I'd never thought of it in these specific terms before, but the essentially educational and fear-ameliorating nature of your post led me to realize that it's likely that a lot of what Nintendo's doing with all of this legal barnstorming is essentially PR, and that's all it's meant to be.
They have little hope of actually winning cases or of doing anything more than cutting off one head of the hydra if they do, and all of their safeguards can be and will be worked around, repeatedly if necessary, so from a practical standpoint, they're fighting a losing battle. But all of their noise and aggressive posturing likely serves to scare a lot of less-informed gamers into not emulating in the first place, so it furthers their goals anyway.