if you bough one online and its molded plastic with thin copper pins, your good, the are bendable and will bend when pressure from the switches pins are applied to them rather than force themselves in place. the ones with the issues were the home made 3d printed ones that used a thick paper...
so i copied the game files to re3, ran the game and i had sound effects but when i got in the car, the radio was a glitched out shrinking mess, i converted the audio files, copied over new audio folder, now game has no audio at all.
i used to go out to the recycling center every couple weeks and look at the crts and other electronics people would drop off. Usually screens were broken or severely scratched from being tossed around. Did find a good one here and there, but never anything like a 1080i widescreen crt.
I have a few of those boat anchors in my basement I tried giving away but no one wanted them, So anyone close to Columbus, Ohio area that wants them, (26", 2x 19") please come get, for free.
Is it piracy if it was released for free? Not in my opinion, but I also think it's not piracy if buying it isn't owning it, and it's not piracy if you can't buy it from the original creators anymore.