https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/03/gitlab-takes-down-nintendo-switch-emulator-suyu-due-to-the-dmca/
Well, that didn't last long did it. After a first release, GitLab have already pulled down the Nintendo Switch emulator suyu project, due to a DMCA hit as a result of it being forked from yuzu which Nintendo shut down.
They should really self host their own codeberg instance
EDIT: looks like they do now! https://git.suyu.dev/suyu/suyu
that DMCA link is quite the thing
edit: to preserve context, there was previously a DMCA link in the footer. You can see it in archive http://web.archive.org/web/20240322163857/https://git.suyu.dev/suyu/suyu/
They need to move to a P2P model of hosting. Radicle is an open source P2P GitHub replacement. Ideally all open-source development would move to Radicle or a similarly P2P hosted model. If it were made easy enough I would set up an instance to help with hosting on my NAS. These corporations should have no right (or ability) to take down projects that the community has funded and built.
Not a fan of crypto-currencies generally but I would also set up recurring donations to any legit fork of Yuzu that will accept donation via Monero. Fuck these corporations.
GitHub replacement
You mean a code forge? These have existed long before Git & Microsoft GitHub.
I love the idea of Radicle, but it looks like it doesn't support Windows natively, so it seems like a non-starter for now.
Codeberg is the forgejo software i just forget how to spell forgejo and i like the name codeberg way more
Forgejo (pronounced /forˈd͡ʒe.jo/) is inspired by forĝejo, the Esperanto word for forge
As an Esperanto nerd, I love that this and Monero are from Esperanto. Now I want to use it more.
I want this trend of naming distributed stuff after Esperanto names to continue. :)
Hopefully they can find a new home. I am ashamed of GitLab. I used to love it but they get worse and worse by the day. Maybe Codeberg would be a better home. Nintendo can't kill this, there will always be new places to host software and it's open source.
It's absolutely ridiculous they took it down even though Nintendo didn't DMCA the Suyu project directly. Shitty corporate cover-our-ass behavior at its finest.
I am ashamed of GitLab.
Don't be. Gitlab has to comply with the law.
It's the law that's broken, not Gitlab.
It’s absolutely ridiculous they took it down even though Nintendo didn’t DMCA the Suyu project directly.
Um, no. If shitty corpo X (ab)uses the DMCA to send you a takedown notice for some project and you also host a fork of the same project, you must take down the fork too.
"You see, while this might be the exact same code, the name is totally different, so we don't have to take it down!" will not hold up in court.
Whether the DMCA request is valid or not is an entirely separate question. You must still comply or open yourself up to legal liabilities.
The process to object to the validity of the request is included in the screenshot.
DMCA hurts more than it serves
This law should be struck down.
I am sure majority of people will benifit from this.
The included DMCA request is specifically about suyu. It sounds to me like someone forked suyu and are receiving a notice about its takedown. Not that suyu is getting a notice about yuzu's takedown, if that was the case the request would be about yuzu.
Unfortunately, it's possible if the project is small. Also, even if it's big, people will be left with clones in different states and of different times, and it will require some coordination to put everything in order again.
So to sum up, people will be forced to waste time, which also may be the goal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I have to think people have stored stuff in a blockchain somewhere. I wonder what the response to that is.
It is if everyone's too scared of getting sued to host it publically
There'll always be a way to get hold of the source but I'm not sure I'd trust some rando on some hidden back alley of the internet not to have messed with it somehow
There’ll always be a way to get hold of the source but I’m not sure I’d trust some rando on some hidden back alley of the internet not to have messed with it somehow
That's what hashes are for.
Well, that's patently false, but I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Looks like they're hosting their own repo now as a result;
I wouldn't want to be their host ... or ISP ... for when Nintendo comes a knocking.
Like they're not going to want to fight a lawsuit for this repo: they'll cut the service off instead.
I guess if it's hosted in a country not friendly to DMCA, etc. they may be able to get away with it. Still risky though.
I've actually spent about $2500+ on switch and games, haven't pirated a single game, I just play the old nes and snes roms via emulation.
I can say, due to Nintendo's behavior I will never buy another nintendo console or game. I might even start with this Suyu emulator now and moving forward.
No company should ever attack its community this much, and aggressively. They are making piles of cash, and this is just toxic.
If you've not encountered it yet, check out the steam deck.
To the novice, it's an excellent, simple to use, handheld console, with all their steam games as a bonus.
To the adventurous, a couple of clicks get you to a Linux desktop. You can install what you want (including emulators) and even plumb them back into the normal steam deck interface.
I'll probably buy their next console, but I'm not going to be buying nearly as many games as I otherwise would. Basically, if a game is available literally anywhere else, I'll buy it there instead.
Also, if my console dies, I'm not buying another and will instead emulate the games I've already purchased. That's just how I do things, I buy for the console while it's relevant, then emulate for nostalgia.
I haven't bought anything from Nintendo since the DS. I never believed their consoles to have the quality, performance or uniqueness to justify their prices. Exclusives is just a money-grabbing FOMO practice that I have never deemed justifiable either.
However, I never actively chose to stand off on purchasing their products until I heard about how they treated the Smash community and literally shut down their tournaments as well as how their fantastically buggy releases of certain Switch Pokemon games.
They have proven time and time again to not only not care about their consumers or community but to actively seek them out and piss in their mouth whenever they can.
Yeah, I absolutely disagree with their community interaction, but they're fantastic for what I want them for: fun, family friendly games. I have young kids, and their games are a lot of fun to play together.
If it weren't for my kids, I probably wouldn't buy one since I'm more than satisfied with Steam. But games like Mario Kart and Mario Party are just a ton of fun to play together. I honestly haven't found another studio as dedicated to making great games for the whole family to play together.
So that's why I buy Nintendo games and consoles. However, because I don't like their community interaction, I limit myself to only those games, whereas I'd probably but a ton more games from them if they weren't so hostile.
I understand your situation. If you do want to dodge Nintendo however you might be able to get a similar experience by emulating a Switch on a Steam Deck.
Nothing short of prolonged mass boycotting nintendo has any chance of changing their behavior and even then I bet nintendo would ride all the way into the ground blaming emulators and pirates for their decline.
Me too, but this has nothing to do with copyright, but the anti-circumvention/anti-piracy part of the DMCA. I hate that part too, for the record. If we eliminated those parts of the DMCA but kept copyright as-is, we'd still have Yuzu.
Yuzu wasn't even DMCA'd though. Nintendo skipped that part and sued them outright. The removal on GitHub was done by the Yuzu team as part of the settlement
Right, but Gitlab was allegedly DMCA, probably using evidence from the settlement (they wouldn't have settled if they weren't in the wrong, or some other stupid logic like that). It doesn't cost Nintendo much to DMCA something, so they're just mopping up the easy targets at this point.
If this is all about some secret keys, couldn't they release the project without those keys, and ask users to get those keys through... Uh... Legal means. I think that's how they got around it in bioses for earlier consoles.
Edit: I see. Fuck Nintendo.
That's exactly what they did.
Nintendo's argument was that the software itself primarily facilities piracy and that to use it, you either had to circumvent protections on your own hardware to extract the keys or pirate someone else's keys.
They're still wrong for abusing DMCA to remove the software, but it would take an expensive and lengthy court battle to get them to back off
The fact that you need any money if someone sues you is beyond me. How braindead or blind does someone have to be to facilitate this?
They kind of have an unfortunate name for an emulator. It sounds like exactly what Nintendo is going to do to them.
If it helps, in Tagalog it means "affection," so you could read it as a project that's showing affection to the Nintendo Switch (i.e. we love the console and games so much we want to preserve it indefinitely). Unfortunately, that love and affection isn't reciprocated.
I would've named it Yuza though, which is the Korean term for the same fruit Yuzu refers to. It's a one-letter change, so typos for the latter are likely to find the former.
So they're saying that since Suyu forked Yuzu, it also contains some cryptographic keys from the Switch, which is the docs violation? Didn't something similar happen to the dolphin devs?
This isn't about copyright, it's about whether the software's purpose is to break DRM. Ninty argued that Yuzu's primary purpose is to enable copyright infringement which is forbidden under the DMCA; both infringement of course but also even just building tools to enable it. The latter is the critical (and IMHO insane) part.
Now, all of that is obviously BS but Ninty SLAPPed Yuzu to death, so it doesn't matter what's just or unjust; they win. God bless corporate America.
The suyu devs do not understand the legalities behind why yuzu was shut down. It wasn't because of keys. It was because it could break copyright protection mechanisms, which is in violation of the dmca.
The suyu devs think that by saying, "we don't support piracy, you have to provide your own keys" is enough, and there's case law to show it isn't. Your project needs to be incapable of breaking copyright protection mechanisms with or without keys.
Yuzu didn't ship with the keys in the first place. The reason it was sued and folded was because they optimised it for totk before totk came out. It's not that the software could break copyright protection, it's that they did while developing it.