Sorry for getting back to an old argument, but I do not think you are making a good point;
Do you know a little about advertising and marketing ? People are influenced on a daily basis by this, and it is not in an obvious conscious way like you are referring. People don't say: "Hey I've seen people play Game X on TV and now I want to play it too !" consciously, but the fact is that they do, otherwise nobody would advertise anything.
Similarly, if you make it a possibility to play as a Ridley-skinned Charizard, you are minimizing their marketing impact. Even though the character is still Charizard and only the texture changed, the impact of Nintendo announcing : "You can play as all-new character Ridley" will be minimized because people have already been playing with a Ridley skin for a while.
I do not think the main reason Nintendo shut them down is because they were advocating piracy, but more because they thought they could lose marketing impact with their texture mod.
But yeah, it would seem there are many lawyers here