Nintendo Takes Down Switch Emulators, Mod Chip Firmware in Massive GitHub DMCA Sweep (ign.com) 42
Nintendo has issued four DMCA takedown notices targeting two Nintendo Switch emulators, Yuzu and Citron Neo, along with mod chip firmware such as Picofly, SX Core and HWFLY. As a result, 144 repositories containing firmware used to circumvent the console's copy protections have been removed by GitHub and replaced by a DMCA takedown notice. IGN reports: GitHub has posted Nintendo's November 6 DMCA notice, which says, "The Nintendo Switch console and video games contain technological protection measures ('TPMs') that permit the Nintendo Switch console to interact only with legitimate Nintendo video game files. This process protects Nintendo's copyright-protected video games, (...) by preventing users from playing pirated copies of Nintendo's video games on the Nintendo Switch console and by preventing users from unlawfully copying and playing Nintendo's video games on unauthorized devices."
However, while this takedown has effectively wiped out a ton of repositories with mod chip firmware, it seems like it's still being hosted elsewhere on the site, according to TorrentFreak. It's possible, though, that Nintendo isn't finished yet; back in 2024, Nintendo effectively took down 8,500 copies of Yuzu by issuing a takedown that targeted 12 different mirrors of the emulator. This particular takedown also comes a few days after emulators were able to run the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on PC, so this could be a sign that Nintendo is winding up its lawyers to crack down on emulation once again.
However, while this takedown has effectively wiped out a ton of repositories with mod chip firmware, it seems like it's still being hosted elsewhere on the site, according to TorrentFreak. It's possible, though, that Nintendo isn't finished yet; back in 2024, Nintendo effectively took down 8,500 copies of Yuzu by issuing a takedown that targeted 12 different mirrors of the emulator. This particular takedown also comes a few days after emulators were able to run the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on PC, so this could be a sign that Nintendo is winding up its lawyers to crack down on emulation once again.
"Massive Takedown" (Score:4, Informative)
In the 1980s, before WWW became a thing... (Score:2)
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Moon Patrol, "cracked by The Nibbler"
But no, back then everybody was using computers in the same room, and when you saw somebody playing Moon Patrol you could ask, "Hey can I copy your disk?"
These days it's a lot harder... kid watches a tiktok, sees somebody playing it, manages to find a broken link to the github, finds a reddit post with a broken link to a mirror, finds a post from somebody else complaining about the links being broken, etc.
Torrent?! Mom's firewall blocks that because she clicked "block al
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If mom clicked to block something, sure the child can also click to unblock that thing
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Uhhhh... wow. Just wow.
Moderators can click on something and make your score go up.
That means you can also just click on it and make your score go up. Right?
Perhaps a performance for legal compliance? (Score:2)
I chuckle when I see how companies these days appear to think that "one specific web site no longer hosting X" will make a difference to their bottom-line.
Perhaps you missed a motivation. If they don't take steps to protect some IP they may lose it. So going after these easily accessible sites is evidence that they have not abandoned the IP and are actively defending it. Its just a performance for legal compliance?
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That only applies to trademarks, not copyright.
I'ver seen sites shut down for trademark reasons, the art assets not the code.
But also the github pages did not host any nintendo trademarks or copywrited materials.
But taking those sites to court may still demonstrate protecting IP in some way. Perhaps going after tools that are somehow involved in misusing copyrighted or trademarked materials? It doesn't have to make sense to an engineer, just a judge.
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Trademark is like, the name "zelda", or the character of mario.
Everyone in emulation goes out of their way to go NOWHERE NEAR either.
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art assets are copyright, not trademark.
"... the character being registered must identify and distinguish the source of the work. In a video game context, this means the character must create an association between the mark and software in order to be eligible for trademark protection. For example, this might include the character being centrally depicted on the launch screen, website, or other marketing materials for the video game — or anything else that would cause an individual to associate the image of the character with the video game
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Perhaps they should consider just charging a proper price for the hardware and making it an open platform so anyone can develop games for it and if you want to pay for Nintendos API then you can or you can DIY it.
Of course companies don't like doing that because they prefer the endless revenue stream from games particularly once they're online and can only be used on one device, no more sharing DVD ROMs.
Video Game Preservation (Score:5, Interesting)
I knew Nintendo was about to do something big again after they announced their own video game preservation initiative. Trying to cover over the other reason emulation exists. I'm no pirate, but I don't use original hardware for anything but my newest games. It's way to hard to keep that stuff running - especially modern wireless controllers. A Dualsense controller is a perfect controller for SNES, NES, Playstation, and even Steam. I never owned a Pro controller for the Wii and I can't easily get one now - so emulation is much more effective.
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One of the things that worries these companies is that if there's too much out there and too many games it's going to become impossible to heavily monetize their games like they want to. If you're being charitable to the companies that may even become difficult to be pr
Re:Video Game Preservation (Score:4, Insightful)
The holiday shopping season is almost upon us. Nintendo is doing their annual crackdown. They want to ensure that the people buy from Nintendo, not buy an emulator box and download ROMs.
Profit must be protected.
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Things are going to get pretty messed up soon (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically you can take a little bit of AI code and somebody else's project from when they did the hard stuff and combine the two and the AI will take the work that person did for a single project and generalize it so that it can be applied to basically any game in existence.
This means that you get stuff like bloodborne being ported to PC which is harmless enough because it's an old game but then the code from that can be adopted and patched and updated by AI to the point where script kiddies can make PS5 games run on PC natively...
Whatever else you think about the topic there's no way Sony and Nintendo and Microsoft can let that slide. Never mind what Adobe is eventually going to do.
The first thing will probably be to do something think of the children bullshit to ban local AI instances. I'm sure they'll say something about pedophilia or guns or something. And honestly they probably will find some gun toting pedos just like how Ronald Reagan used Willie Horton to win an election. Fun fact the guy's name isn't Willie it's William.
I don't know what the fuck you do about any of this but we are going to have to figure out some kind of Middle ground between every single console game can be pirated with ease on your PC and none of us were allowed to own hobbyist PCS anymore.
I mean we don't have to the corporations can just take our toys away. Although the last election shows they're not 110% in charge of everything. I mean they spent like $2 billion dollars trying to get the Republican party here in America elected and surprisingly that didn't work. Christ Mississippi elected a black man to the senate for the first time since before reconstruction...
I didn't say anything about a law (Score:2, Troll)
What I'm talking about here is an intractable problem. Like how automation is devouring jobs faster than our society can adapt and we're about to have a shitload of unemployable people but we're not willing to just let them sit around all day. It's a problem that nobody has a solution too
That's why you're getting angry at me. I'm stating the pr
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devouring jobs faster than our society can adapt
I'm not sure speed of adaptation is a reasonable metric.
How long does it actually take to manufacture a pallet of Soylent Green?
Where there's a will, there's a way!
It's a problem that nobody has a solution to
Lots of assholes have solutions, you just don't want to consider them.
Neither do I, mostly, but there are indeed various proposals. Everything from "eat the rich" to "let them eat cake."
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Copyrights and Patents ought to be taxed by the holders of those protected classes. Choosing to not pay those taxes liberates those patents and copyrights to the public domain.
That's kind of how it works, except all the terms are different. Choosing not to go to court about it etc etc. No matter what it's choosing whether or not to spend the money.
This is the one kind of tax that I can get on board with, because it is 100% voluntary and doesn't force anyone to do anything.
But it does. Copyright is still backed up by rough men with guns.
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Copyright is backed up by courts, which are protected by men with guns. And if you have an idea, you don't have to patent it. And if you have a patent, you don't have to protect it (making it public domain like status). We don't have to have patents, that is also a choice.
Corporations have a lot in common with Patents, protecting property rights with public charters defended by the state (people with guns). We don't have to have those either. I'd be okay with taking government out of the Corporation busines
Wallstreet has broken expections (Score:2)
First up: You can still play your games on old consoles. Those will not go away. The reason you pay for a rerelease, modernization, or reimagining is that it takes actual time and money to create. No one is taking things you have away from you.
Updating and testing something to a new console takes time and money. An AI does not by itself convert a game in a way that you can realistically present it to the masses and not have it hurt your reputation. Venture capital has made expectations of users inappro
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Are you seeing a lot of support for the "people should be forced to use a data center to run AIs, instead of being allowed to do it at home using solar power" position?
What I saw last week, is that "think of the children" means that no one should ever fucking ever let a Republican anywhere within ten feet of a child, rather than it meaning we need to give data centers a monopoly on running AI.
The RAM cr
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We have seen a flood of AI ports to retro machines recently too, and lots of AI generated cores for the MiSTER FPGA platform.
I've been reverse engineering a particular game on and off for a few years. Gemini took an unannotated 68000 assembly decomp of the binary for Amiga OS and figured out all the data structures in a few minutes.
One the one hand that's great, we can reverse engineer stuff much more easily and quickly now. On the other hand what was once a fun hobby is pointless now. People who just want
Switch 2 is expensive and will become moreso (Score:2)
I imagine Nintendo will be hitting all these sorts of sites even harder, going forward - they're aware that their hardware and games is now borderline out-of-reach for much of their intended customer base, and many of those people will be looking for "alternative means" to get access to those games.
DMCA squared (Score:2)
Yo dawg, I heard you like DMCA, so I sent you a DMCA notice (Title 17 Section 512) about DMCA-prohibited circumvention (Title 17 Section 1201).
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Where one falls... (Score:2)
...ten more shall rise.