I concur with your comparison. I laugh to myself as I read the dire statements that pirating an ebook is akin to stealing a car, walking into a home and robbing it, shoplifting, etc.
I, too, have wondered if all those who are lamenting about "piracy" have
never driven above the speed limit, have
never fudged on their tax returns, have
never run a red light, have
never bought something that "fell off a truck", have
never not returned incorrect change given to them by a cashier, have
never made up an excuse as to why their homework or their work wasn't done on time, have
never lied about anything in their lives, have
never taken advantage of a situation for their own benefit,
never taped a movie from the TV onto VHS when we were still being told by the Motion Picture Association that it was illegal to do so,
never taped songs onto a cassette from the radio or a record when they were younger, etc.
As far as I'm concerned, only a person who's never done ANY of those things in their lives is the
only one who can cast any aspersions on anyone who gets their reading material from alternative sources.
One point that I think is being constantly over-simplified is that "piracy" is an either/or proposition. That someone either gets all of their movies, music, books via alternative sources or that they get none of them that way. That is simply not true. Just because one gets items that way doesn't mean that books, CD's and DVD's aren't still being purchased, too - by those same people. Of course there are going to be people who will never pay for anything; they are the same people who were always going to do things on the cheap their entire lives anyway - that's just their mentality.
But speaking for myself, just because I can get any book that I want via alternative sources doesn't mean that I have stopped buying books; on the contrary, I still buy books so that my favorite authors keep producing them. But I'm not going to look with horror at people who get the majority of their books via alternative means. To me they are the same as people who only read books via the public library system; both groups are not adding any money to the authors' pockets. Just as I personally don't see the difference between downloading an ebook to try out a new author, and parking my butt in Borders or B&N for hours just to read the same book without paying for it.
The only difference is two of the methods of reading a book are socially acceptable forms of "piracy" while the other method isn't.
