Hacking Question Is SXOS really illegal?

[LeyendaV]

I was just on a discord asking for some homebrew help a minute ago and I mentioned I was on sxos. Immediately I got botted saying that SXOS was illegal because "It bundles various keys and copyrighted data that cannot be legally shared". I didn't know if this was fully true because SXOS was closed source so I asked how that was discovered and I was told "being closed source is another reason it's bad and not good. Anyway I won't take this any farther because it's not allowed" even though I didn't find that rule in rules. I remember having a similar situation happened in a now dead discord when I got banned instantly by a certain homebrew developer. It always seemed odd to me.

TL;DR: is it really confirmed that SXOS distributes copyrighted keys? If so how was this discovered since the program is close-sourced?

Yes, every single product (software and hardware) so far by Team Xecuter is illegal. And yes, they are distributing copyrighted stuff.

 

[smf]

SX OS bases their whole operation on the fact that they market their product to allow people to back up and play their own game dumps. In the majority of countries worldwide, their arent laws against that.

SX OS is certainly illegal in US and UK, the same as DS flash cartswere.

One could provide an arguement that simply providing a download link to an emulator is breaching the DMCA

An emulator for what? If we say that DeCSS emulates a DVD player, then that is illegal in the US. The case that most people go back to for emulation being legal is Sony v Connectix, but that was before DMCA & Connectix didn't need to bypass any DRM.

Nintendo are a bit slow off the mark with SX OS, they used to have customs officers seizing DS flash carts and sued many sellers (who tried the homebrew angle and failed). I suspect they realized that no matter how much money they spent on shutting them down, it made little difference to the amount of flashcarts on sale.

It's probably more effective for them to let people spend money on SX OS and then invest in finding ways to ban them or mess with them in other ways. That way people can end up regretting buying SX OS and won't tell their friends how great it is.

 

[Technicmaster0]

Its always been a tradition to hate the paid CFW guys. Its in the scenes blood. Theres no getting around it lol Why would anyone want to be in a place that bans them for their choices anyways? Most servers that are anti SXOS usually have it in their rules, or they atleast have something about no piracy talk. SXOS is built for piracy. You cant deny that. You all know what you are buying.

To anyone saying that the community is still toxic for hating and shunning sxos users... thats the nintendo scene for you. There is always somethat is hated... The communitys will always have their toxic sides. If you hate it, you might wanna try just ignoring it or blocking everyone.

It's only like that since the late gateway days. Back in the ds time paying for a flashcard was completely normal

 

[smf]

Most servers that are anti SXOS usually have it in their rules, or they atleast have something about no piracy talk. SXOS is built for piracy.

It's more than that though, on gbatemp there are many rabid anti sxos users and any thread about sxos that is positive is derailed with their troll posts & yet there doesn't seem to be the same sentiment towards the threads for piracy using atmosphere.

 

[RednaxelaNnamtra]

I think the comparison of cfw in general to nds flashcards doesn't fully match.
Flashcards normally allowed all kinds of nds files to run out of the box, homebrew and game dumps, while atmosphere for example doesn't allow this out of the box.
Also most flashcards made for the dsi and later included parts of nds game headers, an thus copyrighted code, leading to them being illegal in more countries.
The legal aspect of cfws also greatly deepends on the country you are living in, in a small part its illegal, in many its a gray area, and in some its fully legal.

But the way sxos inlcudes copyrighted binaries and keys, while also allowing to run pirated games out of the box, certainly pushes it much more to the illegal side in many country's.
On the other side, atmosoheres way of deriving the keys from the device itself, while also keeping all signature checks, an thus the copy protection intact, surely lets it lean more towards the legal side in many countries.

 

[Basketto]

SX OS is certainly illegal in US and UK, the same as DS flash cartswere.



An emulator for what? If we say that DeCSS emulates a DVD player, then that is illegal in the US. The case that most people go back to for emulation being legal is Sony v Connectix, but that was before DMCA & Connectix didn't need to bypass any DRM.

Nintendo are a bit slow off the mark with SX OS, they used to have customs officers seizing DS flash carts and sued many sellers (who tried the homebrew angle and failed). I suspect they realized that no matter how much money they spent on shutting them down, it made little difference to the amount of flashcarts on sale.

It's probably more effective for them to let people spend money on SX OS and then invest in finding ways to ban them or mess with them in other ways. That way people can end up regretting buying SX OS and won't tell their friends how great it is.

Emulators in general are legal to download. Just about every single core in retroarch has a standalone emulator which they are based on, all are legal to download.
To play devils advocate, lets say YUZU though. Downloading YUZU is not illegal, it can only play dumps of switch games. Most people that download it in the US are without a doubt using it for piracy.
Yet you can argue its intended purpose is to play legally owned backups of games, that youve personally created.
If YUZU can be deemed legal, how can you argue SX OS is illegal? SX OS provides other services aswell for which no DMCA case can be made.

Basically if you want to say SX OS is illegal you have to argue that its intended purpose is to circumvent copyright protection. SX OS will argue that it isnt, and because you can use game backups legally considering you own them, their lies the flaw.
You cannot state as a fact what SX OS’s intended purpose is, so you cannot claim gospel truth that their OS breaks the law. It is really that simple.
Certainly downloading YUZU, gives a much easier means of piracy, with a much more direct path, and no other option than to play switch backups.
Yet that is considered legal.
Like I said find me 1 article that specifically says
“SX OS is illegal”, even from a shoddy website I honestly dont care. When you do, you will have a much more solid case. Banning their products in certain countries is not the same thing. Nor is shutting down a few ISPs when 90% of the attempts in other countries failed. Nintendo certainly care, the problem is the laws are too vague.
You want to claim they are illegal, then provide 100% proof of which law they are breaking. Just saying it means very little. If a case can be made for YUZU, it certainly isnt the DMCA.

 

[smf]

Downloading YUZU is not illegal,

Who says? A lot of the laws cover distributing, not receiving. So if it is legal, who has said providing yuzu is legal?

If Yuzu can decrypt switch games (whether you own the game or not) then that would sound very much like DeCSS decrypting DVD movies to play.

 

[Basketto]

Who says?

To save valuable time, i will say this to avoid multiple links.
Go to google and type “are emulators legal” look at literally the very first thing that pops up. If you want me to find another 10 links i can but i really cbfd.

 

[hartleyshc]

Emulators in general are legal to download. Just about every single core in retroarch has a standalone emulator which they are based on, all are legal to download.
To play devils advocate, lets say YUZU though. Downloading YUZU is not illegal, it can only play dumps of switch games. Most people that download it in the US are without a doubt using it for piracy.
Yet you can argue its intended purpose is to play legally owned backups of games, that youve personally created.
If YUZU can be deemed legal, how can you argue SX OS is illegal? SX OS provides other services aswell for which no DMCA case can be made.

Basically if you want to say SX OS is illegal you have to argue that its intended purpose is to circumvent copyright protection. SX OS will argue that it isnt, and because you can use game backups legally considering you own them, their lies the flaw.
You cannot state as a fact what SX OS’s intended purpose is, so you cannot claim that their OS breaks the law.
Certainly downloading YUZU, gives a much easier means of piracy, with a much more direct path, and no other option than to play switch backups.
Yet that is considered legal.
Like I said find me 1 article that specifically says
“SX OS is illegal”, even from a shoddy website I honestly dont care. When you do, you will have a solid case. Banning their products in certain countries is not the same thing. Nor is shutting down a few ISPs when 90% of the attempts in other countries failed. Nintendo certainly care lol, the problem is the laws are too vague.
You want to say they are illegal provide 100% proof of which law they are breaking. Just saying it means nothing. If a case can be made for emulators it certainly isnt the DMCA.

YUZU is legal because the copyrighted bits are separate, and they even tell you in the set up guide how to legally extract those bits from your own switch console.

SX OS includes the copyrighted code of Nintendo. (Supposedly, I haven't personally verified myself). This is what makes it "illegal". Supposedly using GPL code from Atmosphere, without following the GPL license. And from supposedly using Nintendo code/encryption keys.

Emulators are legal because they have totally reverse engineered everything to work as it does. This has been proven over and over to be legal, at least in the United States. It's why the bios isn't legally included in certain emulators. It's why the big Nintendo data leaks don't really help emulator developers besides the fact they can verify their work. They can't use any of it because even though it's been leaked, it's still the intellectual property of Nintendo.

Now are the cops going to come to your house and take away your switch? No. But for certain sites and it discussion groups it *could* put them in legal trouble that they just don't want to deal with.

Personally I have no moral objection to SX OS. I would prefer the open source options, and when they become available for my system, I'll use them. But I'm not going to go all Stallman on the issue and I'm going to use what's available to me right now.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk

 

[smf]

To save valuable time, i will say this to avoid multiple links.
Go to google and type “are emulators legal” look at literally the very first thing that pops up.

That is like saying "are cars legal?" yes, cars are legal. However it's possible to have a car that has been modified so it's not legal, or import a car from another country where it is legal but your country has stronger emissions standards and so would be illegal.

emulation in itself is legal, unless it violates other laws like DMCA or violates patents etc. It would depend on exactly what you are emulating.

You don't seem to have kept up with the last 20 years of developments. You might want to keep reading past the first result.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

YUZU is legal because the copyrighted bits are separate, and they even tell you in the set up guide how to legally extract those bits from your own switch console.

The keys aren't copyrightable, but providing them or documentating on how to extract the keys and decrypting content violates the DMCA. They are lucky that Nintendo haven't sued.

 

[Basketto]

YUZU is legal because the copyrighted bits are separate, and they even tell you in the set up guide how to legally extract those bits from your own switch console.

SX OS includes the copyrighted code of Nintendo. (Supposedly, I haven't personally verified myself). This is what makes it "illegal". Supposedly using GPL code from Atmosphere, without following the GPL license. And from supposedly using Nintendo code/encryption keys.

Emulators are legal because they have totally reverse engineered everything to work as it does. This has been proven over and over to be legal, at least in the United States. It's why the bios isn't legally included in certain emulators. It's why the big Nintendo data leaks don't really help emulator developers besides the fact they can verify their work. They can't use any of it because even though it's been leaked, it's still the intellectual property of Nintendo.

Now are the cops going to come to your house and take away your switch? No. But for certain sites and it discussion groups it *could* put them in legal trouble that they just don't want to deal with.

Personally I have no moral objection to SX OS. I would prefer the open source options, and when they become available for my system, I'll use them. But I'm not going to go all Stallman on the issue and I'm going to use what's available to me right now.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk

If they used enough coding then that may be considered copyright. The fact nintendo isn’t open source though, means that unless someone has leaked there code that works for nintendo, I find it hard to believe there would be enough to claim copyright.
I can assure you though that if that was the case, nintendo would already have launched a lawsuit.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

That is like saying "are cars legal?" yes, cars are legal. However it's possible to have a car that has been modified so it's not legal, or import a car from another country where it is legal but your country has stronger emissions standards and so would be illegal.

emulation in itself is legal, unless it violates other laws like DMCA or violates patents etc. It would depend on exactly what you are emulating.

You don't seem to have kept up with the last 20 years of developments. You might want to keep reading past the first result.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



The keys aren't copyrightable, but providing them or documentating on how to extract the keys and decrypting content violates the DMCA. They are lucky that Nintendo haven't sued.

Do you want me specifically to provide you links saying YUZU is legal rofl? Is that where this is going . It really wont be hard.
You dont need to read past the part that mentions uploading your own emulator, and downloading them from the source.
Its very similar to uploading SX OS to an ISP and providing a download link.
We dont need to get into cars .

 

[smf]

Do you want me specifically to provide you links saying YUZU is legal rofl? Is that where this is going . It really wont be hard.

Where it's going is you're going to post a link to someone clueless and claims that yuzu is legal because they want it to be.

Unless you are posting a link to a court decision then don't bother.

 

[Basketto]

Where it's going is you're going to post a link to someone clueless and claims that yuzu is legal because they want it to be.

Unless you are posting a link to a court decision then don't bother. The situation is so close to DeCSS that they would need to reverse that decision to make Yuzu legal.

ok bud if you want to believe yuzu emulator is illegal we will need to agree to disagree. I can see I am not going to convince you.
I can only show you the door . If you dont want to walk through it, then theres not much I can do.

 

[smf]

I can only show you the door . If you dont want to walk through it, then theres not much I can do.

Why would I go through the wrong door, just because you said so?

If you google DeCSS and read up on that and explain how it's different then that would be a start.

 

[RednaxelaNnamtra]

The keys aren't copyrightable, but providing them or documentating on how to extract the keys and decrypting content violates the DMCA. They are lucky that Nintendo haven't sued.

Its actually not that clear if encryption keys are legal or not, just search for the term illegal numbers.
Also SXOS doesn't just contain encryption keys, they also contain binaries from nintendo and uncredited/unshared gpl code, both are clear copy right infringements.
And getting the keys out of the hardware or decryptings thing on the hardware is also something thats not that clearly black or white and also highly depends on the counry you are in and the interspretation of the laws.

 

[smf]

Its actually not that clear if encryption keys are legal or not, just search for the term illegal numbers.

Right, in themselves you can't copyright a key. If you take an image with a camera and the jpg happens to contain the encryption key then that doesn't violate copyright. However telling someone to download a jpeg and extract the key from a specific offset and using it to avoid DRM would be illegal.

Also SXOS doesn't just contain encryption keys, they also contain binaries from nintendo and uncredited/unshared gpl code, both are clear copy right infringements.

Sure and that is why it is rather pointless complaining about SX OS violating GPL. If anything I would have thought the authors of the GPL code would want as much distance from TX as possible.

And getting the keys out of the hardware or decryptings thing on the hardware is also something thats not that clearly black or white and also highly depends on the counry you are in and the interspretation of the laws.

The country is important, but all WIPO countries (https://www.wipo.int/members/en/) are supposed to be making it illegal https://www.wipo.int/copyright/en/activities/internet_treaties.html.

"it requires countries to provide adequate legal protection and effective remedies against the circumvention of technological measures (such as encryption) used by rightholders to protect their rights."

It could easily be argued that fusee gelee & sept circumvents a technological measure that protects rights.

Most companies are only going after commercial operations, because free projects can easily just go underground. If you're selling something then you have a much larger attack surface.

 

[RednaxelaNnamtra]

Sure and that is why it is rather pointless complaining about SX OS violating GPL. If anything I would have thought the authors of the GPL code would want as much distance from TX as possible.

Keep in mind here, that the main goal of gpl is more a user right thing, and less a creator protection thing. While I still used SXOS for playing online with xcis, I would have really preffered to see what they use, and what I executed on my switch, and even tried to request the gpl code parts, but got ignored, after the support forwareded my request.

The country is important, but all WIPO countries (https://www.wipo.int/members/en/) are supposed to be making it illegal https://www.wipo.int/copyright/en/activities/internet_treaties.html.

"it requires countries to provide adequate legal protection and effective remedies against the circumvention of technological measures (such as encryption) used by rightholders to protect their rights."

It could easily be argued that fusee gelee & sept circumvents a technological measure that protects rights.

Most companies are only going after commercial operations, because free projects can easily just go underground. If you're selling something then you have a much larger attack surface.

That why I also included the interpretation, because dependening on it, decrypting things on the device might not be a circumvention of copyprotection, since the device itself is was always able to read it.

Also atleast in the summery of the wipo page it talked about a ballance between the interests of the owner and the general public, so contries are able to add exeptions, for example to allow private copies.

 

[Basketto]

QUOTE="RednaxelaNnamtra, post: 9160704, member: 291208"]Keep in mind here, that the main goal of gpl is more a user right thing, and less a creator protection thing. While I still used SXOS for playing online with xcis, I would have really preffered to see what they use, and what I executed on my switch, and even tried to request the gpl code parts, but got ignored, after the support forwareded my request.


That why I also included the interpretation, because dependening on it, decrypting things on the device might not be a circumvention of copyprotection, since the device itself is was always able to read it.

Also atleast in the summery of the wipo page it talked about a ballance between the interests of the owner and the general public, so contries are able to add exeptions, for example to allow private copies.[/QUOTE]

In decrypting the switch was not legal, I imagine sciresM would not be at large, and nintendo would never have created a bounty progam to find flaws in the switch. No?
*Apologies for the reply layout, getting a bit of lag on my phone.

 

[smf]

That why I also included the interpretation, because dependening on it, decrypting things on the device might not be a circumvention of copyprotection, since the device itself is was always able to read it.

That isn't true for Yuzu. I don't think the switch being able to decrypt would be relevant either, you're still circumventing signature/licensing checks.

I would like to see a court decision on fusee gelee & sept. Software that is loaded into ram and fetched into the CPU would appear to be covered under DMCA definition of ram copying and patching it at runtime would create an unauthorized derived work which Nintendo have an exclusive right to authorizing copying.

https://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2008/08/20/ram-copying-an-issue-of-more-than-transitory-duration/#:~:text=Since permanence is not required,providing a specific exemption for "

In decrypting the switch was not legal, I imagine sciresM would not be at large, and nintendo would never have created a bounty progam to find flaws in the switch. No?

You can imagine all you want. Nintendo may choose to look the other way without it becoming legal. Police do the same with their informants.

Bounty programs are clever, you have all the details of the person so you can sue them afterwards if they go too far towards illegal behavior.

Black/white thinking is not doing you any favors.

It's unlikely SciresM would get locked up in any case, but you must understand the difference between civil and criminal liabilities right? In a criminal case you need to be beyond reasonable doubt, a civil case only requires >50%. I think Nintendo's rights outweigh SciresM right's & US courts have repeatedly said that they believe modifying consoles (and modifying memory using fusee gelee would seem to count) is not legal.

 

[Basketto]

That isn't true for Yuzu. I don't think the switch being able to decrypt would be relevant either, you're still circumventing signature/licensing checks.

I would like to see a court decision on fusee gelee & sept. Software that is loaded into ram and fetched into the CPU would appear to be covered under DMCA definition of ram copying and patching it at runtime would create an unauthorized derived work which Nintendo have an exclusive right to authorizing copying.

https://newmedialaw.proskauer.com/2008/08/20/ram-copying-an-issue-of-more-than-transitory-duration/#:~:text=Since permanence is not required,providing a specific exemption for "



You can imagine all you want. Nintendo may choose to look the other way without it becoming legal. Police do the same with their informants.

Bounty programs are clever, you have all the details of the person so you can sue them afterwards if they go too far towards illegal behavior.

Black/white thinking is not doing you any favors.

It's unlikely SciresM would get locked up in any case, but you must understand the difference between civil and criminal liabilities right? In a criminal case you need to be beyond reasonable doubt, a civil case only requires >50%. I think Nintendo's rights outweigh SciresM right's & US courts have repeatedly said that they believe modifying consoles (and modifying memory using fusee gelee would seem to count) is not legal.

You mentioned black & white thinking isn’t doing me any favours? Im the one thats been claiming the entire time the whole situation isn’t black and white . Lols. If their was a black and white scenario, a cease and desist would be enough from nintendo, court proceedings wouldnt need to occur.
Id find it more hard to believe though that a multi-billion dollar company would encourage people to commit criminal activities, which then would leave them open to a lawsuit themselves. Given the people, lawyers & resources they have working for them it would be particularly odd.