Is principle the only valid reason to want to do something? Why is it unacceptable that people be motivated to do things because they want the results?

The actual physical reality of the status quo of reverse engineering and recompiling is that the vast majority of stuff never gets the treatment because they aren't lucky enough to catch the attention of one of the few magical individuals with extreme skill and dedication willing to spend worth hundreds or thousands of hours of their time on them. The consequence is rot.

The status quo is thousands of pieces of software, including but not limited to video games, are lost every year, with no feasible way to recreate the systems and conditions that are needed to run them, and no way to update and repair them to be able to run again.

An estimated 88% of PS2 games are already lost forever. There are thousands of people in the world right now who have in their possession the last copies of digital media with no way to play them and nowhere near enough skill to crack and preserve them themselves.

The alternative to REA isn't hand-made free-range organic recomps, it's nothing.