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Yuzu developers agreed to pay $2.4 million in damages to Nintendo to settle their lawsuit
(storage.courtlistener.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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The main link is to the motion paper. This is the link to the actual agreed-upon final judgment and injunction:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.56980/gov.uscourts.rid.56980.10.1.pdf
In short, Yuzu agreed to stop developing and distributing the emulator, cannot distribute source code, assign it to a new entity, encourage any IP violations, and must surrender their domain.
The findings also include admissions that the purpose of the Yuzu software was "primarily" designed to circumvent technical measures in violation of the DMCA.
So it appears Yuzu didn't "win" in any real sense. Nintendo got a chilling amount of damages, effectively their full injunction, and also some agreed-upon "findings of fact" that may serve Nintendo in future litigation to justify claims that emulators are "primarily" designed to circumvent technical measures and circumvent the DMCA.
Someone mentioned this on Reddit, but I wonder how poorly discovery would have gone for Yuzu if the lawsuit had continued.
I can't imagine they were super careful about not bringing up the piracy side of things in various internal and even external communications. I can't help but wonder if they basically talked about or even bragged about how much money they get from adding support for games like TotK.
It's a good point. Honestly, unless everyone in a company is extremely careful, non-lawyers will say very incriminating crap at some point. I think Grokster (the vicarious infringement case Nintendo was probably going to rely on) had quite a bit of that.
Interesting. Wonder what that means in terms of github. Yuzu isn't technically distributing the source, is Nintendo taking ownership of it? What stops someone from forking the repo? Who is "yuzu" that's paying this bill?
Presumably forks remain public on Github at their own risk, but Nintendo may shift to a DMCA removal policy now that are about to have a judgment.
The judgment has two sections, one for people who have "privity" and more direct relationships with Tropic Haze, and another for "all third parties acting in active concert and participation with" Tropic Haze. The latter enjoins only sharing code and decryption keys. So it certainly sounds like this was drafted to capture, in the Court's order, people who don't have a relationship but are code-forking.
Nintendo doesn't have nearly as clean legal leverage for randos and individuals that don't have a company built around this emulator, but I actually predict they'll do GitHub DMCA removals on forks based on a broad reading of the injunction.
There is no judgement in a settlement, and settlements are not case-law. The court has little to do with the settlement as it is simply a binding agreement between the parties to resolve the dispute outside of the court. The judge must also agree and sign off but the settlement is only binding to the parties to the suit and does not create any precedent.
If Nintendo wishes to go after anyone else, it will require an entirely new suit. A quick google on the differences between judgements, verdicts, and settlements will explain a lot better.
Yes, if you were to argue it later in court, you would argue that technically it was a judgment to enter the stipulation and dismiss. And the court may strike the "Judgment" wording in the proposed order. But Nintendo presumably wrote it as a "Judgment" knowing the value that such a designation has.
Further, most stipulated settlements don't include substantive findings of fact, and again, Nintendo drafted that section explicitly to blur the line between a court's finding of facts and mere approved stipulated findings of fact. With this order on the books, it will be up to the next case's defendant to later argue that it wasn't equivalent to any other trial findings of fact and order.
Yes, it doesn't technically create precedent as a trial-tested findings of fact by the Court, but a competent litigation attorney would argue that it is probative of the factual issue and fudge the wording in a brief well enough to argue effectively the same.
This is bad.
Its bad for Yuzu/Tropic Haze. But it is "not bad" for emulation as a whole because there was no legal precedent.
If nintendo decides to continue to strong arm emulator teams into shutting down that is going to be really bad. But that is ALSO when activist orgs tend to get involved and foot the bill/provide lawyers because they want the precedent that prevents those kinds of lawsuits.
You think Nintendo is just going to stop? They can get an easy couple of million now by going after anyone with an emulator. I'm sure they could even go after discontinued console emulators too now they have a shitty service to play their old games.
No they can’t get an easy couple million from any emulator lol, only from emulator developers making millions of dollars from their emulator…which is basically only Yuzu.
Google Gary Bowser if you think not affording it means Nintendo won't go after them
That's not a counter-example...Team Xecuter also made millions of dollars and Gary was running various sites that explicitly promoted and helped people with piracy (much more directly illegal than anything Yuzu was doing). Whether Gary has the money to pay his plea agreement in his federal criminal case (not a mutually agreed upon settlement in a civil case like Yuzu) is irrelevant to my point that the only people getting in big trouble are the ones making a ton of money off of it.
Also it was only "an easy couple million" from Yuzu because they chose to settle the case immediately rather than fighting it. They certainly had the money to fight it if they had $2.4 million to pay in a settlement they agreed to, so I assume they were more across the line into illegal territory than it seemed or they wouldn't have folded so fast.
There actually was a determination made with legal definitions. Check the rest of the comments again. We now have a little precedent. It's a bit hazy though.