May I suggest a pragmatic, in-between position that has nothing to do with morals?
There's no point in arguing morals on line, because (of course)
my morals are far superior to
your beliefs, which in turn beat the heck out of
his outrageous prejudices.
(Did I conjugate that correctly?) Anyway, back to my main point.
I strongly support paying for downloaded eBooks, for a very simple reason: Authors who make enough money by writing can afford to write full time. And that means they are able to produce (wait for it...)
more good books for me to read. Conversely, authors who don't get money for their books have to get day jobs, which leaves them less time to write, which leads directly to
fewer good books for me to read. So if I pay, I get more of what I like, and if I don't pay I get less.
There you go. A purely selfish, pragmatic, real-world reason to pay for the books you download. I am not, however, so self-centered as to believe that you—all of you out there—want to pay so that
I get more books. Rather, you may decide that it's more important to have more books that
you wish to read. If so, you should pay for those books so the authors
you like produce more of what
you want to read.
If you want to complain about wrong-headed, stupid, bleeping publishers who can't see their own best interests even when we hit them with a clue-bat... I'm right with you on that one! I'll even add some strongly worded statements about recto-cranial inversion and the like.
Meanwhile, I'll leave the moralizing to those on either side who... um... never mind.
I can't go there without diluting my point.
for your patience during this brief digression from your regularly scheduled flame war.
Xenophon