I have to agree with World Walker's post.
He nailed it right down the line.
The only thing I have to add is that I look for torrents that organize by author, so I can choose to download only those parts of the torrent that I want. (I use Utorrent btw)
So out of those 3k ebooks in the torrent, I might actually download 300, and likely end up reading 10-20 % of those (to date at least) But my library of backed up ebooks is growing nicely.
Ohhh and as far as lost sales, there were none. Since I never would have bought it in the first place. If I can't find what I'm looking for I settle for something else (that's free)