>most people aren’t ripping their own carts, they’re downloading them from somewhere and probably never bought the original game

I’ve never seen a single ROM homebrew or console hacking community that supports piracy. If users are savvy enough to be able to work with ROMs then they likely know how to rip game carts. Piracy draws legal action from big companies that wish to remove rights. As the niche grows ever smaller, behaving well becomes ever more existentially important.