If evil is more expensive, it will be harder for evil doers to get as much of it done.

So yeah, I say "I'm not sure" because I don't know the personal motives of the individual outspoken people. It really depends on what they thought it was going to accomplish, and why they wanted those things to happen.

Thwarting ICE? Incredibly unlikely and impractical . Slowing ICE down? Probably.

The individual outspoken developer who started it seemed reasonably clear: he didn't want helping ICE through his code to be on his conscience.

I completely agree.

It is impossible to control the actions of other people. What they will or will not do should play little role in your own moral determinations. At the end of the day, anything done in business is only done for money. If you do something which you believe to be immoral, being able to say "but I got paid" will not help. If others step in and do it instead, they bear the moral consequence rather than you.

Other people can choose to enable evil: it's their moral failure.