The Japanese company is fighting the Lernaean Hydra: even if it cuts off one head, two others take its place, so even if GitHub applies the DMCA copyright claim against the Yuzu emulator code base, more and more people are using it.

It’s been two months since the developers of Yuzu, a prominent emulator for the Nintendo Switch, reached a $2.4 million settlement with the big N and took the emulator’s source code offline (as well as the code for their previous project, Citra, which emulates 3DS games). But many people on GitHub forked Yuzu’s code. And Nintendo has not ignored this: it has started taking down what it considers infringing content from users who host Yuzu’s code.

But Nintendo did not file one, two, or fifty DMCA claims, it filed 8,535. The details just recently surfaced on GitHub, and on April 29, the big N filed the claims. It’s not much, but the company claims that the uploads violate the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) because they technologically circumvent a measure that effectively regulates access to DMCA-protected content. That is, Yuzu uses the Switch’s cryptographic keys to unlock and decrypt games. The only problem is that the emulator does not include the keys, and they had to be provided by users. However, there was code to generate game-specific title.keys.

When Yuzu quickly settled with Nintendo, their website still showed how Lockpick_RCM could be used to dump hardware keys from our Switch, or perhaps the game-specific code could have been damaging in court if litigation had eventually occurred. Sudachi, a new emulator for the Nintendo Switch, is a continuation of Yuzu, and keys to games must be provided by the user.

But like I said, it’s a losing battle. The more people take a stand against it, the more people will fight Nintendo…

Source: PCGamer, GitHub