Former Dolphin team member addresses Steam/Valve’s takedown of Dolphin emulator

https://mastodon.delroth.net/@delroth/110440301402516214

by airhangerf15 • 3 years ago

202 145 3 years ago

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mijoharas3• 3 years ago

Possibly an unpopular opinion, but I think this is a reasonable strategic move by Valve.

They're a game distributor, Nintendo is a massive game publisher. Distributing dolphin would piss Nintendo off.

As much as I'd like it as a user, it makes sense for Valve as a company.

tadfisher• 3 years ago

Valve and Nintendo have no working relationship. There is an approximately 0% chance that Nintendo, as a game publisher, will ever publish on Steam. This is a pessimistic move by the legal department, nothing more.

ThatPlayer• 3 years ago

But Valve does publish on Nintendo's eShop.

thebigwinning2• 3 years ago

How would their partners feel about how they treat others intellectual property?

TylerE2• 3 years ago

Never say never. Look at Sega.

asveikau• 3 years ago

Apart from this being false as mentioned by other replies, Nintendo is a large player in the space with a big legal department. It could be a good strategic move not to piss them off.

wodenokoto• 3 years ago

None at all? Then how did portal end up on my switch?

jahsome• 3 years ago

Would you elaborate on "no working relationship?"

kupopuffs• 3 years ago

Strong opinions here

mijoharas3• 3 years ago

I was wondering things along these lines.

I don't see there being a 0% chance (though admittedly a low one) that they bundle some of their back catalogue with an emulator and release the titles on PC (like Sega on Android/iOS).

If they think the value of those sales would exceed the value added to the switch of eg Mario kart 64 being exclusive, then it'd make sense.

nazgulsenpai• 3 years ago

I guess it just goes to show that even a juggernaut like Valve cowers in fear to appease Nintendo's lawyers.

I saw a few weeks ago some coverage of the first E3 where Nintendo's entire presentation was about the dangers of the internet and software piracy and it was really enlightening and hilarious.

Here's a video with some commentary: https://youtu.be/uMuJWADkMYY?t=1787

candiodari• 3 years ago

Or it could be that Nintendo's position is an interpretation of the law as intended by Congress. You know the law doing what it was meant to do.

You don't agree. Great. But, sadly, the correct forum for that is Congress, not Steam.

tinus_hn• 3 years ago

Alternatively they didn’t cower in fear, they just didn’t see a business case in pissing off a big potential partner just so they could host a free app and gain nothing.

santoshalper• 3 years ago

Here's the thing though, Valve could have just waited to see what Nintendo would do. If Nintendo had submitted a DMCA takedown request, Valve could have evaluated it then. Admittedly, whether any of us like it or not, the takedown request would probably have been valid and Valve probably would have honored it. Still, I can't think of one good reason to ask.

croes• 3 years ago

But Valve and Steam are PC, people can just install Dolphin without Steam

haunter• 3 years ago

So Google is okay with it? It’s available for years + Play Store has a much bigger market reach

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dolphinemu...

wiseowise2• 3 years ago

Google is a monopolist on Android. What Nintendo is going to do about? Create their own store?

eterevsky• 3 years ago

It's quite possible that nobody at Google actively looked into this. I don't know what would be the outcome if Nintendo sent Google a cease & desist regarding this.

janmarsal• 3 years ago

A lot of evil deeds make perfect financial sense.

jmorenoamor• 3 years ago

I support emulation, but emulating a live system __and__ publishing it in Steam is pushing some ethical limits. I don't say breaking them, just entering a gray area.

Nobody raised an eyebrow with RetroArch, which for me is the proper use for emulation. Software preservation and keeping alive out-of-market systems.

thargor90• 3 years ago

Is the Wii stillconsidered to be in the market?

dingledork693• 3 years ago

Explain why? Do you think it's ethical to have sold games that can't be played anymore?

hkt• 3 years ago

Streisand moment: neat, I didn't know that there was a Wii/GC emulator!

bombcar• 3 years ago

It's honestly really nice, even if all you ever do is read their release notes: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/tags/progress%20report/

dpiers• 3 years ago

Their progress reports pop up on HN pretty frequently, as they're usually pretty technically dense and interesting.

Here's the discussion of the most recent update: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36019485

satvikpendem5• 3 years ago

And for Switch, Yuzu and Ryujinx work great. I don't know why anyone with a decent enough PC would play on native Switch hardware anymore, when you can get 4k 120 FPS + in many games, including the new Zelda game, Tears of the Kingdom.

louhike2• 3 years ago

There are still bugs for several games, you cannot play in portable mode and you cannot play online unless you use a custom network used only by emulator users with a specific build.

chungy• 3 years ago

Simple: there's no softmod for my Switch and I don't want to risk a hardware mod. I can't even copy the games I own to my PC.

lawn• 3 years ago

Portability is a thing.

(Works swell ok Steam Deck though.)

yunohn3• 3 years ago

The biggest advantage of the Switch is immersive portability. The Steam Deck is great, I own both - but the Switch is less bulky and has simpler software, making it very pick-up-and-play.

A gaming PC is incomparable on those metrics.

WithinReason• 3 years ago

No you can't get 4k 120 FPS in ToTK, often not even 60.

tjpnz2• 3 years ago

MVG has a good summary - according to him the takedown was probably due to a decryption key being found in the source code. That weakens significantly the argument that this was a clean-room effort, which is really unfortunate.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=hsQtv5IvrD8&feature=share7

chii2• 3 years ago

but is it not theoretically possible to have reversed engineered a decryption key from clean room?

And also, in my mind, a decryption key is not copyrightable - it's a utility number. Clean room is meant to avoid any doubt of copyright violations, so if this isn't copyrightable then it shouldn't be a problem right?

tjpnz2• 3 years ago

Corpos have in the past attempted to claim otherwise. The safest bet for the Dolphin team would've been to ask the user for the key.

deng2• 3 years ago

And also, in my mind, a decryption key is not copyrightable - it's a utility number.

This is not about copyright, this is about circumventing a copy protection. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number, which is also cited in the above video. Therefore, it also makes no difference from where this number actually comes from, "clean room approach" makes no difference here.

evandale• 3 years ago

I've really only learned how stupid the DMCA is recently. I have no idea how a private decryption key is treated any different from a trade secret.

IF KFC dropped a recipe card and you found it with 5 of the 7 spices and you cracked the final 2, can KFC come after you? How is that any different from Nintendo being sloppy and dropping their decryption key in memory for someone to find?

Say you found all but the last 4 bytes of the key on the ground and you cracked the last 4 yourself? What if Nintendo published the entire key by accident on Github?

What is the point of keeping a private key private if it's illegal to use it if it's not yours? None of it makes sense.

jokowueu• 3 years ago

Seems like there is a simple solution . Just remove the encryption key from the emulator and ask the user for it

Similar on how ps2 emulators require a bios file

rain1• 3 years ago

what the actual fuck were they thinking uploading dolphin to steam??

VanTodi• 3 years ago

"it's easier to provide the software to steamdeck user this way instead of 'sideloading' it"

thih92• 3 years ago

What does ‘sideloading’ mean in the steamdeck context? E.g. can you run any 3rd party game out of the box or do you need to perform some jailbreak first?

butz• 3 years ago

Maybe Steamdeck version of Steam should add UI to search Flathub and install flatpaks?

ihuman2• 3 years ago

And it would automatically sync saves using Steam's cloud saves

curiousObject• 3 years ago

An act of peaceful protest against unreasonably restrictive laws?

Or that they’d get an enormous marketing campaign, paid for by Nintendo? (This plan appears to be succeeding)

Sakos3• 3 years ago

I'm more baffled that they thought it would be fine for them to include the keys. I wouldn't have risked the project on that kind of risk/uncertainty.

dingledork693• 3 years ago

Probably something along the lines of: emulators are legal and indie developers upload their software to steam all the time

Dalewyn• 3 years ago

My only takeaway from this is that Dolphin lied to paint themselves as David-the-victim against Nintendo-the-Goliath. Getting hit with a DMCA takedown and simply getting told by Valve to sod off are two astronomically different things.

kmeisthax2• 3 years ago

Not necessarily. The differences between DMCA 512 takedowns, cease and desist letters, YouTube Content ID matches, and side-eyed glances between nominal competitors in the games space, are very subtle. It's very easy to confuse the two and people do it all the time, because the end result is exactly the same: something you made is removed from the Internet because someone else says you didn't make it.

hitekker• 3 years ago

You’ve been flagged but your point is largely correct. There is a big difference between Valve in listing them, and Nintendo sending them a DMCA. The dolphin developers ignored that difference and the former Dolphin developer called them out.

deng2• 3 years ago

From the thread:

Whether that's allowed by exception clauses for interoperability, whether that's allowed by some kind of fair use clause, whether Nintendo's broken DRM actually counts as an effective copyright protection measure, etc. -> only a lawsuit could decide that. Your guess is probably as good or as bad as anyone else's.

Sorry no, this is not a "could go either way" situation. There is ample precedence (see: DeCSS) on what counts as "copy protection", and there really is no question that a judge would see the Wii encryption as a copy protection mechanism and hence the DMCA would apply here. The intent that this is meant as a copy protection is what matters, not whether it is broken or not. (Just the messenger - don't shoot me.)

nickpeterson• 3 years ago

I think this is spot on. I do wish, however, that game companies could agree on some timeline for when emulating an old console is 'ok'. Because for the overwhelming majority of old games, its either emulate them or don't play them at all.

cloverich• 3 years ago

This is where copyright is broken. Because they are perfectly happy with nobody being able to play them, and the only option being "buy new stuff".

If copyright expired in a more reasonable timeframe or had more reasonable constraints (like you can't copyright something to prevent its use all together) we'd be better off, i think.

yet it seems more likely ai generated content will be the next step long term, i just can't imagine copyright ever getting weaker as is.

BLKNSLVR• 3 years ago

I think their twisted view of the world is that anyone playing an old game in an emulator is a "lost sale" for a new game.

It's unsurprisingly cheap to be a decade or more behind the gaming bleeding edge.

(I just re-played through Deus Ex, that's two decades...)

Sakos3• 3 years ago

This isn't something that should be decided by corporations. They're almost always going to say no forever. This needs to be regulated and allowed by law after a concrete amount of time that is not significantly longer than the commercial lifetime of a device.

kmeisthax2• 3 years ago

90 years after the publication of the last Wii game, and not a second less! /s

gjsman-10002• 3 years ago

Another example: The copy protection scheme for Blu-ray Discs (AACS) is actually an open standard. You can download the PDF specification from their website right now. But getting your actual unique device key? You are instantly in boiling water if you steal one from another manufacturer.

Or another example: There is a lawsuit right now about whether YouTube has legally-protected “technological protection measures,” even though YouTube doesn’t use Widevine, FairPlay, etc. The hope is to get YouTube-DL-Like programs found a violation this way. If the movie industry is seriously embroiled in a lawsuit about whether freaking YouTube has TPMs (and they think they could win), an AES-128 key from Nintendo used for encrypting games is probably a slam dunk.

In the original post: “whether Nintendo's broken DRM actually counts as an effective copyright protection measure”

Woah, woah, woah. Courts have been clear as daylight that somebody breaking DRM, or the broken status of DRM, has zero effect on legality. DVD has the weakest protection ever (40-bit keys), has been broken since 1999, but the Library of Congress still has their meetings for arguing about what DMCA exceptions to grant for the next three years. And DVD ripping software companies have been sued and lost repeatedly. It’s still a crime to break into a private area secured by a 60-year-old rusted lock.

bitwize3• 3 years ago

We'll have to wait on the result of that court case to be sure, but the letter of the law says that youtube-dl and their ilk are circumvention devices and thus illegal to use or distribute under the DMCA.

malermeister• 3 years ago

Is it that clear cut? It sounds to me like the interoperability clause would apply:

(2) Notwithstanding the provisions of subsections (a)(2) and (b), a person may develop and employ technological means to circumvent a technological measure, or to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure, in order to enable the identification and analysis under paragraph (1), or for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, if such means are necessary to achieve such interoperability, to the extent that doing so does not constitute infringement under this title.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201

Isn't this exactly what Dolphin is doing? Isn't Dolphin an independently created computer program providing PC interoperability with Switch games?

gjsman-10002• 3 years ago

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has talked repeatedly about how the Interoperability exception is significantly weaker in context than it appears.

The biggest problem, as they summarize it, is that “Any interoperable program you created as a result of the reverse engineering is non-infringing.”

Aka, your reverse-engineered DVD player software for Linux cannot break TPMs. Your emulator can’t break TPMs. Etc. It only protects breaking TPMs to develop software that does not break TPMs. Surprise, that’s almost useless.

In which case, all it does is say that the Dolphin developers can’t be sued for breaking TPMs to develop Dolphin, at least under the DMCA. But they can still be sued if they distribute any TPM-breaking tools.

https://www.eff.org/issues/coders/reverse-engineering-faq

makomk• 3 years ago

I think the actual reason this key is in Dolphin boils down to a historical accident of how game dumping and piracy used to work immediately after the Wii's release. Originally, people dumped games using certain DVD drives that were capable of reading the non-standard Wii disc format using undocumented debug commands, burned them to DVDs, and used modchips to make the burned DVDs look like original discs. (This is long obsolete and replaced by softmods that can just rip and run games on USB drives or SD cards using software running on the Wii.) People doing this had no way to decrypt the data and no reason to since the Wii expected it to be encrypted. So in order to be compatible with game rips designed to run on the Wii, Dolphin needs a copy of the common key. That is, the reason this key is in Dolphin in the first place is - ironically - most likely because it was completely ineffective at preventing game copying.

bitwize3• 3 years ago

"Effective" is defined in the DMCA and has nothing to do with actually being effective. It means a measure which, during the normal course of its operation (i.e., the happy path, without anyone fucking with it), prevents copying. It doesn't matter how trivial or trivially broken such a measure is, if it's there to prevent copying you are civilly and criminally liable for breaking or circumventing it.

Phelinofist• 3 years ago

In what way is Dolphin different from e.g. RetroArch, that is also available via Steam?

veidr• 3 years ago

Literally just that RetroArch doesn't support any Nintendo system from the last 20 years?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists

whoops wrong link but fuck it, serendipity

hn92726819• 3 years ago

Here's the correct link showing dolphin core can be loaded into retroarch: https://docs.libretro.com/library/dolphin/

Maybe retroarch itself doesn't emulate anything, but just provide a render surface/input abstraction to 'cores'?

jsheard2• 3 years ago

Retroarch doesn't include any copyrighted BIOS files, or decryption keys which could make it run afoul of the DMCA. Dolphin does include keys dumped from the Wii, which are nessesery to run common dumps of retail games which are usually distributed in their original encrypted form.

The legal dubiousness of bundling keys was already well established, emulators for Nintendos other recent systems (3DS/Switch) don't include the keys, and instruct the user to dump them from their own hardware to shield the project from liability (of course the keys can easily be found online, but the projects don't endorse that out of abundance of caution).

realusername3• 3 years ago

which are nessesery to run common dumps of retail games which are usually distributed in their original encrypted form.

I think people should just share roms with the encryption pre-removed and that's would be the end of the legal reach for Nintendo here.

Not sure why we still reproduce undesirable code from the console.

tssva2• 3 years ago

Valve could have decided to ignore Nintendo with ~ no liability. They decided to just do whatever they were asked, and that's not surprising given they initiated contact in the first place.

They most certainly would have had liability in this situation. Once informed by Nintendo that they consider Dolphin a circumvention technology, it is highly likely that in any future lawsuit a court would find Valve liable for knowing distributing a circumvention technology.

makeitdouble• 3 years ago

They wouldn't have any liability if Nintendo filed no DMCA claim.

They would need to comply to the claim if/when filed, but could have passed the bucket to the Dolphin team for any defense while they're off Steam, and let them duke it in court if Nintendo sues.

tssva2• 3 years ago

DMCA notices apply to copyrighted material not circumvention technologies. There is no safe harbor for distributing circumvention technologies. What Nintendo would need to proof to make Valve liable is that they knew or should have known they were distributing software meant to circumvent protection. Once Nintendo told Valve they considered Dolphin to be circumventing their protection mechanisms, proofing the above in court is pretty straight forward.

paulcole• 3 years ago

Valve's ToS likely allows them to take down anything for any reason they want.

This is all you need to read. If Valve doesn’t want the headache of poking the bear that is Nintendo, they just don’t poke the bear.

For anybody that’s shocked and upset by this, well welcome to the world.

Former Dolphin team member addresses Steam/Valve’s takedown of Dolphin emulator

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