I enjoyed the parallels at play here. I also remember the like, ripper logos on many a chipset insisting on credit, or even not to steal it and claim credit for the ripping? There was a goofy irony to it, like, how precious we can be with anything we can manufacture a claim of credit to, even if the thing was stolen in the first place. Property of the museum, I guess.
Not that those things weren't of value to the community, and some ripping projects were very intensive, just kind of fascinating that a community built around pirated software and frequently pirated assets were a lot less generous with that freebooting attitude when there was a name to be made and forum rep to protect. Guess assets from like, companies and stuff, and even RM2K's maker itself were seen as distant and far away enough power-wise to not matter in those assessments.