Maybe I just don't get it.

I was in college once. A while ago. For a long time. With very little to show for it. It was near the early parts of the Internet revolution. I remember needing to get a signature on a form before I could have my first internet account that let me do such awesome stuff as gopher and telnet and finger (if at least 2 of those don't make sense, you may was well stop reading. You're not in my age bracket).
A while after that is when Napster made it big. Those were the days. I was on a company-sponsored cable modem with a big fatty T3 backbone. I downloaded ill-gotten music like it was going out of style. I don't have the 'too many songs to listen to in a lifetime' disease that so many of my cohorts have. I was choosy. Underground grunge remixes and rare cuts were my trade. I downloaded like it was going out of style. And it did, in a big way. The heyday of stealing music from random strangers went by the wayside, as did my high-speed connection.
Fast-forward to a not-twenty-something age and now I'm back at college, this time in charge of whatever hapless youths I can keep interested in working for the university until they graduate. We're in the age of the download. No one pays for anything, music, movies, TV shows. Doesn't matter they're all sharing it with reckless abandon. Nothing new, again I was in college so the though of paying to download anything was pretty much unheard of.
So one day I wander in to my help desk, one of my students is busy helping a customer with some strange time-consuming dilemma. On the monitor behind him is running some nearly 1st run major blockbuster movie from not very long ago. Chinese subtitles flash on the screen, the colors are washed out and dingy looking, the resolution is straining not to pixelate on the 17' lcd panel, and every now and then you can hear an outburst of laugher or coughing or conversation from an audience that's obviously just off screen. We're talking major Hollywood Special-Effects flick, not some award-wining indie feature full of important dialog and deep messages. Stripped of all its luster and "oooh ahh" factor reduced this to looking like a video tape from a bad high-school drama.
I guess the part I'm missing is how that is enjoyable in any way. How bad do you need to watch this fantastic movie minus all the fantasy? Was my student just such a rabid fan of this Major Feature that he was willing to slog through the murky visuals and packed-house distractions? Was he unable to cough up the dough (or suck up to parents) to get in and see the thing in all its glory 4 months ago? Doubtful. This is just one example of what I've seen over and over. In college, and out. From the die-hard fan to the casual downloader. There's an urge. A compulsion to have the thing you're 'not supposed to have'. An unconscious need to buck the system no matter how bad the end product really is. But it's like doing a smash-and-grab in the second-hand store, filling your pockets with costume jewelery and broken pocket watches. Most of the time you're diluting even the minuscule elements that make the thing worth while in the 1st place. I hope you're getting something meaningful to your soul and intellect, since you're missing out on the cool stuff.
Of course there are better-quality downloads out there, and most of the people I know who engage in said behavior are choosier in their production values than I've been describing so far.
But maybe that's not what I'm getting at.
The funny thing is how well trained the media has us. How we can't resist seeing the next big movie until we've spent our hard-earned time watching it only to say "man the effects were good, but the rest of it was crap". It happens with books, music, tv, video games. They crank up the hype machine and we eat it with Soylent Green enthusiasm. We want it so badly, but we don't even know why. It permeates our culture so badly we're even willing to steal it (according to the current forms of copyright law anyway), or at least take it if it seems to be given away for free. The snake oil they're selling is often so awful, but we swallow it anyway. There seem to be precious few who can resist the lure of the blockbuster. Who are willing to pass up because it doesn't meet their needs or hold their interest. People who hold to a different set of standards. They can look at something critically and decide before hand that maybe it's not worth the time to get caught up in, rather than simply march forth with the masses to the beat of todays manufactured Top 40 hit.
Get what you want, but at least make sure you really want it. The machines have you, and they play for keeps Copper Top.