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Comment on [help] Is pirated tutorials forbidden here ?

Economizer@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Although I agree with you for the most part, as far as I understand it, there seems to be different layers to this.

Emulators are legal if they’re built from ground up, but if they use any code from the actual system, it’s illegal. For example, I think Dolphin tried to get on Steam, but they were disallowed because they used a “leaked copy of the Wii Common Code”.

Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. The piracy talk recently have been kind of interesting, because a couple of the emulator communities I’m involved in require proof of dump for any help such as Yuzu’s Discord.

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mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

but if they use any code from the actual system, it’s illegal.

Actually, this is not the case. DMCA allows some amount on code to be duplicated, just not the whole thing. You’re not allowed to copy everything, but copying some code is allowed.

Also, the encryption key that was copied in Dolphin is just a random string of letters and numbers. That’s not copywritable, so no copyright infringement happened from including that in the software, regardless of what Nintendo claimed

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Overzeetop@sopuli.xyz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They also are not permitted to bypass, enable, or decrypt any part of a content control system - even one as simple as ROT13. In fact, decrypting and format shifting (from cartridge or CD to storage, for example) without explicit permission is actually an infringing act, BUT it is not prohibited in certain special cases (known as “fair use”) and if you are taken to court you can attempt to prove that your use was Fair under one or more of the legal sections dedicated to it. You are still infringing, but it is not illegal and there is no penalty for doing so. That is, as I state above, and very fine point in the law that is fun to argue but ultimately is just a die roll as to whether what you’re doing produces enough smoke to get you targeted by content owners. Because if you get caught, you’re probably going to lose - either directly, or your life savings in legal fees to prove your use was fair, and courts rarely award fees back to the defendant in these cases. (IANAL, but I have done work in performance rights, and worked with an IP lawyer in the business to ensure that everything we did was legal and defensible)

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