Just to play Devil's advocate here...
What about the magicians who need the money just as much as you do? I know of a magician who didn't even finish high school and doesn't have anything to fall back on. We all like to think of magic creators/performers living in a house like Chris Kenner or Criss Angel, when in fact it's not true. Buying a magic DVD is making a commitment you are getting knowledge and it is hard to give back. If you are afraid about purchasing crap don't impulse buy, and ask questions about the effect to someone who owns it. So do you think that torrenting magic or buying magic off of ebay is justified even if it is as bad as TnR?
-Michael
If the product is of a poor quality and people choose not to buy it after torrenting it because they have seen how bad it is then I don't really have a problem with this. It means creators can't get away with deceptive marketing and low quality products. I don't believe you can be protected entirely from this by not impulse buying, i've bought products which appear to have great review but when I get them myself I find they're complete junk and almost unusable.
I don't believe the creators of high quality magic deserve to lose money but they are part of an industry which is known for deceiving the consumers and releasing awful products so it's hardly surprising that people will become skeptical when buying a product. You can't trust trailers as they rarely show the effect as it appears to spectators, the descriptions are often bordering on complete lies and there's loads of review by friends of the creator.
If you build up a good reputation then I still think you can make a good profit in magic and not be too affected by piracy, consumers will know they can trust your products to be good, e.g. i'm fairly sure Dan and Dave have consistently good sales as all their products are consistently of a very high quality. There's other magicians who are known for poor quality products, once you've bought a bad piece of magic from someone you're not going to want to give them any of your money again.
In response to your point about magicians with nothing else to fall back on, I don't have a great amount of sympathy for them. You don't have a right to make a profit as a magician, you have to earn respect by publishing consistently good magic. It's only a viable career (as a creator) if you really have something special to offer. If not, go and get a job. I know quite a few people who left school and have nothing to fall back on. Most of the time it was their fault, they were lazy, did no work, didn't go to class etc Why would I care if one of them happens to be a magician?