I'm not trying to judge one way or another, and not taking it very seriously either, that was just me trying to make sense of the situation from a moral (not legal) standpoint.
Since I'm not a native english speaker, and taking into account the limitations of written communication over a web forum, my post seems to have given the wrong impression.
- I fully support MAME's position (evolving over the years), realizing it's a delicate balancing act. The project has managed to stay legal and keep the "moral high ground" as well as relative goodwill from industry actors.
- I'm not basing my remarks on any existing legal action (best I can remember is Sony vs. Bleem, and IIRC it created a relatively favorable precedent for emulation under the DMCA). Like in today's situation, game companies can be as furious as they'd like, they would have little to no legal ground to stand on. Litigation would cost more than any impact to their bottom line, AFAIK only Nintendo has a different opinion / strategy.
So once again, I'm not debating legality, DMCA arrived after MAME had already matured quite a bit, and the project has always survived and stayed legal through the efforts of the team and other actors like the EFF.
That said, I'm pretty sure various IP holders would think the project is morally "shitty" as you say, and that industry inside information has been leaked many times to enable MAME progress (I'm not going to try and prove this as this would harm the project).
The "breach of trust" is an individual, personal decision from the employees, or technicians, who believe the interests of the other party to be less important than the "common good" of preservation, and they sometimes sacrifice their own employability or reputation for that goal (think whistleblowing).
With this point of view, I have the exact same analysis of your alternate scenario. You do have the right to keep your software to yourself (but in my completely subjective opinion, your claim to ownership is morally quite weak since the actual creator released it under public domain).
The tech who "pirated" it (piracy vs stealing being an endless debate I never settled for myself, but then again, the software is PD) is jeopardizing your contract with the ISP, their job, but legally, possibly something like "unauthorized entry into a computer system" - IANAL but how ridiculous would this look in court, compared to the "damage" at stake?
Like Shkreli back then with his Wu-Tang album, or art collectors, the hoarding of cultural products for speculation is a very volatile game and in the end I won't be crying much over the loss of potential profit. Comparatively, over the years I've been more conflicted over game companies losing profit to emulation, even though we all want to think it didn't happen. Balance is now being somewhat restored with all the current retro products using the work of MAME and others to fructify their IP (if somewhat badly).
Enjoying discussing this, btw !
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