Nintendo is one of the worst companies that always want to set an “example” about the DMCA. They don’t realize they are fighting a battle they cannot win. Emulators are perfectly legal as long as the emulators don’t contain any code that was in ownership from them.
That being said, I’m betting some of those forks were following the DMCA but Nintendo still shut them down. This is where copyright needs to be reevaluated.
I’m honestly not surprised they haven’t gone after dolphin emulator since those devs contain the encryption keys to play the iso files.
Part of the problem is they apply Japanese copyright law to an international level. Wouod be cool if they hit the wrong target, got sued for trying to apply their laws to the world stage, and got matched each time they appealed until their war chest got drained dry
The DMCA is a US law, so I don’t see how you can say they’re using Japanese law.
In Japan, there is no concept of “Fair Use”, it’s why they don’t have a modding scene and why Japanese devs actively fight against people trying to mod their games. Nintendo uses DMCA on things that are clearly fair use (Parodies like SML, Nintendo themed mods on Garry’s Mod), and people cave solely because they can’t afford to go to court.
It’s also literally a criminal offense in Japan to modify Pokemon data because tournaments in that scene are taken that seriously.
Or to be blunt, Nintendo abuses DMCA (an American Legal system) by applying it to things that would only be illegal in Japan, but are perfectly legal in America as it’s outside of Japan, and since the courts only care about who has more money, no one’s pointed this out as they’d have to do so in court in front of Nintendo’s army of lawyers.
