Technology

The problem is that the DMCA is a flawed piece of legislature that hamstrings fair use in a couple of really key ways.

Obligatory IANAL, but my read on the (admittedly very legalese) section 1201 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201) is that it lists a very few exemptions for what is allowable under the DMCA with regard to bypassing copyright protection mechanisms, and archival copies of personal media are not in that list of exemptions. Archival use of computer programs is covered under section 117 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117) and it allows you to make a bit-by-bit copy of your media for archiving it. It doesn't allow you to bypass copyright protection mechanisms on that exist that content.

So, you'd be protected if you were making a 1:1 exact cloned (and therefore, encrypted) copy of your switch game. Any action to decrypt that switch game (because the encryption is explicitly a copyright protection mechanism) would be a violation, whether it be you doing it manually with a tool, or an emulator doing it on your behalf. If you move that violation outside of the emulator, I would think that based on how the law is written they'd have to find some other way you were violating the DMCA with the emulator specifically in order to target it.

Ultimately, I think the reason it's illegal is because the DMCA is corpo crap that has been bastardized several times over to reduce consumer rights, but the lawyers seem to wield section 1201 as the silver bullet.

Torrent on an anon vps or .onion and tech savvy users spread it to the clearnet. I think that's how drm crackers do it.

Selfhosted git on .onion or .i2p.

Online handles are still a thing. Most of these devs aren't known by their legal names in the gaming space at large anyway.

I'm 3D-printing Gameboy Cases full of hatred

Here in Denmark, it's legal to circumvent piracy protection, if the purpose is to legally use the product.

The example that was used in the media when this was new, is when you buy a DVD and want to play it on a PC instead of a DVD player. Usually piracy protection would stop it from working on a PC. Of course the circumvention also makes it easy to make and distribute a pirate copy.

So the ability to use the product in the way the customer choose (within reason), is weighted higher than stopping piracy a little.

Subverting copy protection had always been a vuage notion because they sell you encrypted content, but they still have to sell you something with the decryption keys as well.

Now, using the key to remove the encryption falls under "subverting" but if you use the key to play the encrypted media directly, why does it matter what hardware it is happening on?

When it came to switch emulation you didn't really circumvent the copy protection, you exported the keys from a switch. The game images are basically dumped as is.

Yes, you could find the keys elsewhere, but if you dumped your own it wouldn't really be considered subverting. Especially with the jig you put the switch into a state built into the switch hardware. It's not even a exploit like jailbreak usually are. The recovery boot mode is an intended service feature.

The only illegal thing would be getting copies of games and keys from other people.

Piracy protection is things like encryption, firmware checks, pairing systems, unique game identifiers per instance of game, unique console id's, ... Basically any system put in place to make, or identify, a game/console to be genuine or make sure a genuine game running on genuine hardware and nothing else.
These are all systems the switch had btw.
Switch emulation bypassed or faked all of those, which counts as piracy protection circumvention.

Neat, thanks!

When reached for comment Nintendo is quoted as saying, "Stop busting my balls and fuhgeddaboudit."

Yuzu was different due to how they were getting the keys. Still fucked tho.

Those never made it to trial, right? My understanding is they settled, because that was cheaper than the trial.

So they're refunding that money, right?

Right?

Technically the lawsuit was against Yuzu. Citra was shutdown by association.

That's correct, I thought it was just a cease and desist