In the EU, reverse engineering is allowed by law if the reason for doing so is interoperability by the one who owns a license to the product in question.

"The authorisation of the rightholder shall not be required where reproduction of the code and translation of its form within the meaning of points (a) and (b) of Article 4(1) are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met:

(a) those acts are performed by the licensee or by another person having a right to use a copy of a program, or on their behalf by a person authorised to do so;

(b) the information necessary to achieve interoperability has not previously been readily available to the persons referred to in point (a); and

(c) those acts are confined to the parts of the original program which are necessary in order to achieve interoperability."

More information: https://www.vidstromlabs.com/blog/the-legal-boundaries-of-re...

Same with ripping DVDs/Blu-rays, it's illegal to rip them anyway, so might as well just download them.

Especially now that they're suing emulator developers, it's almost unethical to buy Switch games anymore.

Now there should be some ground rule. When you buy something, it's supposed to be yours, and you should be allowed to do what you want with it, especially studying it and sharing the results of your study. Any rule that allows some big corporation to retain power over something that's supposed to be yours is serious overreach and should be shut down.

Now Nintendo does have a big problem here: without the exclusivity of their form factor (which is arguably difficult to improve upon[1]), all they have left is the exclusivity of their game library.

[1]: https://loup-vaillant.fr/articles/ideal-computer

Wrong :)

You have a right to a private copy, but you don't have a right to circumvent copy protections to get that private copy.

So ripping a DVD is still illegal, despite the tax.

We're getting screwed :)

Since when? Do you remember which law? I don't recall anything like the DMCA being ported to French law.

> So ripping a DVD is still illegal, despite the tax.

I'm pretty sure it used to be legal.

Only if it doesn't have the CSS thing, which most commercial ones have.

Even though it's a silly protection, it still counts as a "protection" legally.

It's like that in Italy so I suppose it's the same in france https://www.gianluigibonanomi.com/diritto-copiare/

TL;DR: it's more complicated than I thought. First, the law was introduced in 2006, so before it, circumventing DRM and publishing how to do it was not a crime. (Of course, publishing copyrighted works with no proper authorisation was already a crime, regardless of DRM.)

Then for a brief time, circumventing DRM was outlawed. But fear of foreign monopolies (most notably Microsoft) and free software lobbying eventually had those articles amended, effectively exempting research and free software from any sanction. The exact limits of the current law are still fuzzy, but it seems pretty clear that using VLC to make copy of a DVD I own is 100% legal in France.

I think I still have most of the key memorized from back then.

So you can dump the cartridges and digital games you own, and the keys to run them.

Cause we all like Github.