GitLab takes down Nintendo Switch emulator suyu due to the DMCA
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/
🖕
Lmaoo
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.
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.
Removing open source code from the Internet just isn't possible
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)_/¯
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.
Don't support Nintendo. Don't buy the console
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.
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.
Suyu has to be an ironic name right?
Hot potato!
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?
Streisand effect intensifies!
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.
How does that interact with legal protections for reverse engineering at all?
Oh for fucks sake
Glad I downloaded Windows and Android before they got hit.