@ #1
Interesting about this legal angle as with older (and newer for that matter) games still have contracts between parties, licensing agreements, and a lot of other legal hurdle to shore up before release. In some cases companies have gone defunct, in others employees and what not aren't with the company anymore.
*Truth be told, I hope with this retro game revival going on the newer contracts and legalese gets better and more forward thinking than in the past.
@2
To me, this one gets kind of murky. I can't go all in on the "stealing" claim but I would say depending on the content on a case by case basis their might be something to a copyright claim. I know there is a lot going down with youtubers and music reactions with copyright claims from artist's labels.
@3
So you hack an IP that you don't own to put out content off the assets inside the game you didn't develop yourself. Come now. To the core point of lazy devs doing poor ports I can agree, but then again, if you want to work on those kind of projects get into the gaming industry.
@4
Now, I am going to start this argument this way: Do you think you pay too much for items? Would you like to pay less? Well, the economics of manufacturing, supply, and demand start to work on that price you pay. If you item you desire price goes up because they use more expensive parts, higher labor costs, higher tariffs to get it where it needs to go are you OK with paying that premium? And as an aside to that train of thought, a company is in business to make money, if they don't hit the percentages they need to on the items they can't sell its no longer worth it to them to be in business. To the second part of this, the human rights side of things, that I can agree with. People should not work in unfair working conditions and people should get paid a fair wage for their work. I believe more exposure of the unhealthy environments for works needs to get exposes and the perpetrators do need to be held accountable for operating as such.
* I would argue that the working condition practice is worse for apparel companies, but with how cheap some of these electronic devices are and the need to cut manufacturing costs....
* I would also go down the road of retail pricing and markups. That is a large that is a large gray scale there.
* There are some geo-political forces at work too. Just think about Hong Kong vs. China in the last year and how the NBA played that. Think about how their biggest backer right now, Nike (and not to single Nike out because there are others), still operates those "sweatshops" in China to keep those costs down. And when bringing up Nike's operating practices the people getting paid by Nike as endorsers and corporate partners kept mum on the situation so they didn't alienate their money pipeline brought on by how they can operate in the Chinese market.
For the record, I am not one to gloss over corporate corruption and unjust practices, but I do think some people don't fully understand all of the economic and political forces at work and to find the truth and possibly the best medium of existence puts a lot of actions where its best in between. In other words you can't say I'm not paying more than $__ for a product but then get upset when prices rise for using more expensive labor, materials, ect...