tl;dr of the statement: Dolphin project is not in any danger but it won’t be released on steam.
@nekusoul I want to add that the mentioned Wii keys was always controversial. Dolphin core is part of RetroArch and the RetroArch team never included those keys, because they knew someday it would only mean trouble. That is why Dolphin is still in RetroArch available on Steam. That’s why the installation of Dolphin core on RetroArch is a bit more involved, because they do it the safe way. Glad this project will continue to exist.
In the article they actually state they believe it is actually better to have the keys included and not rely on some method of inserting them.
After this situation blew up, we received many requests, and even some demands, to remove all Wii keys from our codebase. We’re disappointed that so many people on YouTube and social media didn’t even consider that maybe the team had done their research and risk analysis before including the keys, and just assumed that now that it was “pointed out to us” we would remove them. However, we do not think that including the Wii Common Key actually matters - the law could easily be interpreted to say that circumventing a Wii disc’s encryption by any means is a violation. As such, it is our interpetation that removing the Wii keys would not change whether the exemption in 17 U.S.C. § 1201(f) applies to us or not.
In fact, we think that offloading decryption tasks onto a potential 3rd party application would make the situation worse for everyone. As such, we believe leaving the keys as they are is the best course of action.
@Creesch Not everyone agrees with this approach. That’s why it is controversial. But fact is, it is a risk to include the keys for anyone hosting the emulator, until it’s crisp and clear decided by court or by Nintendo. Until then we (the community), or the dev team, nor any lawyer knows with certainty if this is allowed or not. And that is the problem; we don’t know.
Fyi, you don’t need to ping someone when replying to them ;)
Anyway, yeah I get that it is controversial or already was. But you said it in isolation while the blog post explicitly goes into that choice which I think is important for context.
I know, but I add the id (its automated anyway) because it makes it a bit easier to follow discussion if others reply too. In example the upvotes will change the order (in my view at least) and I would need to scroll up and down to see who the answer was to. Doesn’t matter too much, but if it does not hurt, then I would continue like this. Or does it somehow spam the notification? Then I would reconsider this approach, as my goal is not to annoy anyone.
As for the legal stuff; there is not much else to say for us about the situation.
i was surprised that this was even attempted, but i guess someone would eventually try to
Flatpak works on Steamdeck.
I don’t know why a few of these emulators require stuff from real hardware in the first place. Bleem didn’t and wasn’t passing around copyrighted material, yet every other PS1 and PS2 emulators I know of require .BIN files dumped from a real unit. This is the main thing behind Dolphin being taken off Steam; they’re distributing a thing that is violating a copyright. Surely there is a way around this Wii key bullshit the same way Bleem was able to operate without an actual playstation BIOS, right?
Did you even read the post? They say that they believe that including the decryption key is not violating anything as its only a small portion of the software.
It was taken off Steam because Valve asked Nintendo how they felt about it - Nintendo obviously didn’t like it, so Valve said Dolphin needs to be removed unless they can get permission from Nintendo.
Them believing it isn’t the same thing as actually being ok.
Surely you know more than the lawyers Dolphin got help from.
The lawyers didn’t say “it is ok”.
we do not think that including the Wii Common Key actually matters - the law could easily be interpreted to say that circumventing a Wii disc’s encryption by any means is a violation
Their conclusion is that it doesn’t matter because it might or might not be ok either way.
Note that they also say:
Dolphin is an independently created computer program that is circumventing Wii disc encryption for interoperability with Wii software. According to this exemption, this does not constitute infringement under 17 U.S.C. § 1201. This exemption even allows distribution of information collected through circumvention, like encryption keys, if it is for software interoperability.
17 U.S.C. § 1201(f) is a significant legal protection for emulation in the US, and it is why Nintendo has yet to legally challenge any emulator with the DMCA anti-circumvention clauses despite the law going into effect 25 years ago. Unless a court rules that our understanding of the law is incorrect, we have every reason to believe that our decryption of Wii game discs is covered by this exemption.
Their conclusion is that they believe that they fit in the exemption clauses of the DMCA and therefore, they are not breaking the DMCA by including a mechanism or the key. They think that the exemption clause might not apply if the key or decryption mechanism was standalone.
