Yeeeah, Nintendo sucks.

And it sucks that, despite this not killing the distribution of Yuzu or Ryujinx forks it does make them less safe and reliable for users, as well as hindering ongoing development.

Ultimately, though, Nintendo is acting within their rights. Which is not an endorsement, it's proof that modern copyright frameworks are broken and unfit for purpose in an online world. We need a refoundation of IP. Not to make everything freely accessible, necessarily, but to make it make sense online instead of having to rely on voluntary non-enforcement. I don't care if it's Youtube or emulation development, you should know if your project is legal and safe before you have lawyers showing up at your door with offers you can't refuse.

They aren’t working within any rights. Emulator production is a legal right that Nintendo neither has the ability to bestow or deny. It’s the founding legal rationale behind virtualization as a technology. This is the equivalent of someone holding a gun to your head and telling you to shut up - the forced relinquishing of your rights through threat of force, and it’s a little frightening to watch people suggest otherwise.

They are absolutely within their rights to approach the developers of Ryujinx and threaten to sue them. Based on how things have worked so far they'd lose, and I agreee with you that the inequality in that interaction is terrible and should be addressed.

On the Yuzu scenario it's more relevant, because of the specific proprietary elements found in the emulator.

And then there's Nintendo targeting emulation-based handhelds and streamers for featuring emulated footage of their first party games on Youtube videos, which falls directly under the mess that is copyright enforcement under Youtube and other social platforms.

In all of those cases, a clearer, more rules-based organization of IP that explicitly covers these scenarios would have helped people defend against Nintendo's overreach, or at least have a clearer picture of what they can do about it. We can't go on forever relying on custom, subjective judicial interpretation and non-enforcement. We're way overdue on a rules-based agreement of what can and can't be done with media online.

The worst part is... we kinda know. There is a custom-based baseline for it we've slowly acquired over time. It's just not properly codified, it exists in EULAs and unspoken, unenforceable practices. It's an amazing gap in what is a ridiculously massive cultural and economic segment. It's crazy that we're running on "do you feel lucky?" when it comes to deciding if a corporation claiming you can't do a thing on the Internet that involves media. We need to know what we're allowed to do so we can say "no" when predatory corporations like Nintendo show up to enforce rights they don't have or shouldn't have.

You’re incorrect. Creating an emulator is not illegal. Nintendo has the legal right to threaten to sue someone, but if you are threatening to sue for something that is not a crime, and you know that, and you do it anyway in the hopes of bankrupting them before the case settles, that’s not a legal proceeding, it’s extortion. I can threaten to sue you for cooking pancakes in your house, and while it’s technically ALLOWED for me to do that, it’s clearly and obviously not a case I would win, but if the threat of making your life hell is prominent enough, you might get forced into backing down, which is exactly what’s happening here.

They would absolutely NOT lose in court for creating an emulator. I cannot stress enough exactly how legal emulation is. It’s as legal as making your pancakes. The only way they would lose in court is if there is some EXTRA thing they’ve done that we don’t know about. If all they’ve done is create and distribute Ryujinx, there is absolutely NO way they would win a case in the US.

He never said that creating an emulator was illegal. He said that Nintendo is legally in the clear to do what they did. In Yuzu’s case, Nintendo sued and both parties settled, and they reached an “agreement” with Ryujinx to take down its emulator.

As far as I’m aware, the Yuzu case isn’t settled law as it calls into question whether the use of dumped keys to “bypass” copy protections is legal under the DMCA. This question isn’t about emulation, even if it’s a step required for emulation to be possible.

Since there are many issues with copyright law right now, corporations have a free pass to bully people in a multitude of ways, and the Yuzu lawsuit and Ryujinx “agreement” are just new ways of doing the same thing. All OP is saying is that lawmakers need to re-create copyright and IP laws to make them more fair and make sense so that content creators and/or homebrew devs and/or fangame creators and/or emulator devs can do their work with a far less shaky legal foundation.

And Elon Musk was “legally in the clear” to sue a trade group into non-existence over the idea that companies deciding to boycott his site independently was collusion.

I am objecting loudly and powerfully to “legally in the clear” being equated with “acceptable” or “within the spirit of the law.”

Make no mistake. As far as we know, this is only legally in the clear because the developers are unable to fight it. That does NOT make Nintendo’s action correct. By LAW the developers are in the right, they simply cannot afford to defend themselves. If your claim is that it is technically legal to threaten to sue anybody you want, you are correct and also terrifyingly shortsighted. Inability of someone to defend their rights for financial reasons is an miscarriage of justice. Given the options of smugly pointing out the technical situation or ranting about the injustice, I’ll take the latter.

Where did I say “oh well, nothing we can do?” You’re literally tying random arguments to my name.

Nobody here made the argument that what is legal is exactly what is fair. Nobody here made the argument that Nintendo being overly litigious is a good thing. The only argument made is that copyright law is flawed because companies abuse it and that lawmakers need to fix it.