I think it should make a difference if that famous person is doing something that the government totally paid for. The camera used, the space suit, the ride up were all financed by all of us, so any of us should be able to use any of the images for whatever we want.

Although it isn't actually looking at the objects with your own telescope, all of the data that the Hubble Space Telescope creates is free to the public. To use the data you will need a copy of Adobe Photoshop, but once you have that it can be great fun to create the same sort of images you see from the Hubble Heritage site. To use the data (that you get in fits format) in Photoshop, you need to download the "Fits Liberator" from the http://www.spacetelescope.org/ site (check the projects tab). You can then get the data from http://archive.stsci.edu/hst/search.php (you will have to create an account).

As someone who processes Hubble data for viewing (I am working on one right now), pretty much every image you see like the ones he show are "enhanced". They are taken through (generally) 3 narrow band filters for nebulae, and 3 wide band for galaxies. If you check his images, he even shows what filters he used.
And NASA isn't the only group putting out viewable Hubble images. The ESA publishes quite a few (which get published through the Hubble Heritage site). Check out www.spacetelescope.org. The lovely full view of Orion was done by them.

I don't pirate to "try before you buy". I pirate because I can't afford the software, and I need it (want it?). But, I have purchased 3 rather high dollar 3D graphics programs that I pirated. I purchased them because I liked them, and when I managed to get the cash together, I wanted to make sure that the company that made them got some of my scratch. Sure, I could have only stuck with what I could afford at the time, but then I would only be using Truespace, and the other 3 companies (Truespace was what turned me on to graphic art, me and my brother purchased it back in 96, the other three I pirated before I purchased) would not have gotten any money out of me.

So to say it is total bullshit is not correct. Some of us really do purchase the software we pirate first. It just takes awhile.