| ▲ | dormento 14 hours ago |
| Reminder to all that barring access to internal docs, use of internal software/firmware components and information obtained through nefarious means, emulation is 100% legal pretty much everywhere in the world. Edit: of course there's the gray area of scrapers, game downloaders etc... but those are not emulators. |
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| ▲ | ChrisRR 17 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| This myth needs to stop being spread. Emulation lies in a legal grey area and only some parts of it have been tested in court. Only those parts are defined as legal. It may well be legal, it may not, but until it's tested in court then nobody can fully claim it's 100% legal |
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| ▲ | mattbee 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Right - the trouble is now that we're seeing emulators and recompilers that are obviously derivative works of NDA-restricted SDKs. These SDKs are lavishly documented, full of worked examples and have top-notch toolchains. More than enough for Claude and a really big stack of tokens to turn into an emulator. So who's to tell whether a new emulator didn't come from forbidden information? If there are any honest efforts left, this will surely drown them. |
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| ▲ | brookst 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't think it works that way. Putting information behind an NDA does not make it "forbidden information" that nobody can ever use. It means that one party (the one who signed the NDA) can't disclose it. To the extent someone either violates the NDA or the owner is sloppy and posts the information publicly, there are no restrictions on what people NOT party to the NDA can do with it. Nintendo (and others) are free to go after those who violate NDAs, and to go after scrapers or whatnot, but they can't declare the information itself off-limits to everyone. | | |
| ▲ | bragr 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Trade secrets are absolutely protected by law. There are limits of course, but they are protected. | | |
| ▲ | justinclift 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If the owner of a trade secret publishes (non-trivial) documentation about it, even accidentally, isn't it then no longer a trade secret? | |
| ▲ | isityettime 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Is it that trade secrets are protected or that corporate espionage is prohibited? | | |
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| ▲ | flanz_10 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| but also: distribution is often not legal |
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| ▲ | ratelimitsteve 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | of emulators, or of copyrighted games/code? | | |
| ▲ | greatgib 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It is not illegal in Europe! | |
| ▲ | flanz_10 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | it depends. | |
| ▲ | kevin_thibedeau 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | For the US, DMCA bans circumvention devices. It is possible to argue that emulators run afoul of this provision. | | |
| ▲ | bawolff 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Note that there is the following exception to dmca circumvention provision: "Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace." | | |
| ▲ | ndiddy 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Some people find this confusing. Section 1201 of the DMCA has two parts. One part bans circumventing DRM, and the other part bans distributing devices that can circumvent DRM. The Section 1201 exemptions published by the Copyright Office only apply to the first part, not the second. I imagine it works this way because the companies lobbying for the DMCA to be passed didn't want to make it legal to sell or distribute circumvention devices as long as someone has a legal right to break the DRM, as that would defeat the purpose of the law. | |
| ▲ | mmooss 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | From where is that quote? | | |
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| ▲ | actionfromafar 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | DMCA is so weird. Anything can be a circumvention device. XOR. Harsh wording with an if then. | | |
| ▲ | bragr 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I started to think about this like physical locks and that made it seem less weird. You don't need a great lock to communicate "this is a private space" and there's no "but your honor is was a crappy lock" defense to trespassing. Circumventing bad copy protection still establishes intent to circumvent so you're still in trouble. | | |
| ▲ | gizmo686 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Notably, neither lockpicks nor lockpicks are illegal. By making circumvention itself illegal the DMCA gives the producer to essentially invent new IP law. Want to take a DVD you bought while vacationing in China and play it back home in the US. That is perfectly legal. However, if the DVD has even the flimsiest form of region locking, you would need to circumvent them, which is a crime. | | |
| ▲ | cluckindan 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Lockpicks are illegal to possess in some jurisdictions (locksmiths obviously exempt) | |
| ▲ | bragr 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >Notably, neither lockpicks nor lockpicks are illegal. As someone with lockpicks and practice locks, sure. But as soon as I pick someone else's lock without permission, it very much is a crime. | | |
| ▲ | wolrah 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > But as soon as I pick someone else's lock without permission, it very much is a crime. Right, but no one's installing a modchip on someone else's Switch without permission. No one's stealing Blu-rays to rip. I'd actually challenge you to find any DMCA anticircumvention claim where the people accused of violating it were doing things to hardware or media they didn't own or have permission from the owner to access. | |
| ▲ | alterom 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >But as soon as I pick someone else's lock without permission, it very much is a crime. The analogy is broken and doesn't apply. The better analogy would be someone installing a lock on your property which you have the right to enter and use, and you going to jail for breaking the lock. In real world, of course you can break someone's lock without permission when they put it on your property without getting your permission to do it. And you buying property means the locks are no longer someone else's. They are yours to pick, cut off, melt, or throw into volcanoes. |
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| ▲ | kay_o 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is an intent thing. A protected auth checksum verification step could be the number of letters in the packet and still count, it is not a technical provision Circumventing a xor by xoring it back is still attempted circumvention. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | The "arguing in favor of a bad law by saying they'll just look at your intent" thing is completely invalid for the DMCA because your intent is the thing they don't care about. That's why it's such an absurd law. Suppose you commit unambiguous copyright infringement. Then they could already sue you regardless of whether there is any circumvention and anti-circumvention is completely redundant. It has no actual purpose that exceeds what you would get from presuming willful infringement if someone had to circumvent copy protection and then having different penalties for willful and unintentional infringement. But now suppose you don't commit copyright infringement. You make a fair use copy of the work. Completely different intent. They don't care. It's crazy. Where this gets really wild is the prohibition on circumvention tools. Suppose the copyright expires on a work previously under copyright. Happens all the time. You now have a bunch of works with a "technological protection measure" preventing you from copying them, even though they're not copyrighted. Your intent is now to publish a tool to help everyone remove the DRM from those public domain works. But maybe the same DRM is also used on other works that are still under copyright -- and you may not even know that. So does your intent matter or not? | | |
| ▲ | kay_o 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | To clarify by intent I mean whether the intent was to circumvent or not wrt strength of technical DRM not whether the intent was to use it fairly or not; nothing to do with morals or ethics. I make no comment on whether it is right, just, or absurd. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | When people say intent matters, what they generally mean is intent to do something wrong. It implies that having no malicious intent would exculpate you. Applying it exclusively to the intent to do something innocuous is... I believe the technical term is cheating. And does the DMCA have even that as an intent requirement? Suppose you tell your local AI to copy something without even knowing that it has any DRM, and it does. Is that still a violation? Obvious loophole if it isn't, but intent requirement 100% fully absent if it is. |
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| ▲ | cowlevel 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Programmer runs into the fact the law runs on intent and actual happenings rather than the form of a thing, gets confused. Anything can be a murder weapon too. Kitchen fork. Rubber ducky. | | |
| ▲ | actionfromafar 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, I agree with all that. But we accept that reverse engineering is often a correct, honest, morally legit thing to do. But tape on a padlock made of paper onto the thing and suddenly you are criminally liable for repairing your tractor. | | |
| ▲ | cowlevel 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's morally correct to go back in time and kill baby Hitler, but you'd still be charged with murder. |
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| ▲ | ranger_danger 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Paypal explicitly bans emulators as do some other services, although that's not really a legal issue per se. |
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| ▲ | 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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