To paraphrase that argument ...
Dear Tobias, I'm more than happy to buy the TV that you stole from the guy 2 streets over, it was such a good price and I don't know him. But damn you to hell for stealing my neighbor's TV, I would never, ever buy that from you, you dirty thief!
That's a fallacious analogy. I'm not saying that piracy is not illegal, but that's just straw-man bullshit.
What this whole argument comes down to is really simple. There's what we want (and what we will do to get it) versus what we can legitimately have.
Do you guys not see the similarities between these situations?
Situation A: I want to play Dungeon Explorer II. I don't have $400 (or don't want to spend it) so I skirt the law and buy a bootleg for $40.
Situation B: You guys want to play Xak III, but you don't know how to read Japanese (and don't want to spend the time to learn.) So you download a patch that someone made that makes unauthorized changes to someone else's intellectual property so that it is now in a form that you can digest. Nevermind the fact that probably 95%+ of the people using said patch are patching an ISO of the game that they downloaded, since they don't actually own the game.
Both situations are showing a lack of respect to the IP owners. You want to play Xak III? Petition the IP owners to get it translated and released here, on the Virtual Console or something. Or take your translation patch to them and show them that the work has already been done. They say no? Tough shit, that doesn't give you the right to do it yourself. I want to play Dungeon Explorer II? I can petition Hudson to release the game on the US Virtual Console. They say no? Tough shit, that doesn't give me the right to pirate the game, or buy it from a bootlegger.
Edit: I just read SamIAm's response, and am glad to see what he said. The only thing I would say to that is that I didn't buy Tobias' sets because I needed pretty shelf shit, but because I want to play PRESSED copies of the games. I would have been fine with disc-only presses at a fraction of the price. I would also be more than fine with buying official presses directly from Hudson. If Tobias can do it, then so can Hudson, on a mail order-only basis. Movie and television studios have done the same thing, releasing DVD sets of low-demand movies and TV shows. The game companies choose not to do it.
And just to make myself absolutely clear, I have NO PROBLEM with people making translation patches. I think it's f*cking awesome that people do it. But please don't act like it's a completely legitimate activity while bootlegging isn't. You can't have it both ways, and say that "game company X doesn't care what we do to this old game" and then also say "you are stealing from game company X by pirating or bootlegging that game."
