[AmericanChopper]

The main subject of the article seems to have come to an amicable agreement with Nintendo, but for all of the “copyright infringement enabling tools” that do get forcibly taken down, the way to avoid that just seems so obvious to me. The emulators, or DRM bypassing tools, or whatever, all seem to get tripped up by the marketing. Releasing emulators or DRM cracks is protected speech and not a copyright violation, but releasing the same tool and saying “this is a tool for enabling copyright violation, here’s how you use it to commit copyright violations” just makes you a party to the subsequent copyright violations that it might be used for. I’m paraphrasing, but that’s basically how a lot of them get taken down. Just releasing your tools without all the legally dubious explanation seems to be such an obvious risk avoidance strategy.

[mkoryak]

Did he though? What if the kind offer he got was along the lines of "please delete all of your stuff tomorrow and we won't destroy your life? Thanks".

It doesn't say what the agreement was, but I can tell you from experience that the prospect of being legally steamrolled is not pleasant.

[14]

or simply going dark and releasing updates along with a public key to verify authenticity of the author making the contributions as a torrent and not on any governed site that can receive take down notices.

[deafpolygon]

Do not forget that the Switch ROMs have encryption on them, and Ryujinx seemed to have some way of decoding them.

[AmericanChopper]

And publishing software that decodes encrypted Switch ROMs is protected speech and not a copyright violation. Releasing it accompanied by a statement that said something to the effect of "here's some software that decodes encrypted Switch ROMs which you can use to pirate Switch games" makes you a party to the copyright violation. Just like I'm legally allowed to provide you with a hammer, but if I accompany that with the statement "here's something you can use to murder your neighbour" all of a sudden I'm a party to a crime.

[deafpolygon]

That's not entirely correct.

DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent technological protection measures that control access to copyrighted works. Bypassing these measures can be considered a violation.

Court cases have often ruled against the First Amendment protections, ruling that publishing software to bypass encrypted is not encrypted. This is like handing someone a gun, and then watching them commit a crime. You're suddenly a party to it, even if you never encouraged or endorsed the illegal act.

Cases such as Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Corley and MDY Industries, LLC v. Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. have upheld the enforcement of the DMCA in situations where software was designed to circumvent encryption or other digital rights management technologies. These cases indicate that creating and distributing decryption tools for copyrighted materials (such as Switch ROMs) would likely not be protected speech.

So, there is precedence.

[hackernudes]

Also note that the decryption keys are not built-in. Not like they made it hard to work, but I think it's an important distinction.