Artists have a right to control whatever they produce. People shouldn't steal Nintendo's hard work, and if Sega is encouraging thievery now, that's a bad thing.

Not forever.

And not abuse nebulous new laws to suppress what were long considered legitimate uses of copyright materials.

You two wouldn't steal a car.

... or WOULD you?!

I didn't steal this car and wrap it around a light pole, I fair used it to offer critical commentary on the failures of power steering during impromptu drift racing scenarios.

The ironic thing is, Skate and his fellow Streets of Ragers dedicate their lives to fighting criminals like ROM hackers, Cena, and SolRo.

And the drugs of Tim Allen.

They aren't encouraging thievery. The only way to share romhacks to to buy the megadrive roms as part of the retro collection on steam. Having done that, you have permission from SEGA to make edits to those roms (romhacks) and can share them with other people who have bought the collection on steam via the steam workshop.

It is a very good thing, in my opinion.

Keep in mind that Nintendo's response to the same thing (people creating SMW romhacks) was to ignore it for 25 years. Then release their own engine that lets you make levels which ends up heavily policed and bans peoples levels for no apparent reason.

Redford: Then they started issuing takedown notices to videos of SMW romhacks.

Their choises of which targets to pick is again, seemingly random and is mostly a fear tactic more then anything else. They have no issues with posting DCMA to popular youtubers which might be good examples, but have no issue with kaizo SMW and kaizo mario 3 being shown at GDQ in order to raise charity money.

Fear tactics, you say?

So basically, Nintendo is Batman, swooping in from the shadows to take down criminals. Such fear is good. Evil knows it is not safe in Nintendo's Gotham City.

And anyways, Nintendo has standards. There's not a ROMhack alive that could pass muster for the Nintendo Seal of Quality.

Homer I defy you to claim an opus like Mega Crap isn't worthy of a Nintendo Seal of Quality, if only for its scathing stances on homosexuality, pederasty, genital mutilation and sexual harassment that still carry weight to this day.

Or if you don't care for story and subtext, there's Gay Ghost Fuckers II, which prominently features penile vore.

Do you see me complaining about cock vore? No, I just want people to do their cock voring on their own time, with their own intellectual property. Is that too much to ask?!

I'm only sorry it didn't replace EVERY sound with the Tim Allen grunt, like these superior examples:
http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=132010
http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=138679

but this Steamworks development is nonetheless an important step; Mega Drive modding is still sorely lacking compared to the SNES.