That's the thing though, they really were never as rabid as Nintendo. Bleem wasn't the first PS1 emulator, it was just the fact that it was a commercial product that Sony took issue with, honestly understandably so.

There are actually PS1 emulators from the pre-Bleem era that are still available. Sony did nothing to shut those ones down because they were being offered freely.

Piracy is a totally different deal. I'm not delusional, any company that owns an IP is completely within their rights to aggressively stomp piracy at every turn, and I think it's silly to criticize a company for trying to protect one of their main sources of income (I mean really, do people expect a company to spend billions on a product, then just be okay with the theft of that product?).

That's not to say I've never sailed the high seas, or think it's objectively wrong to do so no matter what, but I tend to save it for times where I really wouldn't be able to enjoy the product otherwise (abandonware, or in Nintendo's case, games they stubbornly lock behind ridiculous paywalls).