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If the person would never buy the book in the first place, then it's not a lost sale - whether you want to call it piracy, theft, or copyright infringement. The label is immaterial since neither the publisher nor the author was going to receive any money for that book. For them to call it a lost sale is a fallacy.
Arguing about whether it is theft or copyright infringement is pointless, because it's not a matter of ethics for most people. If you are like me, and think that whatever you purchase becomes yours to do with as you please, then if people want to share their purchase with their 5,000 closest friends, more power to them. I don't see it as being much different than a library buying a copy of a book and 5,000 people reading that copy for free. No argument is made that those people should be forced to buy their own copy.
I believe that most of us are quite willing to pay what we consider a fair price for an ebook - taking into consideration that there are no printing, marketing or distribution costs to speak of with ebooks. Unfortunately, the major publishers think that we readers are stupid and charge anywhere from more than the cost of a paperback up to the full hardcover price for an ebook. And considering that the customer has to invest money first in a device to read the ebook - whether it's a dedicated ereader or a computer or a smart phone or whatever - asking them to pay the same price as a for a paper book is ridiculous. As long as the pricing schemes are out of whack with the value of the item received, people are going to share.
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