, though. The damages of stolen hardware is limited and can usually be curtailed. The damages of stolen software is infinite and permanent. And can all be done by one individual. It's a shame for white hat users, but black hats always tend to ruin that.
In a disciplined world we wouldn't need copyright at all and we'd properly credit and compensate creators for their work. Hardware or software. But that was abused so regulation had to come into account. Like any regulation it has loopholes, but being abused yet again means we need to close the loopholes, not tear it all down and let anarchy reign.
There needs to be some way to protect software so the core rules of DMCA make sense. But IMO there needs to be harsh sanctions when it can be shown that the DMCA is being abused falsely, consistently. It shouldn't be viable to send out 1000 DMCA requests knowing 950+ of them have no ground to stand on. But that's what some companies are made to do. It's simply patent trolling and aside from ruining lives it does end up clogging the courtroom of actual issues.
Even with no laws banning circumvention, there's no laws saying that adding anti-circumvention is illegal. And we've seen that even with the law, circumvention methods continually pop up anyway....
The damages of stolen software is infinite and permanent. [...] There needs to be some way to protect software so the core rules of DMCA make sense
Even with no laws banning circumvention, there's no laws saying that adding anti-circumvention is illegal. And we've seen that even with the law, circumvention methods continually pop up anyway. The law is only hurting consumers and not stopping the actual pirates. Format shifting my DVDs is legal. It's illegal to share my rips. It's illegal to tell people how to do it. And that's the problem.
It can still be illegal to re-share software while not having any legal protections for anti-circumvention. At the end of the day, anti-circumvention efforts are futile for local software and media, because you have to hand the consumer the keys sometime.
Nintento, Sony, John Deere...they can all continue putting their anti-circumvention measures in place. Removing the anti-circumvention clauses wouldn't change that. But if we remove their legal protections, it becomes easier for people to exert their fair use rights.
Piracy for music, games, and video didn't drop because DRM made it harder...if anything the wider distribution the new streaming models and digital distribution made it easier than ever. But the value prop that streaming provided made people choose the streaming service over the pirated options.
Pre-DMCA, Starcraft 1 was one of the most pirated PC titles of all time. Ditto for everything ID put out. Yet these companies did not go under despite it... they thrived. Windows only became the OS juggarnaught it did because of piracy.
At the end of the day, I don't care if software companies die because their product is stolen. Much like a business claiming that they can't afford to pay their employees a living wage... If they can't get enough people to buy the software to keep the company going, their business model is wrong and they don't deserve to keep the business going.
And this is their solution. make use of DRM to slow pirates, make use of DMCA to takedown copyright infringement. I'm sure you're not alone in saying you don't care about a company living, but why...
If they can't get enough people to buy the software to keep the company going, their business model is wrong and they don't deserve to keep the business going.
And this is their solution. make use of DRM to slow pirates, make use of DMCA to takedown copyright infringement. I'm sure you're not alone in saying you don't care about a company living, but why should a company care about people with such a mindset?
Piracy for music, games, and video didn't drop because DRM made it harder
it's colluding data, so it's hard to make an objective conclusion oh how much each contribute. All we can say is that more DRM did not lead to an increase in piracy in the 2010's:
All you can really gleam is the pandemic increased piracy rates in some areas, which makes sense since it also increased media consumption over the board.
And we've seen that even with the law, circumvention methods continually pop up anyway. The law is only hurting consumers and not stopping the actual pirates.
Sure, someone talented and determined enough will break any lock. And in some cases they are outside jurisdiction.
Don't think of DRM as this ironclad vault, but a semi-sophicsticated lock. Your job isn't to stop the Lockpicking Lawyer, it's to stop the other 1000 people who will jiggle the door and walk away, or the 50 people who may throw a crowbar at it. It's not even financially worth it to keep some DRM schemes on which is why PC games remove them after a year, when the game makes the most money.
I'm not saying they should be banned from making locks. I'm saying they shouldn't be allowed to sue homeowners who buy the home and remove the lock. And lockpicking tools are also not illegal.
I'm not saying they should be banned from making locks.
I'm saying they shouldn't be allowed to sue homeowners who buy the home and remove the lock.
Issue comes down to software vs. hardware. We don't own the OS the same way we own a home. So there's no ownership that makes it "safe" to bypass OS securities. The real time encryption described...
they shouldn't be allowed to sue homeowners who buy the home and remove the lock.
Issue comes down to software vs. hardware. We don't own the OS the same way we own a home. So there's no ownership that makes it "safe" to bypass OS securities. The real time encryption described here sounds like it's OS level., not an inherent part of the game you "own" (which you don't, but that's another conversion)
So the metaphor is more like renting an apartment. YMMV on landlords that let you modify locks or pick them, but it's not universal
That's not true though. When you buy a thing, if it comes with an OS, the OS is part of that thing. You don't have a right to make multiple copies of that OS, or distribute it to others. But that...
We don't own the OS the same way we own a home.
That's not true though. When you buy a thing, if it comes with an OS, the OS is part of that thing.
You don't have a right to make multiple copies of that OS, or distribute it to others. But that particular copy is a good, which means you have ownership rights and that means you can do what you want with it. Otherwise, it'd be illegal to sell used DVDs. Or for libraries to exist.
If you buy a DVD, you don't get ownership of that movie's copyright. You get ownership of that copy. And you have rights to tranfer that copy to other mediums for compatibility or backup. So long as you're not distributing the other copies.
If you purchase a seperate copy of Windows, you can transfer that copy between different hardware...so long as you're not making multiple copies and retain ownership of the original.
Software is not somehow magically seperate from other copyright laws. As it says in the link I posted, most stuff in EULAs are unenforcable nonsense that companies rely on customers not knowing their rights or able to fund lawsuits in attempts to exert them.
You already admitted earlier that you don't care if piracy kills a company, so there probably isn't much point continuing this conversation. Because my main point that I seem to be failing to...
You already admitted earlier that you don't care if piracy kills a company, so there probably isn't much point continuing this conversation. Because my main point that I seem to be failing to express is
Software is a different domain from hardware, and we cannot apply hardware laws 1:1 to software
You do not "own" software to the point of a house. You are not allowed to modify nor distribute copies of software without express permission of the copyright holder.
It is in a company's best interest to protect their IP. Financially viable? I can't be sure. But enough businesses do this that this isn't some isolated instance of excessive zeal.
But if you don't care and want to simply justify piracy, I can see how this falls on deaf ears. At the end of the day, Nintendo will be fine so I don't care what people do with their private software. But I'm very ambivalent of people using this displeasing verdict to try and justify piracy as some moral right of the consumer. I've done some piracy myself and still will under specific conditions, but I understand the risks and won't feel bad if one day my copy of such media is rendered null. I don't blame the company for this anymore than I blame
Do what you want, but let's call a duck a duck: piracy is theft. Most peope use emulation for piracy. I feel bad for the honest hackers but the black hats always ruin the deeds of the white hat. Laws aren't made to keep honest people honest.
I'm not trying to justify piracy, but I can straight up tell you that you are mistaken on points 1 and 2. The link I was referring to was actually from the previous Yuzu topic...one of the best...
I'm not trying to justify piracy, but I can straight up tell you that you are mistaken on points 1 and 2.
In short, if the software is sold as a perpetual license, it is no different than if they sold me a paper book. That copy of the software is mine, and I'm free to futz with it or resell it to my hearts content. Otherwise modding games would be illegal. I'm not allowed to distribute new copies, but I can transfer ownership of that singular copy.
I'm in the process of jailbreaking my switch so that I can extract my Stardew Valley saves to my PC and play it there instead. I bought it legally for both systems. There is no copyright violation. But it does require circumventing Nintendo's protections.
I'll be clear: I understand that circumventing DRM is mostly illegal right now. But I unequivicolly state that it shouldn't be, because DRM has always been about giving a seller power over good they have sold, which is directly at odds with the core principle of buying goods.
Is it really clear who, between the user of the software and the developer of the software, is doing the actual circumventing here, especially when it literally doesn’t work without the user...
Is it really clear who, between the user of the software and the developer of the software, is doing the actual circumventing here, especially when it literally doesn’t work without the user sourcing and contributing an encryption key on their own?
I don’t feel like you have fully addressed the aspect of my original question which points out that the thing they are distributing cannot, on its own, circumvent literally anything.
I don’t feel like you have fully addressed the aspect of my original question which points out that the thing they are distributing cannot, on its own, circumvent literally anything.
I'm not the person you were responding to, and I don't necessarily have the same interpretation or perspective on the DMCA as them, but I think if you come at it with the assumption that there's...
I'm not the person you were responding to, and I don't necessarily have the same interpretation or perspective on the DMCA as them, but I think if you come at it with the assumption that there's no way to legally obtain an encryption key, then there's no defense for the developer to offer someone an option to input the encryption key.
Nintendo might take the position that whatever encryption key they have on the Switch is protected in such a way that it's not possible to extract it or utilize it outside the Switch hardware without violating the DMCA's anti-circumvention measures, provided there's no exemption for it, and thus there's no legal scenario where someone should be entering an encryption key, even if they own a Switch themselves and the encryption key they are putting in is from their own Switch.
In that scenario, no the Yuzu developer itself isn't circumventing, but they'd be knowingly facilitating circumvention if you approach it from that angle that there is no legal reason to be inputting an encryption key.
So just to remind, this little tangent is not discussing whether or not there is something legally problematic about Yuzu. Personally I myself am of the opinion that absolutely there is. The...
So just to remind, this little tangent is not discussing whether or not there is something legally problematic about Yuzu. Personally I myself am of the opinion that absolutely there is. The question though raised by stu2b50’s ancestor comment is whether or not there is any question for the courts to settle regarding the legality of distributing an emulator without encryption keys in general. The only reason I asked my pointed question was because I don’t think it’s clear that the response “the dmca says it’s illegal to distribute tools designed to circumvent drm technologies” actually applies to this situation. Because in this limited context (and in my own naive opinion), I would definitely expect the finer details of how much user intervention is required to come into play even if it’s still pretty obvious that no matter what, the Yuzu devs were not in legal compliance nor ever even attempted to have the veneer of it.
It was addressed above, no? That decryption algorithm being supplied in the code was probably the big issue. They didn't give you bios information, but it had some capacity to help bypass securities.
It was addressed above, no?
What Yuzu got dinged for was that you could supply it an encryption key and it would be able to decrypt encrypted switch files
That decryption algorithm being supplied in the code was probably the big issue. They didn't give you bios information, but it had some capacity to help bypass securities.
Or make sure you're at least the second most popular out there. There are countless examples of the most popular app or program being shutdown and the rest happily continuing. In this case Ryujinx...
probably means that this will be a no go for emulators in the future.
Or make sure you're at least the second most popular out there. There are countless examples of the most popular app or program being shutdown and the rest happily continuing. In this case Ryujinx is still up, recently that manga reader was shutdown. YouTube Vanced, Pirate bay, Napster, and so on and so forth.
It's only a problem once you get too large and it's a perceived revenue loss.
Always will as long as the barrier to getting a lawyer and fighting these cases is so high. I don't see any interest in changing this structure either.
Always will as long as the barrier to getting a lawyer and fighting these cases is so high. I don't see any interest in changing this structure either.
Message from the yuzu developers from their Twitter and Discord:
Message from the yuzu developers from their Twitter and Discord:
Hello yuz-ers and Citra fans:
We write today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu's support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately.
Yuzu and its team have always been against piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and were not intending to cause harm. But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo's technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy. In particular, we have been deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content prior to its release and ruin the experience for legitimate purchasers and fans.
We have come to the decision that we cannot continue to allow this to occur. Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end. Effective today, we will be pulling our code repositories offline, discontinuing our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and, soon, shutting down our website. We hope our actions will be a small step towards ending piracy of all creators' works.
It’s also incredibly funny(at least for me) because if you followed the development for this specific emulator, you would notice that they did exactly the opposite of what they are stating here....
It’s also incredibly funny(at least for me) because if you followed the development for this specific emulator, you would notice that they did exactly the opposite of what they are stating here. They took any chance they could to see if they could monetize further the emulator, specially when they try to charge for the online that one time…
There’s no way that there aren’t hundreds of clones/forks out there in the wild. I expect Yuzu will return with different developers fairly quickly, likely with hosting in a country beyond...
There’s no way that there aren’t hundreds of clones/forks out there in the wild.
I expect Yuzu will return with different developers fairly quickly, likely with hosting in a country beyond Nintendo’s reach. Trying to kill it will probably be like trying to kill a hydra.
Well, there’ll be copies of the repo around. In terms of actual forks, this type of engineering is hard and requires a lot of domain knowledge into very niche areas. Without financial incentive,...
Well, there’ll be copies of the repo around. In terms of actual forks, this type of engineering is hard and requires a lot of domain knowledge into very niche areas. Without financial incentive, and with Big N potentially looming over you, I’m not sure how much development will continue.
There’s jobs that will pay a lot more for that kind of talent and hobbies that have much less risk of financial disaster!
Most people who would be able to help, are part of Ryujinx already, so it's unlikely a Yuzu fork will manage to gather enough devs. Unless the Yuzu devs decide to work on it in secret, despite the...
Most people who would be able to help, are part of Ryujinx already, so it's unlikely a Yuzu fork will manage to gather enough devs.
Unless the Yuzu devs decide to work on it in secret, despite the injunction, which could possibly happen.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24455376/tropic-haze-judgment.pdf This is The Verge's copy of Exhibit A. It's just a proposal for now, a judge still needs to approve it.
Yes. People were dumping the source code already when it was first announced. I expect a bunch of forks to pop up real quick. It's the same story every time. One is the martyr that spawns the hydra.
Yes. People were dumping the source code already when it was first announced. I expect a bunch of forks to pop up real quick.
It's the same story every time. One is the martyr that spawns the hydra.
Fuck. I read the news, checked the GitHub, was relieved it's still up. The minute I wanted to clone the Android repo, 404. They took down everything already. :( Does anyone have the latest copy...
Fuck. I read the news, checked the GitHub, was relieved it's still up.
The minute I wanted to clone the Android repo, 404. They took down everything already. :(
Does anyone have the latest copy hosted somewhere, and is willing to share?
The result was expected, but what I'm afraid of are the repercussions Nintendo is looking to cause. From the Verge: i.e. They're asking a federal judge to agree with the following: This would...
The result was expected, but what I'm afraid of are the repercussions Nintendo is looking to cause.
From the Verge:
Nintendo and Tropic Haze are asking a judge to specifically find that Yuzu circumvents its copyright protections by using those keys, even if it doesn’t come with them.
i.e. They're asking a federal judge to agree with the following:
Developing or distributing software, including Yuzu, that in its ordinary course functions only when cryptographic keys are integrated without authorization, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s prohibition on trafficking in devices that circumvent effective technological measures, because the software is primarily designed for the purpose of circumventing technological measures.
This would essentially criminalize emulators as far as I can tell.
I am not a lawyer, but if this happened, I think you could protect yourself pretty well by just taking care to never promote your emulator as a way to play copyrighted video games, and do all your...
I am not a lawyer, but if this happened, I think you could protect yourself pretty well by just taking care to never promote your emulator as a way to play copyrighted video games, and do all your marketing in the context of it being a platform to develop new and original games or to study how an old game console works. Bonus points if you distribute your emulator in such a way as to make it impossible to play copyrighted games on it unless you do some advanced configuration stuff that is clearly not supposed to be part of its “standard operation”.
It wouldn't. It offsets where the piracy happens, in a sense. Dolphin has a key that Nintendo was told is not grounds for a lawsuit which gives them a pass, but most use decrypted data, or ROM...
It wouldn't. It offsets where the piracy happens, in a sense. Dolphin has a key that Nintendo was told is not grounds for a lawsuit which gives them a pass, but most use decrypted data, or ROM rips that were never encrypted to start with.
As far as I was told, the issue is that decryption for more modern games, or at least switch games specifically, happens on the fly. It's not that easy to separate the emulator from the decryption...
As far as I was told, the issue is that decryption for more modern games, or at least switch games specifically, happens on the fly. It's not that easy to separate the emulator from the decryption process anymore.
If the decryption process of either the game or the console is integrated in any form in the emulator, it would become a crime.
I'm also not fully convinced that this wording wouldn't apply to any emulator simply because you can argue they're used to play games in unintended systems, bypassing DRM and other tracking technologies, which Nintendo is arguing is in violation of the DMCA.
I'm really worried to be honest, all it takes is a technologically illiterate judge.
Since it wasn't mentioned yet - this also killed Citra, their 3DS emulator. It seems like they took down everything Nintendo-related that they have control over, in order to obey the future...
Since it wasn't mentioned yet - this also killed Citra, their 3DS emulator. It seems like they took down everything Nintendo-related that they have control over, in order to obey the future injunction.
That's the one that hurts. The 3DS is abandonware. I already own a Switch and buy Switch games, Yuzu was allowing people to play products that were being currently developed and sold. Buy Citra?...
That's the one that hurts. The 3DS is abandonware. I already own a Switch and buy Switch games, Yuzu was allowing people to play products that were being currently developed and sold. Buy Citra? They've taken down their shop, there's no legal way to get loads of those games.
It’s pretty much the nail in the coffin for Citra. It already had very few updates despite a very, very incomplete compatibility list since the devs were focused on the more lucrative yuzu....
It’s pretty much the nail in the coffin for Citra. It already had very few updates despite a very, very incomplete compatibility list since the devs were focused on the more lucrative yuzu.
There’s even less incentive now. Probably have to wait until mikage or others catch up before any games that can’t be played not have a chance of running on an emulator.
I can't really agree given that this is mostly affecting a minority of highly engaged gamers at the end of the day. Most people won't even know you can play switch games on your PC. Meanwhile,...
I can't really agree given that this is mostly affecting a minority of highly engaged gamers at the end of the day. Most people won't even know you can play switch games on your PC.
Meanwhile, every western studio is trying to turn a game into a continuous service that sells subscriptions via "battle passes" and most eastern studios more or lesses uses console games to sell into their various gacha. Nintendo surprisingly has avoided the former and is already pulling out of the latter.
Anti-consumer practices affect people even if they don't realize it. Companies like Nintendo are slowly eroding the rights of consumers and setting up new precedents, leading to less and less...
Anti-consumer practices affect people even if they don't realize it. Companies like Nintendo are slowly eroding the rights of consumers and setting up new precedents, leading to less and less expectations on behalf of the consumer the more time that passes. This time its an emulator, but in the past its been Nintendo DMCAing youtubers for making videos with their games, shutting down Smash tournaments for no reason, killing fan-made projects that have absolutely no bearing on their original games and aren't making a profit.
What's it going to be in the future?
By the way, it wasn't just the Switch emulator that was killed, they also killed Citra, a 3DS emulator which isn't even supported by Nintendo anymore, you literally can't buy games on those platforms. (at least from Nintendo)
If we're being realistic, these are all very niche scenes. Very few people are youtubers and the invisible hand did in fact make that non-viable. Very few people are playing in paid tournaments...
but in the past its been Nintendo DMCAing youtubers for making videos with their games, shutting down Smash tournaments for no reason, killing fan-made projects that have absolutely no bearing on their original games and aren't making a profit.
If we're being realistic, these are
all very niche scenes. Very few people are youtubers and the invisible hand did in fact make that non-viable. Very few people are playing in paid tournaments for 20 year old games, and fanart of any sort (drawings, mods, remixes) were always a gray area that most companies simply ignored (and again, few are artists that choose to focus on fanart).
all within their rights. It's not even DMCA (except youtube), it's plain ol' copyright. You can't be expected to overstep into another person's IP and always be okay. Some studios like Bethesda embrace it, many are neutral. But some just want to very closely control their image.
Anti-consumer practices affect people even if they don't realize it.
If a tree falls....
Most people want to simply buy a nintendo, download a game, and play the game. The extra extensions done by engaged fans aren't affecting the majority of customers either way. Most consumers are happy and can consume just fine, especially since Nintendo is one of the few with no ways to fall into a pit of engagement nor MTX's. They won't see Nintendo as anti-consumer just because there's less fanart or videos on Youtube.
you literally can't buy games on those platforms anymore (at least from Nintendo)
From Nintendo's POV that seems like a convenient side effect.
What's it going to be in the future?
Much worse, but ironically enough, Nintendo will probably be the final guard since they go at their own pace.
We'll naturally surrender game ownership as the PC scene did as cloud and subscriptions slowly becomes more viable.
More marketshare will be taken up as people flock to eternal services over new, ephemeral experiences.
Which means studios will make less games as they focus most of their resources on their own version of Fortnite (in a financial sense, not genre sense).
Indies will stagnate as the smaller ones are already limited and the larger ones struggle to get funding as investors will want to also skew towards services instead of bespoke experiences. We'll still get our occassional Hollow Knight or Stardew Valley, but we'll call them what they are: one hit wonders.
Oh, and then AI in the long term will blend a lot of the market into mush (but how artists will react and protect against AI is a whole other topic), as by that point content production will matter much more than proper artistic direction and cohesion. With less artist in the studio there's less protest against the ones up top against such ideas.
I don't particularly have much optimism about the future of gaming, but Nintendo and how they work aren't even on the iceberg, let alone being the tip of one.
Just because something is legal doesn't mean its good for the consumer. Yes, but lots of people watch youtubers and are negatively affected when they can't produce videos. Yes but a lot of people...
Just because something is legal doesn't mean its good for the consumer.
Very few people are youtubers and the invisible hand did in fact make that non-viable.
Yes, but lots of people watch youtubers and are negatively affected when they can't produce videos.
Very few people are playing in paid tournaments for 20 year old games
Yes but a lot of people like watching those tournaments.
Anyway, what does it even matter if its a small group of people being affected, that still doesn't mean its not anti-consumer. Your reasoning just seems to be "if it doesn't affect me, it doesn't matter" which ironically is exactly what these giant companies want you to think. It's frustrating that you're so quick to dismiss a not-so-small-as-you-seem-to-think group of people's legitimate concerns just because "most people just wanna play zelda"
The act of paying money is inherently anti-consumer. Like everything else in life, business is a compromise between what benefits the customers and the creators. and generally, when you can't...
what does it even matter if its a small group of people being affected, that still doesn't mean its not anti-consumer
The act of paying money is inherently anti-consumer. Like everything else in life, business is a compromise between what benefits the customers and the creators. and generally, when you can't please everyone you either try to please the most people or please a very specific group of people. Nintendo chose the former.
That's why I'm arguing about the smaller crowds not mattering in the grand scheme of things. Nintendo has its audience and it's not necessarily the people who would want to protest over an emulator being litigated. Everyone on the internet who read the news about this (which is probably in the millions) could boycott Nintendo and it'd make a small dent at best into their bottom line. We are insignificant.
The whole problem with "smaller crowds not mattering" is because everyone is part of a smaller crowd in one way or another. Small precedents are set used to justify big things. Nintendo is...
The whole problem with "smaller crowds not mattering" is because everyone is part of a smaller crowd in one way or another.
Small precedents are set used to justify big things. Nintendo is exerting the exact same rights as John Deer....and they're both skeevy anti-consumer nonsense.
I am reminded of this poem.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Deer's customers are other businessmen. When the money is threatened they have to fight back or die out. That's one of the few ways to truly rile up a populace; when they have weight in the game....
Small precedents are set used to justify big things. Nintendo is exerting the exact same rights as John Deer....and they're both skeevy anti-consumer nonsense.
Deer's customers are other businessmen. When the money is threatened they have to fight back or die out. That's one of the few ways to truly rile up a populace; when they have weight in the game. Or when you're retired and have a lot of time to lobby or simply attend town hall meetings.
When Nintendo's customer are threatened... They will just move on to anything else. Other consoles, More toys, social media, etc. There won't be any push back if Nintendo screws up, just "quiet quitting". Just fade into irrelevance.
I don't think that will happen anytime soon, but the actual worst case is is much more boring than late stage capitalism. Microsoft has said this for years that games aren't their biggest competition, and they have a good point.
I vote with my wallet - I'm not buying anything Nintendo. If I ever want to play their game I will find some means of doing so. EDIT: I have to add that I haven't pirated a game in many many years...
I vote with my wallet - I'm not buying anything Nintendo. If I ever want to play their game I will find some means of doing so.
EDIT: I have to add that I haven't pirated a game in many many years and actually own Switch and games for it. But I don't see my future giving any more money to Nintendo...
I used to not care that much, but there are quite a lot eye-openers in last few years... Smartphones getting basically unrepairable (including battery swap), printers refusing to print black when...
I used to not care that much, but there are quite a lot eye-openers in last few years... Smartphones getting basically unrepairable (including battery swap), printers refusing to print black when you don't have color or refusing to scan if you don't have ink or downright refusing anything with non-original ink, laptops getting more and more thing soldered to motherboards and no changeable, subscriptions for seat warmers in cars (that are already built-in in all those cars so the BOM cost is there no matter what you want), streamin services getting scattered like hell with everyone wanting their share of pie (while customers just want their show and not pay for milionth service) and we could probably continue all day long... Including Nintendo sueing (siing?) everyone in sight.
I'm fed up with all this. That is why I keep buying audio CDs, DVDs and Blu rays, why I have Jellyfin, why I went through the hassle of getting public IP so I can run my own VPN and stream my rips anywhere, why I buy games on GOG (and Steam as Steam still goes strong and didn't fuck up... yet and I hope it never will), why I bought basically low end shit phone Nokia G22 (advertised and actually built to be home repairable), why I use Linux instead of Windows...
Yes, Nintendo won't see single penny, cent whatever from me. I was legitimate customer that is actually hit by Yuzu being taken down. Nintendo got on my blacklist and I don't think they will ever change to get back.
I understand they want to defend their IP and that is good thing to do. But Yuzu is just a tool, it doesn't commit crime by itself. They pointed their finger on the wrong thing. This will not stop piracy. It will kinda do Streissand effect on them - Yuzu will continue to live, though not officially. And more people will know about it from media coverage of recent days. And piraes will continue to pirate. And some new pirates may arise from so far loyal customers of Nintendo.
Your view is the same as mine. I gave them the money to play the game officially, it's just more convenient for me to play it on other hardware though. They shouldn't care as I paid for it, they...
Your view is the same as mine. I gave them the money to play the game officially, it's just more convenient for me to play it on other hardware though. They shouldn't care as I paid for it, they got the money. I don't care if they can call me officialy a pirate, my mind is at ease, morally I'm okay with what I do.
Wel, now... There are probably hundreds of thousands who didn't pay anything yet they play the game the same as me. Those are who are PITA for Nintendo. But it is the tool that gets punishment, not the actual pirates. If I shoot someone to death with a gun, will the gun go to prison instead of me?
Rotten Apples ruin the barrel. I usually use this quote when talking about forums, but it seems somewhat fitting here. if the "witches" in question are pirates, of course. I'm sure if data...
All I'm doing here is format shifting. It's not bloody video game piracy
Rotten Apples ruin the barrel. I usually use this quote when talking about forums, but it seems somewhat fitting here.
The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.
if the "witches" in question are pirates, of course.
I'm sure if data suggested that most people who used these tools bought the game and it reduced sales to litigate the tools, that they would softly allow them. Similar to fanart. But as it is I can't imagine that idealist vision being close to reality.
Honestly, advertising the play-ability of an unreleased product was a horrible idea from the perspective of those genuinely wanted to use emulation to play backups of their purchased products. It removes any veneer that the people playing are there to backup their copies.
DMCA needs to die. Technological circumvention my hairy backside.
Maybe one day we'll get a Stallman styled radical who will drain millions to make an argument in court. But it seems like a pipe dream for now. Companies making money put in the most money to mitigate any risk of losing money.
to be frank, every AAA company is suing or being sued. Nintendo is simply noteworthy because they get hit the most and have the most consumer facing cases on otherwise boring litigation. Xbox...
Including Nintendo sueing (siing?) everyone in sight.
to be frank, every AAA company is suing or being sued. Nintendo is simply noteworthy because they get hit the most and have the most consumer facing cases on otherwise boring litigation. Xbox releases 99% of their games on PC so xbox emulation isn't attractive, and Sony has such large technologial barriers that we're still 2 generations behind on emulation (with PS3 emulation still being imperfect). Meanwhile, The Switch was emulated in near year 1.
This will not stop piracy
It will slow down the scene and I'm guessing that is their true goal. Similar to how DRM's goal isn't to forever fight piracy of games (and part of why devs remove it after a year). Early momentum is everything in game releases and companies feel those early sales are enough to invest in heavy DRM, even if it takes a hit in game quality.
People are theorizing that this is done to prep for the Switch 2 release. I don't fully believe that, but I can see the line of reasoning, especially if the Switch 2 is being made to be backwards compatible with Switch games.
Disclaimer: Having own VPN is for accessing your own PC/network, not to beanonymous on the web or being able to switch to different location (to ie. access geo-locked content). If you want to run...
Disclaimer: Having own VPN is for accessing your own PC/network, not to beanonymous on the web or being able to switch to different location (to ie. access geo-locked content).
If you want to run your very own VPN server, you would need IP address to do so (so devices know where to connect to)
This public IP should be set to you/your machine so it doesn't change
IPv4 addresses are limited in count and basically we have already run out of them
You have to ask you ISP if they can set you with public IP just for your very own use, this may and in most cases do cost you more money (as it costs them money to have that address assigned to them in the first place)
Then your (probably) router needs to be set up with this address (or it may be port-forwarded to your router so you don't need to do anything on the router) and it basically becomes accessible from the whole world (well, except North Korea, probably China etc.) and hackers can immediately take advantage of this -. if you don't know what you are doing, better not do it in the first place
Either on your router (if capable) or on your home server (if you have one) you setup ie. OpenVPN and generate clients' certificates and then just distribute them to your notebook, phone etc. and voila, you are connected to your other VPN connected devices from anywhere
That was kinda the process and a bit of outcomes... Let's be more specific:
I run Jellyfin (like Plex) with my media collection on it, through VPN I can access it wherever I have one of my devices that have VPN access on them (Steam Deck, phone, ...), thus basically making it my very own streaming service for myself and family members
I also have server at my parents house which I use as backup server for my most important data, this server is connected to the VPN thus making it accessible to other machines and I'm able to sync data to it over the internet
I have a Rapsberry Pi at home that can start/stop pool circulation (through solar = heat the pool) which I can control from anywhere because this Raspberry Pi is also connected to the same VPN
EDIT: I also have second VPN set up which I use to play multiplayer games with my friends, kinda like Hamachi was used back in the day, but without any problems - this just works everytime
Having public IP is security risk to some degree. You are exposing your home network to the internet through your router. You have to take serious precautions and be sure you set the router right so you don't have breach. If you don't have public IP, your ISP takes care of this (or at least should take care) by securing their own network equipment and setup.
Also having public IP has kinda downside in that if you ie. upload a movie to sharing site, police have address where they should go knock on the door - your ISP knows it's your IP and will tell police your home address. So if you have public IP, you shouldn't do malicious stuff. Downloading stuff from internet may be (or may not be, depending where you live I guess) fine, but uploading (sharing, copying) is illegal probably everywhere. Public IP ties your actions to you as a person. Watching movie from Jellyfin is fine though - you bought the movie (right?), ripped it yourself (right?) and you are watching it on encrypted VPN tunnel (nobody knows it's a movie except you).
I hope I have answered your questions to some degree. Feel free to ask if I didn't or you have new ones.
A static IP makes it slightly easier, but a dynamic IP doesn't protect you; your ISP knows what IP is assigned to which client. If the police asks them who had the IP a.b.c.d with a date and time,...
your ISP knows it's your IP and will tell police your home address
A static IP makes it slightly easier, but a dynamic IP doesn't protect you; your ISP knows what IP is assigned to which client. If the police asks them who had the IP a.b.c.d with a date and time, they can can and will give them your name.
True. I thought and meant that you are behind their public IP with more of their clients - like hundreds of households accessing internet from one public IP. Then it's up to your country's laws if...
True.
I thought and meant that you are behind their public IP with more of their clients - like hundreds of households accessing internet from one public IP. Then it's up to your country's laws if the ISP must keep records of which household (client) accessed which site at precise time from that one public IP.
As much as I hate defending Nintendo here, it seems like they were justified here? Apparently in the Discord server for the emulator, the devs would distribute leaked copies of games before...
As much as I hate defending Nintendo here, it seems like they were justified here? Apparently in the Discord server for the emulator, the devs would distribute leaked copies of games before release and paywalled early builds of the emulator with patches to play these pre-release games. And unsurprisingly, Nintendo apparently had people in this server monitoring everything too so they knew everything that was going on.
I wonder if it would be possible to run a company where you take money from random people, invest it in market indexes, and if you get more value in your account than the market value of a target...
I wonder if it would be possible to run a company where you take money from random people, invest it in market indexes, and if you get more value in your account than the market value of a target public company you buy it. I think you could get quite a lot of meme energy behind a movement to take over Nintendo. And worse case people have just invested in an index fund.
Fortunately or not, but the current owners of the company actually need to agree to sell their shares. While there’s a fair amount of free float for any given stock, a hostile takeover is another...
Exemplary
Fortunately or not, but the current owners of the company actually need to agree to sell their shares. While there’s a fair amount of free float for any given stock, a hostile takeover is another thing entirely.
Also, Nintendo is quite large (64b), and you generally need a multiple of the company’s market cap to actually do a hostile takeover.
To be honest, litigious or not, I think Nintendo is run quite well for a games company and would prefer they not be owned by an amorphous meme collection.
Well I just Googled it, and Nintendo's market capitalization is apparently $64.82 Billion, supposedly as of this month. Now Math is hard (seriously, that's not a joke), but it takes 50million...
Well I just Googled it, and Nintendo's market capitalization is apparently $64.82 Billion, supposedly as of this month.
Now Math is hard (seriously, that's not a joke), but it takes 50million people at $20 each to make a billion. Or something like 3.3 Billion people at that $20 each to all collectively decide, and organize to, buy out Nintendo.
Obviously every person who donates, say, $500 obliviates the need for 25 others to come up with their twenty bucks. At that buy-in, a touch less than 130 million donations are needed. If it jumps up to two grand per, thirty-three million people could afford to buy out Nintendo.
Of course, I'm reading the RJR Nabisco LBO book right now, and Capitalists just can't stand to let someone else make money if they could be making it themselves. Or at least get a piece of the action. If, somehow, this groundroots investor organization managed to organize and coalesce to a singular purpose, the rest of the world's financial community would certainly be gunning for their piece.
So really, the moment it became clear Nintendo (or any company) was going to be bought, the price will go up. Others will get stock and wait for the rise, some will maneuver to convince (or force) Nintendo to sell to them. And so on. Seems prudent to factor at least a 50% margin to cover all that. So probably, at that two grand level, you'd end up needing closer to about 50 million folks.
But people are greedy. Some asshat would take control of the "Nintendo Buyout Fund" and divert the money, or take his piece of it. A study would be needed. Training. Consultants. Suddenly the needed cash has been drained below the requirement. Now we need more cash. And people to track it, and organize it, invest and safeguard it.
Basically we'd have a whole corporation that exists to manage the buyout of another corporation. And corporations exist only to sustain themselves. So the Nintendo buyout would never happen. Somehow, there'd always be a reason to wait just a bit more. But keep donating, because any day now, we'll be ready.
Donate to me specifically lol. Unless…? Srsly tho, I know you’re making a point/painting a picture, but the minute Nintendo stops being beholden to old Japanese investors, it stops being Nintendo....
Donate to me specifically lol. Unless…?
Srsly tho, I know you’re making a point/painting a picture, but the minute Nintendo stops being beholden to old Japanese investors, it stops being Nintendo. It ceases to exist. The decriers of their corporate policy, since 2004 at least when I was a young lad reading Nintendojo hot takes, have always refused to acknowledge that every stupid out-of-pocket decision all Americans hate comes with 10-15 games and at least one entire system no other company would take a chance on. Animal Crossing? Never happens after an American IPO. DS? 3DS? No way. Sure there’s virtual boys and Wii U’s to poke at, but Nintendo is the company other companies emulate, whether anyone admits it or not. Smash Bros is a singular 20+ year experience, culminating in cooperation from so many licensing corps it’s unfathomable. Never would have happened outside their weird anti-profitability closed garden.
To be expected. Yuzu isn't large enough to deal with an extended legal battle and they made an error when advertising with Tears of the Kingdom before its launch date. It seems Nintendo waited for a slip up like that, considering that Yuzu launched in 2018, and ended up serving them with a lawsuit specifically around TotK only recently.
Shame. It sets a bad precedent for suing emulators, whose existence is important in my opinion when you think of the right to do what you please with something you bought. If I were to buy a Switch game and I want to dump it and play it on another device, I should be able to.
Oh well, we still have Ryujinx.
It doesn't make any legal precedent at least
Yep, no legal precedent. That being said, 2.4m is well over what the Yuzu patreon made in total, so the developers effectively spent all those hours of labor for negative money. It'd definitely make any other patreon-funded Emulator developers think twice - maybe it'd be better to just get a normal job
IANAL but doesn't the settlement just get whatever is left in the LLC?
If they were paying themselves salaries, I imagine those would be safe?
The settlement can do whatever the two parties want it to, since it's a settlement. If it went to trial, and the judge did not allow Nintendo to "pierce the corporate veil", then compensatory and punitive damages could only come from the LLC. In a settlement, well, you can agree to do anything you want.
So we don't know, in the end. The settlement may have required payment of 2.4m to be accepted - after all, Nintendo doesn't need to agree to any particular settlement if they felt like they have yuzu devs checkmated.
No you're right, and reading into it some more the settlement is rather clear about Yuzu agreeing it's piracy because they facilitate prod.keys being available (which they do not, it really seems they're just rolling over completely). Even if it did set precedent, it doesn't change the fact that emulation by itself is legal as long as you do not incorporate, facilitate, or host any bios files.
But... Why not go after the others too for the same thing? Nintendo's money pool for legal things is endless, emulators do not have this capability and Yuzu is clearly not fighting this for the same reason.
What Yuzu got dinged for was that you could supply it an encryption key and it would be able to decrypt encrypted switch files. While that didn’t get tested since it immediately went to settlement, that means whatever lawyer yuzu hired told them they were so incredibly fucked that they should take the first settlement agreement and run with it, probably means that this will be a no go for emulators in the future.
It doesn't need to be tested, and no precedent is needed. This is well established law: You cannot circumvent technical measures. This has been in place internationally in WIPO since 1996, in the EU since 2001, in the US since 1998.
Here's the US DMCA line: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title"
Right, which is why everyone who's ripped a DVD or Blu-Ray is a criminal. Probably also everyone who's taken a screenshot of media while watching it on Netflix (this is bypassing DRM, even though it's through analog means) and used it to make a meme.
It's a law that can be enforced selectively. Which applies to a lot of laws, I suppose. But this is one of those vague laws that could be used to go after a large subset of the population.
technically, yes. In reality, it's not worth suing every small fish over breaking the law. Don't aim for the consumer, aim for the distributor.
It's not a convient truth, but technically all fanart is a gray area. Companies simply allow it because it's free advertising for them. But if Netflix wanted to strike any workaround content that isn't fair use, they can.
Except there's a whole big list of exemptions, including for jailbreaking general-purpose computing devices (which frankly anything that can run code should be considered IMO).
In absence of encryption keys, it would be 100% legal to copy your purchased Nintendo game and run it on emulated hardware. The same way it's perfectly legal to format shift your CD collection. Encryption keys do not need additional protections. They are trade secrets and should be treated as such: Once the secret is leaked...too bad it's out there.
The only big problem is the anti-traffiking rules for circumvention measures, which don't have relatively easy exemption procedures. You'll notice that this is the core complaint that most companies need to lean on...not anything surrounding the actual emulator or backup software itself.
Which should be struck down for a few reasons, but my personal reason is that it places undue burden on people whom desire to do exempt activities but lack the technical skills to circumvent themselves.
The end result is that anti-circumvention rules are mostly anti-consumer, and will hopefully be struck down over time as the harms become more and more apparent.
Just because you can run Doom on a Pregnancy test doesn't mean it's a general purpose computer. It depends a lot of the advertised functionality and how they facilitate apps into their envionment.
Game consoles felt like they were going that direction in gen 7, but since then they have mostly closed off a lot of features for security's sake. No Other OS, no custom theming, many general purpose apps outside of streaming services aren't on later consolves, not even a(n accessible) web browser these days.
Just because it's a pregnancy test, doesn't mean it's not a general purpose computer. I don't think there's a reasonable arguement that the pregancy test needs anti-circumvention measures either.
That's the reality of computers, if it's turing-complete, it's a general purpose computer...or could be converted to one by someone sufficiently dedicated.
The only barriers are what others erect in the way of that.
Just because Sony dictates the PS5 can't have a browser doesn't mean it's not possible. And I'm sure general consumers would love to do those things if it were permitted by law.
If absolutely needed, I guess I would define a general-purpose computer as any device that can run authorized 3rd party software (with a clause to prevent "all software compiled by publisher and thus is first-party" loopholes). And that there should be no legal barriers to preventing running unauthorized software.
Actions speak louder than words. I simply don't think anything that has a CPU in it is subject to be called a general purpose computer. And it'd be hard proving a pregnancy test to be considered as such due to that.
I suppose you are free to take apart that test, extract the CPU, and build your own general purpose computer with it, but that seems to be covered more under right to repair than DMCA. The interest in such stuff is more in the software than the hardware anyway. And we can't always do whatever we want with the software. Apple is the most obvious example here.
Like any piece of software, yes. Some are natural (you don't need to send your raw assets to let people play your game, so there's low incentive to share source code or PSDs), some are artificial like DRM. Reverse enginering such stuff has various up and downsides. Sadly, there's enough downsides that it's better to protect against it than enable stuff like mods or plugins.
Right to repair is 100% the counter-movement to the DMCA anti-tamper provisions. They are not seperate things.
What I buy is mine. Doesn't matter if I use it as intended, smash it with a hammer, or hack the BIOS and run alternative operating system. And it shouldn't be illegal to share how (or the tools) to do these things.
It doesn't matter if it's hardware or software. If you buy it, that copy is yours.
They have to be separate things, though. The damages of stolen hardware is limited and can usually be curtailed. The damages of stolen software is infinite and permanent. And can all be done by one individual. It's a shame for white hat users, but black hats always tend to ruin that.
In a disciplined world we wouldn't need copyright at all and we'd properly credit and compensate creators for their work. Hardware or software. But that was abused so regulation had to come into account. Like any regulation it has loopholes, but being abused yet again means we need to close the loopholes, not tear it all down and let anarchy reign.
There needs to be some way to protect software so the core rules of DMCA make sense. But IMO there needs to be harsh sanctions when it can be shown that the DMCA is being abused falsely, consistently. It shouldn't be viable to send out 1000 DMCA requests knowing 950+ of them have no ground to stand on. But that's what some companies are made to do. It's simply patent trolling and aside from ruining lives it does end up clogging the courtroom of actual issues.
Even with no laws banning circumvention, there's no laws saying that adding anti-circumvention is illegal. And we've seen that even with the law, circumvention methods continually pop up anyway. The law is only hurting consumers and not stopping the actual pirates. Format shifting my DVDs is legal. It's illegal to share my rips. It's illegal to tell people how to do it. And that's the problem.
It can still be illegal to re-share software while not having any legal protections for anti-circumvention. At the end of the day, anti-circumvention efforts are futile for local software and media, because you have to hand the consumer the keys sometime.
Nintento, Sony, John Deere...they can all continue putting their anti-circumvention measures in place. Removing the anti-circumvention clauses wouldn't change that. But if we remove their legal protections, it becomes easier for people to exert their fair use rights.
Piracy for music, games, and video didn't drop because DRM made it harder...if anything the wider distribution the new streaming models and digital distribution made it easier than ever. But the value prop that streaming provided made people choose the streaming service over the pirated options.
Pre-DMCA, Starcraft 1 was one of the most pirated PC titles of all time. Ditto for everything ID put out. Yet these companies did not go under despite it... they thrived. Windows only became the OS juggarnaught it did because of piracy.
At the end of the day, I don't care if software companies die because their product is stolen. Much like a business claiming that they can't afford to pay their employees a living wage... If they can't get enough people to buy the software to keep the company going, their business model is wrong and they don't deserve to keep the business going.
And this is their solution. make use of DRM to slow pirates, make use of DMCA to takedown copyright infringement. I'm sure you're not alone in saying you don't care about a company living, but why should a company care about people with such a mindset?
it's colluding data, so it's hard to make an objective conclusion oh how much each contribute. All we can say is that more DRM did not lead to an increase in piracy in the 2010's:
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/music-piracy-plummeted-in-the-past-5-years-but-in-2021-it-slowly-started-growing-again/
https://streamsafely.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/CC_monetary.png
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/a-fall-in-online-piracy-search-traffic-to-torrent-websites-down-by-a-third-in-2020/articleshow/80110327.cms?from=mdr
All you can really gleam is the pandemic increased piracy rates in some areas, which makes sense since it also increased media consumption over the board.
Sure, someone talented and determined enough will break any lock. And in some cases they are outside jurisdiction.
Don't think of DRM as this ironclad vault, but a semi-sophicsticated lock. Your job isn't to stop the Lockpicking Lawyer, it's to stop the other 1000 people who will jiggle the door and walk away, or the 50 people who may throw a crowbar at it. It's not even financially worth it to keep some DRM schemes on which is why PC games remove them after a year, when the game makes the most money.
I'm not saying they should be banned from making locks.
I'm saying they shouldn't be allowed to sue homeowners who buy the home and remove the lock.
And lockpicking tools are also not illegal.
Issue comes down to software vs. hardware. We don't own the OS the same way we own a home. So there's no ownership that makes it "safe" to bypass OS securities. The real time encryption described here sounds like it's OS level., not an inherent part of the game you "own" (which you don't, but that's another conversion)
So the metaphor is more like renting an apartment. YMMV on landlords that let you modify locks or pick them, but it's not universal
That's not true though. When you buy a thing, if it comes with an OS, the OS is part of that thing.
You don't have a right to make multiple copies of that OS, or distribute it to others. But that particular copy is a good, which means you have ownership rights and that means you can do what you want with it. Otherwise, it'd be illegal to sell used DVDs. Or for libraries to exist.
If you buy a DVD, you don't get ownership of that movie's copyright. You get ownership of that copy. And you have rights to tranfer that copy to other mediums for compatibility or backup. So long as you're not distributing the other copies.
If you purchase a seperate copy of Windows, you can transfer that copy between different hardware...so long as you're not making multiple copies and retain ownership of the original.
Software is not somehow magically seperate from other copyright laws. As it says in the link I posted, most stuff in EULAs are unenforcable nonsense that companies rely on customers not knowing their rights or able to fund lawsuits in attempts to exert them.
You already admitted earlier that you don't care if piracy kills a company, so there probably isn't much point continuing this conversation. Because my main point that I seem to be failing to express is
But if you don't care and want to simply justify piracy, I can see how this falls on deaf ears. At the end of the day, Nintendo will be fine so I don't care what people do with their private software. But I'm very ambivalent of people using this displeasing verdict to try and justify piracy as some moral right of the consumer. I've done some piracy myself and still will under specific conditions, but I understand the risks and won't feel bad if one day my copy of such media is rendered null. I don't blame the company for this anymore than I blame
Do what you want, but let's call a duck a duck: piracy is theft. Most peope use emulation for piracy. I feel bad for the honest hackers but the black hats always ruin the deeds of the white hat. Laws aren't made to keep honest people honest.
I have nothing else to say, so take care.
I'm not trying to justify piracy, but I can straight up tell you that you are mistaken on points 1 and 2.
The link I was referring to was actually from the previous Yuzu topic...one of the best sourced articles on consumer software rights
In short, if the software is sold as a perpetual license, it is no different than if they sold me a paper book. That copy of the software is mine, and I'm free to futz with it or resell it to my hearts content. Otherwise modding games would be illegal. I'm not allowed to distribute new copies, but I can transfer ownership of that singular copy.
I'm in the process of jailbreaking my switch so that I can extract my Stardew Valley saves to my PC and play it there instead. I bought it legally for both systems. There is no copyright violation. But it does require circumventing Nintendo's protections.
I'll be clear: I understand that circumventing DRM is mostly illegal right now. But I unequivicolly state that it shouldn't be, because DRM has always been about giving a seller power over good they have sold, which is directly at odds with the core principle of buying goods.
Is it really clear who, between the user of the software and the developer of the software, is doing the actual circumventing here, especially when it literally doesn’t work without the user sourcing and contributing an encryption key on their own?
It doesn't matter, because distributing the tools that do the circumventing is also illegal.
I don’t feel like you have fully addressed the aspect of my original question which points out that the thing they are distributing cannot, on its own, circumvent literally anything.
I'm not the person you were responding to, and I don't necessarily have the same interpretation or perspective on the DMCA as them, but I think if you come at it with the assumption that there's no way to legally obtain an encryption key, then there's no defense for the developer to offer someone an option to input the encryption key.
Nintendo might take the position that whatever encryption key they have on the Switch is protected in such a way that it's not possible to extract it or utilize it outside the Switch hardware without violating the DMCA's anti-circumvention measures, provided there's no exemption for it, and thus there's no legal scenario where someone should be entering an encryption key, even if they own a Switch themselves and the encryption key they are putting in is from their own Switch.
In that scenario, no the Yuzu developer itself isn't circumventing, but they'd be knowingly facilitating circumvention if you approach it from that angle that there is no legal reason to be inputting an encryption key.
So just to remind, this little tangent is not discussing whether or not there is something legally problematic about Yuzu. Personally I myself am of the opinion that absolutely there is. The question though raised by stu2b50’s ancestor comment is whether or not there is any question for the courts to settle regarding the legality of distributing an emulator without encryption keys in general. The only reason I asked my pointed question was because I don’t think it’s clear that the response “the dmca says it’s illegal to distribute tools designed to circumvent drm technologies” actually applies to this situation. Because in this limited context (and in my own naive opinion), I would definitely expect the finer details of how much user intervention is required to come into play even if it’s still pretty obvious that no matter what, the Yuzu devs were not in legal compliance nor ever even attempted to have the veneer of it.
It was addressed above, no?
That decryption algorithm being supplied in the code was probably the big issue. They didn't give you bios information, but it had some capacity to help bypass securities.
Or make sure you're at least the second most popular out there. There are countless examples of the most popular app or program being shutdown and the rest happily continuing. In this case Ryujinx is still up, recently that manga reader was shutdown. YouTube Vanced, Pirate bay, Napster, and so on and so forth.
It's only a problem once you get too large and it's a perceived revenue loss.
Nothing says they won't. I think half the point was to intimiadate others into backing off.
It merely confirms the "frivolous scare lawsuits work" concept.
Always will as long as the barrier to getting a lawyer and fighting these cases is so high. I don't see any interest in changing this structure either.
I kinda figured that this was going to be the case, copied the guy repo and today when I look...it's gone.
Message from the yuzu developers from their Twitter and Discord:
This reads like a person reading off a teleprompter with a gun to their head.
It’s also incredibly funny(at least for me) because if you followed the development for this specific emulator, you would notice that they did exactly the opposite of what they are stating here. They took any chance they could to see if they could monetize further the emulator, specially when they try to charge for the online that one time…
Yeah, a gun studded with 2.4 million worth of diamonds.
This is just going to get forked by someone else and be released under a new name like immediately, right?
I hope so, I was an idiot for not cloning the repos when the lawsuit was first announced, now they're gone from GitHub.
There’s no way that there aren’t hundreds of clones/forks out there in the wild.
I expect Yuzu will return with different developers fairly quickly, likely with hosting in a country beyond Nintendo’s reach. Trying to kill it will probably be like trying to kill a hydra.
Well, there’ll be copies of the repo around. In terms of actual forks, this type of engineering is hard and requires a lot of domain knowledge into very niche areas. Without financial incentive, and with Big N potentially looming over you, I’m not sure how much development will continue.
There’s jobs that will pay a lot more for that kind of talent and hobbies that have much less risk of financial disaster!
Most people who would be able to help, are part of Ryujinx already, so it's unlikely a Yuzu fork will manage to gather enough devs.
Unless the Yuzu devs decide to work on it in secret, despite the injunction, which could possibly happen.
Do you know the details of the injunction? From this filing, I can’t seem to infer a whole lot.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24455376/tropic-haze-judgment.pdf
This is The Verge's copy of Exhibit A.
It's just a proposal for now, a judge still needs to approve it.
Yes. People were dumping the source code already when it was first announced. I expect a bunch of forks to pop up real quick.
It's the same story every time. One is the martyr that spawns the hydra.
Interesting that Yuzu has $2.4M on hand to settle or is it more likely that's an amount that guarantees to Nintendo that the LLC shutters...
Most likely they will transfer all their assets to Nintendo, and liquidate the company. I don't think Nintendo will get anywhere close to 2.4M.
Fuck. I read the news, checked the GitHub, was relieved it's still up.
The minute I wanted to clone the Android repo, 404. They took down everything already. :(
Does anyone have the latest copy hosted somewhere, and is willing to share?
Came accross that one on hn:
https://git.zaroz.cloud/nintendo-back-up
The result was expected, but what I'm afraid of are the repercussions Nintendo is looking to cause.
From the Verge:
i.e. They're asking a federal judge to agree with the following:
This would essentially criminalize emulators as far as I can tell.
I am not a lawyer, but if this happened, I think you could protect yourself pretty well by just taking care to never promote your emulator as a way to play copyrighted video games, and do all your marketing in the context of it being a platform to develop new and original games or to study how an old game console works. Bonus points if you distribute your emulator in such a way as to make it impossible to play copyrighted games on it unless you do some advanced configuration stuff that is clearly not supposed to be part of its “standard operation”.
It wouldn't. It offsets where the piracy happens, in a sense. Dolphin has a key that Nintendo was told is not grounds for a lawsuit which gives them a pass, but most use decrypted data, or ROM rips that were never encrypted to start with.
As far as I was told, the issue is that decryption for more modern games, or at least switch games specifically, happens on the fly. It's not that easy to separate the emulator from the decryption process anymore.
If the decryption process of either the game or the console is integrated in any form in the emulator, it would become a crime.
I'm also not fully convinced that this wording wouldn't apply to any emulator simply because you can argue they're used to play games in unintended systems, bypassing DRM and other tracking technologies, which Nintendo is arguing is in violation of the DMCA.
I'm really worried to be honest, all it takes is a technologically illiterate judge.
Since it wasn't mentioned yet - this also killed Citra, their 3DS emulator. It seems like they took down everything Nintendo-related that they have control over, in order to obey the future injunction.
I really hoped Citra would be left alone.
That's the one that hurts. The 3DS is abandonware. I already own a Switch and buy Switch games, Yuzu was allowing people to play products that were being currently developed and sold. Buy Citra? They've taken down their shop, there's no legal way to get loads of those games.
It’s pretty much the nail in the coffin for Citra. It already had very few updates despite a very, very incomplete compatibility list since the devs were focused on the more lucrative yuzu.
There’s even less incentive now. Probably have to wait until mikage or others catch up before any games that can’t be played not have a chance of running on an emulator.
Nintendo wants to ensure they're still seen as the biggest anti-consumer games company out there.
I can't really agree given that this is mostly affecting a minority of highly engaged gamers at the end of the day. Most people won't even know you can play switch games on your PC.
Meanwhile, every western studio is trying to turn a game into a continuous service that sells subscriptions via "battle passes" and most eastern studios more or lesses uses console games to sell into their various gacha. Nintendo surprisingly has avoided the former and is already pulling out of the latter.
Anti-consumer practices affect people even if they don't realize it. Companies like Nintendo are slowly eroding the rights of consumers and setting up new precedents, leading to less and less expectations on behalf of the consumer the more time that passes. This time its an emulator, but in the past its been Nintendo DMCAing youtubers for making videos with their games, shutting down Smash tournaments for no reason, killing fan-made projects that have absolutely no bearing on their original games and aren't making a profit.
What's it going to be in the future?
By the way, it wasn't just the Switch emulator that was killed, they also killed Citra, a 3DS emulator which isn't even supported by Nintendo anymore, you literally can't buy games on those platforms. (at least from Nintendo)
If we're being realistic, these are
If a tree falls....
Most people want to simply buy a nintendo, download a game, and play the game. The extra extensions done by engaged fans aren't affecting the majority of customers either way. Most consumers are happy and can consume just fine, especially since Nintendo is one of the few with no ways to fall into a pit of engagement nor MTX's. They won't see Nintendo as anti-consumer just because there's less fanart or videos on Youtube.
From Nintendo's POV that seems like a convenient side effect.
Much worse, but ironically enough, Nintendo will probably be the final guard since they go at their own pace.
I don't particularly have much optimism about the future of gaming, but Nintendo and how they work aren't even on the iceberg, let alone being the tip of one.
Just because something is legal doesn't mean its good for the consumer.
Yes, but lots of people watch youtubers and are negatively affected when they can't produce videos.
Yes but a lot of people like watching those tournaments.
Anyway, what does it even matter if its a small group of people being affected, that still doesn't mean its not anti-consumer. Your reasoning just seems to be "if it doesn't affect me, it doesn't matter" which ironically is exactly what these giant companies want you to think. It's frustrating that you're so quick to dismiss a not-so-small-as-you-seem-to-think group of people's legitimate concerns just because "most people just wanna play zelda"
The act of paying money is inherently anti-consumer. Like everything else in life, business is a compromise between what benefits the customers and the creators. and generally, when you can't please everyone you either try to please the most people or please a very specific group of people. Nintendo chose the former.
That's why I'm arguing about the smaller crowds not mattering in the grand scheme of things. Nintendo has its audience and it's not necessarily the people who would want to protest over an emulator being litigated. Everyone on the internet who read the news about this (which is probably in the millions) could boycott Nintendo and it'd make a small dent at best into their bottom line. We are insignificant.
The whole problem with "smaller crowds not mattering" is because everyone is part of a smaller crowd in one way or another.
Small precedents are set used to justify big things. Nintendo is exerting the exact same rights as John Deer....and they're both skeevy anti-consumer nonsense.
I am reminded of this poem.
Deer's customers are other businessmen. When the money is threatened they have to fight back or die out. That's one of the few ways to truly rile up a populace; when they have weight in the game. Or when you're retired and have a lot of time to lobby or simply attend town hall meetings.
When Nintendo's customer are threatened... They will just move on to anything else. Other consoles, More toys, social media, etc. There won't be any push back if Nintendo screws up, just "quiet quitting". Just fade into irrelevance.
I don't think that will happen anytime soon, but the actual worst case is is much more boring than late stage capitalism. Microsoft has said this for years that games aren't their biggest competition, and they have a good point.
Prior thread: https://tildes.net/~games/1eji/nintendo_is_suing_the_creators_of_popular_switch_emulator_yuzu_saying_their_tech_illegally
I vote with my wallet - I'm not buying anything Nintendo. If I ever want to play their game I will find some means of doing so.
EDIT: I have to add that I haven't pirated a game in many many years and actually own Switch and games for it. But I don't see my future giving any more money to Nintendo...
Unfortunately Nintendo makes great games, but their anti-consumer practices make it a pretty hard sell.
I used to not care that much, but there are quite a lot eye-openers in last few years... Smartphones getting basically unrepairable (including battery swap), printers refusing to print black when you don't have color or refusing to scan if you don't have ink or downright refusing anything with non-original ink, laptops getting more and more thing soldered to motherboards and no changeable, subscriptions for seat warmers in cars (that are already built-in in all those cars so the BOM cost is there no matter what you want), streamin services getting scattered like hell with everyone wanting their share of pie (while customers just want their show and not pay for milionth service) and we could probably continue all day long... Including Nintendo sueing (siing?) everyone in sight.
I'm fed up with all this. That is why I keep buying audio CDs, DVDs and Blu rays, why I have Jellyfin, why I went through the hassle of getting public IP so I can run my own VPN and stream my rips anywhere, why I buy games on GOG (and Steam as Steam still goes strong and didn't fuck up... yet and I hope it never will), why I bought basically low end shit phone Nokia G22 (advertised and actually built to be home repairable), why I use Linux instead of Windows...
Yes, Nintendo won't see single penny, cent whatever from me. I was legitimate customer that is actually hit by Yuzu being taken down. Nintendo got on my blacklist and I don't think they will ever change to get back.
I understand they want to defend their IP and that is good thing to do. But Yuzu is just a tool, it doesn't commit crime by itself. They pointed their finger on the wrong thing. This will not stop piracy. It will kinda do Streissand effect on them - Yuzu will continue to live, though not officially. And more people will know about it from media coverage of recent days. And piraes will continue to pirate. And some new pirates may arise from so far loyal customers of Nintendo.
Nintendo brought this to themselves on their own.
Your view is the same as mine. I gave them the money to play the game officially, it's just more convenient for me to play it on other hardware though. They shouldn't care as I paid for it, they got the money. I don't care if they can call me officialy a pirate, my mind is at ease, morally I'm okay with what I do.
Wel, now... There are probably hundreds of thousands who didn't pay anything yet they play the game the same as me. Those are who are PITA for Nintendo. But it is the tool that gets punishment, not the actual pirates. If I shoot someone to death with a gun, will the gun go to prison instead of me?
Rotten Apples ruin the barrel. I usually use this quote when talking about forums, but it seems somewhat fitting here.
if the "witches" in question are pirates, of course.
I'm sure if data suggested that most people who used these tools bought the game and it reduced sales to litigate the tools, that they would softly allow them. Similar to fanart. But as it is I can't imagine that idealist vision being close to reality.
Honestly, advertising the play-ability of an unreleased product was a horrible idea from the perspective of those genuinely wanted to use emulation to play backups of their purchased products. It removes any veneer that the people playing are there to backup their copies.
Maybe one day we'll get a Stallman styled radical who will drain millions to make an argument in court. But it seems like a pipe dream for now. Companies making money put in the most money to mitigate any risk of losing money.
to be frank, every AAA company is suing or being sued. Nintendo is simply noteworthy because they get hit the most and have the most consumer facing cases on otherwise boring litigation. Xbox releases 99% of their games on PC so xbox emulation isn't attractive, and Sony has such large technologial barriers that we're still 2 generations behind on emulation (with PS3 emulation still being imperfect). Meanwhile, The Switch was emulated in near year 1.
It will slow down the scene and I'm guessing that is their true goal. Similar to how DRM's goal isn't to forever fight piracy of games (and part of why devs remove it after a year). Early momentum is everything in game releases and companies feel those early sales are enough to invest in heavy DRM, even if it takes a hit in game quality.
People are theorizing that this is done to prep for the Switch 2 release. I don't fully believe that, but I can see the line of reasoning, especially if the Switch 2 is being made to be backwards compatible with Switch games.
There are DRM-free releases on Steam. Of course, you haven't necessarily indicated against knowing this, but just in case you wanted to know:
https://tildes.net/~games/16ea/what_gaming_rumor_just_wont_die#comment-8gy9
Yeah, generally you just run the .exe. Now, I'm not sure that Steam necessarily advertises this very well.
Disclaimer: Having own VPN is for accessing your own PC/network, not to beanonymous on the web or being able to switch to different location (to ie. access geo-locked content).
That was kinda the process and a bit of outcomes... Let's be more specific:
Having public IP is security risk to some degree. You are exposing your home network to the internet through your router. You have to take serious precautions and be sure you set the router right so you don't have breach. If you don't have public IP, your ISP takes care of this (or at least should take care) by securing their own network equipment and setup.
Also having public IP has kinda downside in that if you ie. upload a movie to sharing site, police have address where they should go knock on the door - your ISP knows it's your IP and will tell police your home address. So if you have public IP, you shouldn't do malicious stuff. Downloading stuff from internet may be (or may not be, depending where you live I guess) fine, but uploading (sharing, copying) is illegal probably everywhere. Public IP ties your actions to you as a person. Watching movie from Jellyfin is fine though - you bought the movie (right?), ripped it yourself (right?) and you are watching it on encrypted VPN tunnel (nobody knows it's a movie except you).
I hope I have answered your questions to some degree. Feel free to ask if I didn't or you have new ones.
A static IP makes it slightly easier, but a dynamic IP doesn't protect you; your ISP knows what IP is assigned to which client. If the police asks them who had the IP a.b.c.d with a date and time, they can can and will give them your name.
True.
I thought and meant that you are behind their public IP with more of their clients - like hundreds of households accessing internet from one public IP. Then it's up to your country's laws if the ISP must keep records of which household (client) accessed which site at precise time from that one public IP.
As much as I hate defending Nintendo here, it seems like they were justified here? Apparently in the Discord server for the emulator, the devs would distribute leaked copies of games before release and paywalled early builds of the emulator with patches to play these pre-release games. And unsurprisingly, Nintendo apparently had people in this server monitoring everything too so they knew everything that was going on.
I wonder if it would be possible to run a company where you take money from random people, invest it in market indexes, and if you get more value in your account than the market value of a target public company you buy it. I think you could get quite a lot of meme energy behind a movement to take over Nintendo. And worse case people have just invested in an index fund.
Fortunately or not, but the current owners of the company actually need to agree to sell their shares. While there’s a fair amount of free float for any given stock, a hostile takeover is another thing entirely.
Also, Nintendo is quite large (64b), and you generally need a multiple of the company’s market cap to actually do a hostile takeover.
To be honest, litigious or not, I think Nintendo is run quite well for a games company and would prefer they not be owned by an amorphous meme collection.
Well I just Googled it, and Nintendo's market capitalization is apparently $64.82 Billion, supposedly as of this month.
Now Math is hard (seriously, that's not a joke), but it takes 50million people at $20 each to make a billion. Or something like 3.3 Billion people at that $20 each to all collectively decide, and organize to, buy out Nintendo.
Obviously every person who donates, say, $500 obliviates the need for 25 others to come up with their twenty bucks. At that buy-in, a touch less than 130 million donations are needed. If it jumps up to two grand per, thirty-three million people could afford to buy out Nintendo.
Of course, I'm reading the RJR Nabisco LBO book right now, and Capitalists just can't stand to let someone else make money if they could be making it themselves. Or at least get a piece of the action. If, somehow, this groundroots investor organization managed to organize and coalesce to a singular purpose, the rest of the world's financial community would certainly be gunning for their piece.
So really, the moment it became clear Nintendo (or any company) was going to be bought, the price will go up. Others will get stock and wait for the rise, some will maneuver to convince (or force) Nintendo to sell to them. And so on. Seems prudent to factor at least a 50% margin to cover all that. So probably, at that two grand level, you'd end up needing closer to about 50 million folks.
But people are greedy. Some asshat would take control of the "Nintendo Buyout Fund" and divert the money, or take his piece of it. A study would be needed. Training. Consultants. Suddenly the needed cash has been drained below the requirement. Now we need more cash. And people to track it, and organize it, invest and safeguard it.
Basically we'd have a whole corporation that exists to manage the buyout of another corporation. And corporations exist only to sustain themselves. So the Nintendo buyout would never happen. Somehow, there'd always be a reason to wait just a bit more. But keep donating, because any day now, we'll be ready.
Donate to me specifically lol. Unless…?
Srsly tho, I know you’re making a point/painting a picture, but the minute Nintendo stops being beholden to old Japanese investors, it stops being Nintendo. It ceases to exist. The decriers of their corporate policy, since 2004 at least when I was a young lad reading Nintendojo hot takes, have always refused to acknowledge that every stupid out-of-pocket decision all Americans hate comes with 10-15 games and at least one entire system no other company would take a chance on. Animal Crossing? Never happens after an American IPO. DS? 3DS? No way. Sure there’s virtual boys and Wii U’s to poke at, but Nintendo is the company other companies emulate, whether anyone admits it or not. Smash Bros is a singular 20+ year experience, culminating in cooperation from so many licensing corps it’s unfathomable. Never would have happened outside their weird anti-profitability closed garden.
hopefully they don't go after ryujinx too.