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So now those people may be heroes? I hope you aren't referring to me, as my intentions were nowhere near that selfless, and I doubt any of the other downloaders' were either.
I recently researched a film for BET that only exists today because someone illegally transferred the film to video in the 1980's. Not even the director has a copy ... the one or two surviving prints (which are unwatchable for the most part due to age) are incomplete. The bootlegger copied the film for profit but the end result was that he produced the only archived version of the movie. The film, by the way, is hung up in a copyright oroborus in which a studio ( a studio that has been re-aquired a dozen times since 1978) filed a copyright in 1978 but has no version of the film filed in the Library of Congress to accompany the copyright, and as such the film cannot be released by anyone ... including the current studio that technically owns the film ... until the copyright expires in like 75 years.
Point is: you can end up being a hero even though your motives are selfish. Happens all the time, in fact.
The business of mass media is rotting from within right now, and this FBI crackdown is another symptom of the disease. If you choose not to see it, that's your right. But it's not the first time that mass media has fallen ill .. the main difference between then and now is that the prognosis is looking pretty chilling.