Pro-piracy people want the hack for playing warez
Anti-piracy people want the hack for unlocking the region lock
Anti-piracy hipocrites want the hack for playing emulators
Apparently only a few want the hack for actual homebrew which is the main reason the hackers are trying to hack 3DS. Not for region lock, not for emulators, not for Warez... mostly for homebrew
Although an Emulator made from scratch, is technically homebrew, while emulating anything is technically illegal, there isn't any legal punishment that I have any knowledge of. Here's a link that explains quite well:
http://www.epinions.com/content_1645453444
Regarding my own point of views regarding those points:
-I want a hack to remove region lock, since some games don't always reach Europe/America (I don't enough money that I can afford to buy a game that I can't understand, so I won't buy a Japanese one unless there's a translation patch available);
-While I don't really pirate nowadays, since I enjoy having physical copies of games and adding them to my collection, I do however sometimes play a game which I don't own. I mostly do it for fan translated games, a game that was released first in another region (ie Harvest Moon, get's an EU release more than 6 months after the US one) which I plan to buy once it reaches my own or in some cases to check out if a game is worth it (if I play for more than an hour, then I usually end up buying it since it means I enjoyed it enough);
-Emulation, I often use it, I love SNES games, however most of my fave games had never been released in English, it's probably the console with the most translated tittles, in some cases emulation also allows you to run homebrew games since it could be homebrew for a specified console, like for GBA, unless you had a GBA emulator you wouldn't be able to run it, so in those cases, the hypocrisy you said, wouldn't exist to begin with. z.z
And I'm pretty sure the emulation capabilities of the 3DS are also a big factor in why some hackers are trying to hack it, the PSP was quite successful with emulation, the 3DS should be capable of much more. z.z