I'd like to deviate from the topic a little, but I assure you, it's still very much related.
For one, the IP industry (excluding the actual authors in most cases), brought this on themselves. Their policies actually encourage people to steal from them because of the blatant way they try to hunt a small minority of people who don't want to pay for an author's product no matter the price. This I do not support, but in my eyes, even they are better than the publishers and retailers. In an attempt to prevent copyright theft, these publishers have developed asinine protection systems that hinder a greater majority. And thus that majority rebels against them.
Another issue here is the inflated pricing and low author percentages involved. This, put shortly means that authors do not receive their due pay not because someone is illegally copying their work in a digital format instead of buying it, but because their publishers are giving them too small a piece of the cake. Thus, when someone is stupid enough to buy an author's work, he's not really supporting the art, he's supporting a huge, greedy industry which cares for neither the author nor the customer but for its profits. Ebook piracy would collapse if all there was to pay for an ebook was the 8% authors receive.
Sure, some may argue that publishers add value to the author's work. However, I believe that neither is this value worth their 92% share nor is it always as flawless as it should be - how many times have you failed to get a book because it wasn't available where you live? Is the physical copy worth the trip to the store and the increase price? To those that it is, ebook piracy means nothing because it's rather hard to pirate a physical copy.
Traditionally, consumers were offered two choices on the market - buy or not buy. By not buying, they were forced (thus, it wasn't exactly their moral choice but a reality one) to go without. With the product available over the internet they no longer had to go without and indeed, should not because, the purpose of the market should be to make a price any buyer is willing to pay and any the seller is willing to receive, not an imposed "this costs so and so" concept where people are denied something because somebody's idea is that higher prices equal higher profit (which is not always true).
In the end, is it any wonder people download things off the internet?
EDIT:
Quote:
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If you plan to rob a bank, but you are caught before actually carrying out your crime, you will (at least in the UK) be charged with "conspiracy to commit armed robbery", which carries the same penalty as the act itself. The law makes no distinction between the "wrongness" of intending to do something, and actually doing it.
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What if you're only thinking of it? I doubt any country in the world could charge you for thinking of robbing the bank.