shalokshalom The main uses of emulators are:
Preservation (most hardware becomes rare)
It is the job of the developers that created or acquired a game to re-release it.
Education (how does the OS work, the chips, and so on)
Again, if that's what you want to do with it, you are probably going to compile the software from source anyway, no package needed.
Playing the game on high resolution
Especially the last part is important for me. You can upscale games from the last decade to 4K, and add custom texture packs and mods that the community provides.
The developers of the most advanced PlayStation 1 and Saturn emulator (also commonly shipped by Linux distro's) refuse to implement this kind of functionality. On principle, apparently; they didn't want the capabilities of old consoles to be misrepresented in YouTube videos. Weird priorities to set, but it shows that enhanced graphics are not the purpose of these emulators, it's just a bonus if they offer it.
The usage, providence, and even mention of pirated games lead on #dolphin-emu and every other legitimate platform that deals with emulation, instantly and constantly to a ban.
Official communication channels have to do that in order to stay in the legal clear. Unofficial communication channels will mock you a lot if you ask how to use such an emulator legitimately (I found several of these threads and barely anything helpful when I dug into the subject), because no one actually expects you to do that.
I also support demm's comment, that basically everything can be used abusively, and the degree to which Dolphin is used for piracy is unknown.
One tool, that is particularly similar to that case, is Wireshark. It is used by security researchers, and in an effect of that, also by attackers. That doesn't mean, we should take it out of our repos.
Again, Wireshark has enough legitimate uses. And with most connections being encrypted these days, most illegitimate use is no longer possible.
I suggest, that when you like to pursue that proposal any further, that you provide actual evidence that Dolphin is used mainly for piracy.
The argument that it's used mainly for that, is just out of thin air and merely a hypothesis.
There is absolutely no proof, that this is the case.
For emulators of older consoles it's rather easy to prove: How much cartridge dumping hardware is made, compared to how widely these emulators are used? I've been interested in a Retrode 2, but these kind of products are rarely in stock because they're more a "see, piracy-free unofficial emulation is technically possible!" proof-of-concept than anything else.
The GameCube and Wii use discs (so for the Windows version of Dolphin it's hard to proof conclusively even though it's super obvious) but for the Linux version, it's kinda proven by the fact that the software needed to rip a Wii disc is not in any distro's repository, only the emulator. Which brings us to...
All known emulators offer ways to legally use the officially bought content.
It is rare for them to offer any built-in functionality or documentation for doing this. Again, the software for ripping a Wii disc on Linux is separate from dolphin-emu itself. It's out of scope, partially because you can also use a jailbroken Wii to rip the disc, but mostly because no user asks for this functionality, because the piracy site already did the job for them.
And completely besides that: The absolute most content that is played on an emulator is not sold anymore.
This is easily disprovable: Go to a video game piracy site with a "Top 10 downloads" list; many games on these lists have been re-released officially.
The Wii and Gamecube sold out many years, which is what Dolphin emulates.
And the WiiU did, which is the successor to these two consoles.
The last released game for the Wii lays years back, and they don't make any revenue from it anyway.
So there is no revenue lost for Nintendo whatsoever, even if there is pirating happening.
You can make that case for an emulator like Yuzu, which emulates current gen hardware.
The Wii was current-gen hardware when Dolphin was open-sourced. It was the Yuzu of its day. And it still hurts the re-release efforts. When Super Mario 3D All-Stars came out, most Internet threads about it were spammed with recommendations to use Dolphin instead.
