[kg]

Emulation is legal in the US

[tombert]

For now at least. Given Nintendo's efforts to get rid of Yuzu and Ryujinx I think it's likely that the legal days may be numbered. All they have to do is get it in front of the right judge(s) and the precedent by the Connectix and the Bleem lawsuits is undone.

Not that I particularly care if it's legal; I seriously doubt anyone is going to break into my house to seize my MiSTer as contraband, but I think it's entirely possible that emulation progress stalls because it's forced to move into the shadows.

[dcrazy]

Nintendo was able to pressure RyujinX because it relied on stolen code.

[whateveracct]

punk never dies

[easyThrowaway]

In the music industry they have a saying about sampling and IP clearance which easily applies here too: "The lawfulness of your actions is directly related to your law firm fees compared to the other part".

Are Dolphin and emulation in general going to be legal in the future? Easy, if Nintendo chooses to go with Morrison & Foerster or Fish & Richardson for a lawsuit I'm going with "no".

[charcircuit]

But dumping the games isn't. How do you think the screenshots in the blog post were taken. Do you think they properly got a license to do so?

Hint: The blog post says they made a way to dump the games.

[cyphar]

That depends on the country. In Australia, there is an explicit carve-out in the Copyright Act to allow for backups of computer programs[1], and there is also a widely held belief (at least, according to the government) that backups of this kind in general are also considered fair use[2]. Actually, it seems there is a somewhat similar carve-out in the US as well[3].

[1]: https://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/cons... [2]: https://www.alrc.gov.au/publication/copyright-and-the-digita... [3]: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#117