Comment on A new NES emulator was briefly available on the Apple App Store

• cbarrick@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Right. But there is no copyright infringement in an NES emulator, as long as no copyrighted games are distributed.

  Emulation itself is not copyright infringement.

  The recent issue with the Switch emulator was that they were distributing encryption keys along with the emulator. I don’t think that was a copyright issue (encryption keys are not expression, therefore not copyrightable) but probably a CFAA issue.

  None of that applies to the NES.

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  • Bandicoot_Academic@lemmy.one ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yuzu didn’t distribute keys. You had to obtain them yourself. The problems were that:

    • They distributed software that would decrypt the games once provided with the keys (which is apparently illegal).
    • They used leaked versions of TOTK to develop the emulator.
    • They openly talked about piracy in their discord.

    Note that I don’t actually know for sure. This is just what I saw online.

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  • catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Using leaked source code or binary firmware blobs are other common reasons emulators can violate copyright. I don’t know if this emulator did any of those.

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    • Nawor3565@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I highly doubt it. The NES has been completely reverse engineered for decades, there really isn’t any reason to use proprietary code for an emulator for it.

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    • kadu@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The NES is the most basic possible architecture you could imagine. There’s no source code to be leaked here, there’s nothing you would even call a BIOS.

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