In a futile effort to stop Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom leaks, Nintendo is also hitting good-faith streamers and emulator users
As The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom leaks continue to spill over the internet, Nintendo is issuing takedowns against emulation tools and streams, many of which have nothing to do with the game's early proliferation.
Last week, Nintendo issued a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) strike taking Lockpick down from GitHub. Lockpick is a tool that allows you to dump decryption keys for games that you already have from your own Switch console. If you wanted to play a Switch game you don't own - in other words, one obtained through piracy - you'd need to find keys somewhere on the darker corners of the internet. You wouldn't be using a tool like Lockpick to get those keys.
Nintendo has just issued multiple DMCA takedown requests to GitHub, including for Lockpick, the tool for dumping keys from YOUR OWN Switch, which is absolutely ludicrous - pirates aren't gonna be sourcing keys from their own consoles!https://t.co/QePiLPTjmmMay 4, 2023
It's worth noting here that emulation - even emulation of current, actively marketed platforms like the Switch - is legal. At least that's the case in the US, based on the legal precedent set when Sony unsuccessfully tried to get the commercial PlayStation emulator Bleem (opens in new tab) taken off the market many years ago. While Switch emulators like Yuzu or Ryujinx have been popular for years, Nintendo has never taken action against them because it has no recourse to do so.
However, under the DMCA, any circumvention of copy protection is considered copyright infringement, regardless of how you end up using the content. To give a metaphor to my fellow 2000s teenagers, imagine you've got a music CD and an MP3 player you want to play those tracks on. Nothing illegal there, right?
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