this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2024
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Emulation
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Since when is it illegal to dump games? I understand distributing them being illegal but this is my own hardware, if I wanna dump BotW to my Deck I'm gonna dump it
In the USA if you are circumventing some digital lock (encryption) in order to create the backup, it is illegal. The DMCA fucked us out of our rights to an archival copy.
If anyone knows from a more technical perspective - where exactly would the DRM breaking come into play?
I think I understand correctly that to take (for example) a Switch cartridge and pull out the game on it in a way that it could be playable on an emulator involves breaking DRM somehow.
But if that requires cracking or decrypting, shouldn't it also be possible to pull a copy of the protected software off the cartridge? And have an actual unmodified backup of the software that couldn't be played in an emulator without modification, but could still be read by the original hardware?
From what I understand the dmca backup issue only comes into play when it involves emulation, yeah, because you either need to reproduce the decryption mechanism or bypass it, and both could be argued to be “circumvention of encryption” which comes into play on the DMCA stuff.