I would say it’s more about establishing legal boundaries.
The Wii was the first console to use digital signatures; which would make it the first console to really invoke DMCA Section 1201 when prior consoles did not. Establishing out the gate that this tramples on 1201 could be extremely important in the future. Section 1201 is also what overrides Bleam and other prior emulator lawsuits - they didn’t have cryptographic keys protected by law flying around.
Because, how long until Yuzu is on the Steam store? And if Nintendo didn’t take action for the Wii (the first one protected under the title), defending against Yuzu is much harder.
Cryptographic key doesn't matter. It's covered explicitly under the exemptions listed in Section 1201. Discovering the cryptographic key using reverse engineering and using it for system interoperability is legal. They explicitly call this out:
> to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner;
If only it were that easy. The EFF had long warned that the interoperability exception is legally much weaker when it conflicts with 1201 than it appears, and is (in their view) legally almost useless.
“The "act" prohibition, set out in section 1201(a)(1), prohibits the act of circumventing a technological measure used by copyright owners to control access to their works ("access controls"). So, for example, this provision makes it unlawful to defeat the encryption system used on DVD movies. This ban on acts of circumvention applies even where the purpose for decrypting the movie would otherwise be legitimate. As a result, it is unlawful to make a digital copy ("rip") of a DVD you own for playback on your video iPod.
The "tools" prohibitions, set out in sections 1201(a)(2) and 1201(b), outlaw the manufacture, sale, distribution, or trafficking of tools and technologies that make circumvention possible. These provisions ban both technologies that defeat access controls, and also technologies that defeat use restrictions imposed by copyright owners, such as copy controls. These provisions prohibit the distribution of "DVD back-up" software, for example.
Section 1201 includes a number of exceptions for certain limited classes of activities, including security testing, reverse engineering of software, encryption research, and law enforcement. These exceptions have been extensively criticized as being too narrow to be of real use to the constituencies who they were intended to assist.“
This comes up elsewhere on this Hacker News thread, because Dolphin actually does contain a Nintendo encryption key. Which makes Dolphin almost indistinguishable from, say, a DVD ripper or counterfeit DVD player, which this law was specifically designed to crush.
If you want a further example, look into Apple v Psystar, where Psystar broke Apple’s DMCA 1201 locks to run macOS on unofficial hardware with “interoperability between hardware” being one of their many legal defenses. They were squashed in hearing after hearing and declared bankruptcy after having exhausted all legal options.
> As a result, it is unlawful to make a digital copy ("rip") of a DVD you own for playback on your video iPod.
Strictly speaking, this is true. It is not unlawful to plug a DVD player into your iPod and play the DVD back digitally though. That's basically what Dolphin is doing - it runs unmodified disc images, copy protection and all. They've even abstained from using code or insights gained from the Wii's source code leak. The emulator should be clean, outside of any legal complaints about "damages".
You're correct to highlight that it's still an ambiguous area, but in a post-Bleem! world it's hard for Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony to find the legal willpower to stop these people. They'll settle for easy wins like harassing Valve's legal staff with scary looking letters instead.
> If you want a further example, look into Apple v Psystar
There's more recent precedent with Corellium. Their commercial product is allowed to create iOS VMs on unofficial hardware. Running their code is considered fair use, the most valid legal claim Apple had for shutting them down was their violation of icon and wallpaper trademarks.
> It is not unlawful to plug a DVD player into your iPod and play the DVD back digitally though. That's basically what Dolphin is doing - it runs unmodified disc images, copy protection and all.
If it can play disc images with copy protection, it de facto requires a way around that copy protection that is unlicensed, slamming it squarely into Section 1201.
> The emulator should be clean, outside of any legal complaints about "damages".
Dolphin contains Nintendo decryption keys; which is actually very likely illegal when the rest of the emulator is not. Recall 09 F9…
A competing emulator developer (for Citra) has also commented on this and said what Dolphin did there was legally dangerous and very much not endorsed by courts.
> Their commercial product is allowed to create iOS VMs on unofficial hardware.
If you read the ruling, the fair use won because Corellium successfully argued there was no way that their product could impact Apple in any substantial negative way in the general market. They also argued that their products do not perform as substitutes to any products that Apple provides. And lastly, their products offer a unique benefit for a unique, niche, special interest, with vetting and similar procedures to ensure only people with those interests used their software.
If, however, they had done that to make their own smartphones, or a general iOS emulator for playing games on PC, they would have been annihilated. Nintendo easily has a case that emulation causes substantial financial and business harm; and that emulation can serve as a replacement for their products. Courts don’t like that.
Edit (“posting too fast”):
Unlike the GameCube, Wii games are digitally signed and encrypted.
This specific line of code contains the illegal key:
As the developer of Citra (above) noted, big no-no. The emulator is legally fine, but encryption keys are a no-go. Bleam was OK because keys were not involved. Every case that has involved keys for a non-extremely-specific use (Psystar, RealPlayer, VidAngel) has gone down in flames.
I don't believe it does. Wii U emulator CEMU requires them to boot, and Citra the 3DS emulator also requires them. The Wii seems to have no copy protection to speak of, besides it's rudimentary disk check/hashing routine. I'd love to be proven wrong on this, though.
> the fair use won because Corellium successfully argued there was no way that their product could impact Apple in any substantial way regarding security research
> Nintendo easily has a case that emulation causes substantial financial and business harm
> To the extent Bleem merely approximates what the PlayStation games look like, by generating screen shots through a process of degrading a computer image, it is simply creating a simulation. If Bleem insists on generating simulated approximations of Sony's games, there is no need for Bleem to use Sony's copyrighted material whatsoever.
Again - there is still ambiguity in these rulings, especially for modern console emulators. It's easy to scare Steam into taking this down since Valve doesn't want to take the fall for emulators. That being said, a true cease-and-desist scenario for Dolphin is likely unlawful, given the precedent and context.
Edit in response to your edit: Citra's developer is right - this is brazen. But it's also a legal can of worms Nintendo cannot guarantee a win on. Their claim is that it violates the Copyright Act, which they would then have to defend against the DMCA amendments that give explicit protections to many classes of usage. If "the key" is their objection, Nintendo's copyright complaint will be about as effective as the DeCSS moratorium.
I don't understand how private keys are any different from secret ingredients. You can't stop me from cracking the KFC recipe and if I successfully did it and published the recipe can KFC come after me? What if KFC was sloppy and dropped the recipe on the floor and I found it and published that?
To me the private key is just a secret blend of bits to make the output bits look exactly the way you'd expect. If Nintendo can't keep their private keys private isn't that their problem? Why does someone else have the responsibility to keep Nintendo's key private if they discover it?
DMCA Section 1201 is your answer. Those keys are primarily used for circumventing “technological protection measures” on software. That’s not legal even for otherwise legal uses which is why the Section is morally awful. What you do could be completely legal otherwise, but if it involves circumventing these “TPMs” of which encryption keys are an important part of, you’re screwed.
An emulator, meanwhile, only mimics hardware which is considered legal. An example: It is completely legal to implement the DVD specification; but brute-forcing the keys to decrypt DVDs because you don’t have a license is not.
The same applies to AACS, which protects Blu-ray Discs. It’s actually published publicly - you can just go download the spec for that copy protection right now. But getting a legal, unique device key will require contracts.
Stupid? Yes, but that’s where the law is drawn right now.
What about Sony vs. Connectix? That case seems to have established that US copyright law does not confer a monopoly on devices or software to play commercial games.
They was both A) a case decided before the DMCA was law, and B) the DRM system of the PS1 is pretty much solely focused on legitimate PS1s only playing legitimate discs; there's nothing in most games stopping other systems from reading everything off the disc freely in cleartext.
I’m sorry, I should have said first Nintendo console. The earlier Nintendo consoles had no ROM encryption and used heavily physical protection methods (odd disc sizes, lockout chips).
The Wii was the first console to use digital signatures; which would make it the first console to really invoke DMCA Section 1201 when prior consoles did not. Establishing out the gate that this tramples on 1201 could be extremely important in the future. Section 1201 is also what overrides Bleam and other prior emulator lawsuits - they didn’t have cryptographic keys protected by law flying around.
Because, how long until Yuzu is on the Steam store? And if Nintendo didn’t take action for the Wii (the first one protected under the title), defending against Yuzu is much harder.