n1ckn4m3

The problem is that the DMCA is a flawed piece of legislature that hamstrings fair use in a couple of really key ways.

Obligatory IANAL, but my read on the (admittedly very legalese) section 1201 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201) is that it lists a very few exemptions for what is allowable under the DMCA with regard to bypassing copyright protection mechanisms, and archival copies of personal media are not in that list of exemptions. Archival use of computer programs is covered under section 117 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117) and it allows you to make a bit-by-bit copy of your media for archiving it. It doesn’t allow you to bypass copyright protection mechanisms that exist on that content.

So, you’d be protected if you were making a 1:1 exact cloned (and therefore, encrypted) copy of your switch game. Any action to decrypt that switch game (because the encryption is explicitly a copyright protection mechanism) would be a violation, whether it be you doing it manually with a tool, or an emulator doing it on your behalf. If you move that violation outside of the emulator, I would think that based on how the law is written they’d have to find some other way you were violating the DMCA with the emulator specifically in order to target it.

Ultimately, I think the reason it’s illegal is because the DMCA is corpo crap that has been bastardized several times over to reduce consumer rights, but the lawyers seem to wield section 1201 as the silver bullet.

Emulation is legal but emulators that circumvent the DMCA in order to function are not. Yuzu and Ryujinx both decrypt encrypted Switch content using prod keys and title keys in order to execute it. The act of decrypting switch games in real-time using those keys is a violation of DMCA and is illegal (in countries that care about the DMCA anyhow). Having code in your emulator that CAN decrypt the Switch content can be viewed as a DMCA violation as well, even if it also supports unencrypted content.

Based on that, it seems like all we need is for Ryujinx/Yuzu/some other switch emulator that hasn’t yet been sued by Nintendo to be built in a way that it requires decrypted copies of the software and they could then argue that the person who violated the DMCA was the person who released the decryption tool or the teams that release decrypted versions of switch software.

Seems like if the developers remove the need for the emulator to use prod keys or title keys and they can remove the primary DMCA violation that is being weaponized against these emulators.

IANAL, but from what I read regarding Yuzu / the title and prod keys / etc., is Nintendo’s argument is three-fold – the only way to obtain those keys is to use a tool that itself is a violation of the DMCA, use of those keys by an emulator to decrypt Nintendo’s protected content in a method outside of Nintendo’s authorized use is a violation of DMCA even if the keys aren’t provided in the emulator, and there is no legitimate use of those keys except to circumvent controls intended to protect copyright.

Therefore, by their argument, any emulator that can use those keys would effectively be subject to DMCA even if you had to bring your own keys, because unless the emulator only ran homebrew or completely decrypted content and had absolutely no decryption capabilities, you’d still be using the prod keys and title keys to decrypt content in violation of the DMCA in order to execute it. So, the tool that dumps the keys is a DMCA violation and any emulator that uses those keys to decrypt protected content in order to execute it is a DMCA violation, and Nintendo has a strong case that the actual keys themselves are only useful for making unauthorized copies of content that bypass the encryption that exists to prevent it.

It stands to reason that a clean-room developed Switch emulator that required all content it ran to be decrypted prior to being able to run it may be able to exist without Nintendo shitting it into non-existance, since Nintendo couldn’t make any argument that the primary use was a DMCA violation as no encryption would be being bypassed by the emulator. They’d probably then go after whoever made the tool to dump the games, but they’d probably be less successful.

On the other hand, the pragmatist in me says that unless I was 500% sure of my online anonymity, I wouldn’t want to pick a fight with Nintendo – even if I thought I was right. They have enough money to lock someone up in legal battles for a very long time and most independent developers wouldn’t have anywhere near the finances required to bankroll appropriate defense counsel. Can’t say I’d blame people for not wanting to invite that hellscape into their lives.

ADB Explorer is really just a wrapper for adb-pull, you can use that manually on Linux but without the GUI it’s true it’s not quite as seamless.

IDK, have you tried to copy files over USB-C/USB 3.0 to a phone? I similarly thought it was going to be much faster than it actually is, but it’s still mind bogglingly slow using MTP – especially with file creation operations. Want to move 5,000 small text files totalling 20MB? You’ll be there for 8 hours, haha.

In my experience ADB is significantly faster than a cable (even USB-C+3.0), even when ADB is connected wirelessly. I typically get 20MBps-40MBps using ADB regardless of whether I’m writing large files or a bunch of small files, where at best I will (and a cursory google search sems to indicate most people will) see 8MBps-10MBps over the cable for large files, and when I’m copying small files (e.g., game roms for ScummVM or something), I will get maybe 1Mbps at the top end. Results are consistent between computers I use to copy, cables I use to copy, and phones I’ve copied data to.

I’m honestly surprised that in 2024 copying data to a brand new flagship phone using a USB cable is as poor of an experience as it is.

In Android just selectively enable wireless ADB debugging and then use ADB Explorer. Easier than plugging the phone in, wireless, and allows access to all folders on the device (including /Android/data/* which is blocked from being accessed using on-device file explorers). Turn it off when you’re done. Boom, wireless data transfer to and from an Android device at way faster than cabled SMB speeds.