Comment on Nintendo Targets YouTube Accounts Showing Emulated Games
GeneralInterest@lemmy.world 1 month ago
If someone has bought a Switch game legally, then it’s legal to dump that game to a PC and play it on a Switch emulator, right?
Sure you could say that very few people dump their own games, but those that do are doing everything legally I think?
Nah. From Nintendo’s position, you don’t “own” the game. They do. All you bought is a license to play the game on a Nintendo approved console. By ripping the game from the switch dump, you are violating the license you bought by copying their software without permission.
From a practical perspective, fuckem. Your paid money to play the game and if you decide to play it on something else you own, go nuts.
IIRC this is what is currently protected in American law, but the problem is that in the time between now and the Sony/Bleem lawsuit Congress passed the DMCA, which has a provision making it illegal to bypass copyright protection. When emulating any modern console, you are naturally required to bypass the copyright protection on the game, which Nintendo would argue makes it illegal to do.
Maybe you could get around this with some kind of emulation scheme that requires the console to be plugged into your PC, like the emulator uses the console’s official hardware for the copyright check and then just takes over rendering the game.
dan@upvote.au 1 month ago
Depends on where you live.
In the USA, section 117 of the copyright act lets you create a copy for archival/backup purposes only. What I’m unsure about (and don’t know if there’s any relevant caselaw) is whether bypassing copy protection to create the copy violates the DMCA.
The equivalent Australian copyright law explicitly states that you can use the backup copy instead of the original one. The US law doesn’t (all it says is that you can make an archival copy, not how you can use the archival copy), so it’s a grey area.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
I don’t see any way you could argue a video game isn’t computer software. It literally just is.
dan@upvote.au 1 month ago
Nintendo could try make up something like “it’s not computer software since the Switch is a console, not a computer” or something like that. Not a great argument, but they have good lawyers and could probably convince a court that it’s true.
phx@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
But the game is running on a computer with the emulator which still strongly lends to it being software
archomrade@midwest.social 1 month ago
Pretty sure they would consider this “format shifting”, which is not a valid exception to bypassing copy protection