While yes it is pirated games, it isn't morally wrong imo. The games aren't for sale at retail anymore, and therefore there is not lost sale in the process. Though I would much rather have the physical copy, as I'm a collector.

But most are available via the virtual console.

There are a ton of disc launchers for the homebrew channel. Most of them should allow you to ignore the update and just play the game. Alternatively, there's an option in preloader 0.30 to disable updates for all games launched via the Disc channel, which would be my preferred solution.

That is not quite true. There are many games not on the virtual console. Plus emulators have the benefits of playing non-official additions in games such as platformers, as well as games not present on the VC, I.E PS1 games.

but there are some ps1 games on psn marketplace, aren't there?

also there are some games on virtual console that are hard to get to the roms for (the esa protected games, such most of the nintendo published games lol).

the games that won't make it to the vc or equivalent survice are the games from bought out/brankrupt companies, most notably anything from rare.

i had several softmods. i updated to 4.2 and lost them. all i did was make a card that automatically install all of them again when its in the slot.

update your softmods via wifi, then install the firmware update. You may have to reinstall some of your soft mods, but you should be fine. It only took them like 1 week to rehack the firmware and technically what Nintendo did was stupid as it would only trick the laziest hacker.

dont mod your wii then

If you brickblock nothing will update, and I have yet to run into a game that actually needed the update to run.

I am guessing he has homebrew channel installed and is afraid it will be deleted. But, if you upgrade to the newest version of the homebrew channel, the latest firmware won't find it, and it won't be deleted.