Since Nintendo is going after 3ds mod sites instead of 3ds emulators it looks like hardware piracy is a much bigger problem.
http://www.ubergizmo.com/2017/03/nintendo-lawsuit-3ds-mod-chip/

Emulation is not piracy, yet it's pretty close to a mod chip. That's innocent too 'cause homebrew, yet how many people actually use a mod chip for homebrew. However to be fair, unlike mod chips, emulators do distance themselves from piracy for example:

Where can I download games to use with Citra?

Short answer: You don’t. Buy games and dump them with a Nintendo 3DS.

Long answer: Downloading commercial games is illegal and thus strongly frowned upon by the Citra developers. To prevent legal issues, this includes gray areas like downloading games which you purchased earlier. You don’t necessarily need to own a 3DS yourself, as you can buy game cartridges and dump them with a friend’s console. On the other hand, copying a friend’s game dump is considered illegal. Please note that any mention or discussion of piracy on our forums or Discord channels will result in being banned from our community.

For guidance on how to dump games for use with Citra, please refer to:

• Dumping Game Cartridges
• Dumping Installed Titles

Ofcourse you probably need a mod chip or hack the console to do that in the first place.

You wouldn't use a mod chip if you buy the games anyway, with an emulator you might be tempted to try out different games you don't own, as well as having to hack the console to stay legal on the copying part. And why mod the console if you can play it on better hardware.

As long as you need beefy hardware, piracy on the actual console will be far bigger. Perhaps a good reason for consoles to not fall too far behind.

Anyway emulation is not piracy, yet it's dependent on it or rather hacked consoles before emulators can be build. They can encourage piracy since it's the easiest way to use an emulator.

I have a question for everyone saying that emulators are fine as long as you don't pirate games.

What does that even mean? If I want to play an NES game, and I download an NES emulator and a Super mario bros rom, am I a pirate ? How else am I supposed to use the game?

The ultimate goal of emulation is preservation of access to content since games are a special format of entertainment in that their information cannot be copied so easily in comparison to either solely or a mixture of video and sound data ... (It is a part of humanity's preference to not lose important information.)

And for that the benefits vastly outweigh the drawbacks once we achive such content for future generations to view ... 

Warez and torrent be damned

Archiving / preservation is a lot different than offering up freely playable versions. Offering up enhanced / improved versions is even further removed from archiving and preservation.

For archiving / preservation you only need to make an exact copy of the data to store next to the cartridge on renewable storage in case it fails over time. No need to play it. To preserve the hardware, build schematics are the best bet in case the actual hardware gives out. Exact 1:1 emulation no matter how shitty it runs is also a good way to preserve the original experience. However most of the emulators are not interested in exact emulation or preserving the original experience.

The ultimate goal of most of the existing emulators is to play the old games, not to preserve them nor preserve the original experience. It's just an excuse people use to feel better about illegally downloading roms.

This is what preservation looks like

I don't use emulation all that often, but it is nice to use for me to check and see which games I want to get in the future. It's like I'm sampling the game.

But of course, anyone can see that and copyright isn't permanent either like others would imply ... 

Offering 'enhanced' versions is very much a part of preservation even if the information isn't a perfect copy ... (Just because it isn't a 1:1 exact match doesn't mean that the important details aren't preserved. )

Easier said than done when corporations don't want to share trade secrets so in the end preservation of content is best left up to an open community instead ...

And not being able to play the said content defeats purpose creating storage mediums in the first place since information can only be valued when it can be either exchanged or transferred ... 

Is playing old games not preservation ? Emulation is only a means to an end ... 

Why though? It's related to gaming, doesn't make sense to ban them on a gaming site.

Well, basically I'm personally not a huge fan of emulating newer consoles (although I don't judge people who do emulate them). I prefer buying games for newer consoles and when they are no longer a major part of the industry (like genesis, saturn or atari 2600) I like to emulate to get access to a huge digital library.

Emulation is awesome. I know it's illegal to create roms from games and share them, but I don't think it should be. I look at it the same way as if I would record a program on an old VCR and share that with friends: if you do it without a profit motive, it should be up to you what you do with a product you own.

I do hope, however, that even if people emulate consoles, they will still buy many games. I personally own 13 games for my Switch, 300+ games on my X1 so I am a pretty big consumer of gaming in general.

So does buying used games. Should we be banned from talking about that here too?