tldr - It's complicated.
I've been thinking about the issue of reproductions and the community and here is my 2 cents.
Reproductions will happen, I think that fact there is only 1 person/group doing Turbo reproductions (is this correct, I have not seen another) is surprising considering how easy it is to press CDs.
I did a google search for "SNES Reproductions" and i got 6 different sites selling repros in the first 7 links. Which are selling the likes of Zelda ROM hacks, F-Zero 2, Star Fox 2, and English translations of Bahamut Lagoon, Final Fantasy 4, 5, & 6, Ys, DragonBall Z, Tenchi Muyou RPG, and many many others.
So to me it looks like if you translate a SNES game a reproduction WILL be made.
I'm not sure but I think this means the odds of legal reprisal are probably low, especially to the translators. Now I'm not saying it is not a valid concern, it is, I just think the odds are low.
So I guess it comes down to how much will it bother you that someone else might take your work and make money from it? This is a tough question and one each person has to answer for themselves.
Now how does this apply to the Turbo community? I mean you can just burn a CDR, right? (I'm not going to talk about chip games since the everdrive is an option there.) Well as shown by some threads on this site that is still too high a bar for some. I have made my fair share of coasters myself.
So someone who wants to play a game that is talked about being great but it is expensive decides to burn a CDR. They find an iso and get some burning software, burn the disc with the default settings, try it, and it does not work. So they find someplace to ask questions, here, some other forum, facebook, wherever, and they are told, "Well you should use software X and brand Y of CDR. Oh, and you need to set your burn settings to Z." They try again it still does not work.
They ask more questions, maybe read a guide. Eventually they get a good burn, it works but not well. It skips, does not always load or has extra long load times. At this point they have spent 2 weeks burned a dozen CDRs and still have not played the game, and now might have to pay to get the laser adjusted to read CDRs better. This means they will be without their system for a while and can't play any of the other games they have either.
At this point spending some $$$ on a pressed bootleg starts looking mighty good since the system plays pressed discs just fine. So when you say to just burn a disc and don't buy bootlegs, what people are comparing is:
A lot at time end effort to get a good burn and possibly sending their system to get the laser to get re-calibrated.
vs
Dropping some $$$ on a bootleg that will be shipped to them in a couple of days.
Yes there are the shelf collectors and flippers out there but I don't think it is productive to spend to much time or energy worrying about them. If no one did anything that could be flipped then nothing would be done. Then I think the community would slowly shrink and die which would be a much greater tragedy.
Wow, that got to be a lot longer than I expected. If you read the whole thing congratulations you get 1 internet cookie* and think you for reading. :-)
*Not a real cookie.
