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Yes, I think sending one person a copy of an ebook is much more likely to generate additional sales for the author than sharing on P2P. Even if you could track a huge number of P2P downloads, the chances of the downloaders actually noticing they have a specific book, reading it, and going on to look for more of the same (let alone paying for them) has to be vanishingly small.
I'm not one of the people saying that the darknet is going to bring about the end of civilization as we know it, or even take food out of the mouths of existing authors. All I said was that I think authors ought to be paid by those who read and like their books, for the simple reason that otherwise there will be no more books, because the authors will be too busy flipping burgers or whatever to work on writing. I'm pretty open about how the money gets from point a to point b, but people buying books from authors via an intermediary to handle the financial and technical details (including editing, QA and catalog management) is likely to be a good candidate. And I honestly think that for the most part, this method will continue to work, because it's convenient for all parties, relatively safe, and can be financially reasonable (due to the improvements in efficiency possible with digital works over physical volumes). The main people who will necessarily lose out in the transition are printing plant operators, truckers and warehouse workers-- the people who deal strictly with the physical product.
Oh well, I suppose there's not much point in going on about this. We have these debates on a regular basis, and there are a bunch of us middle-path types who try to reason through the situation, and a bunch of people at the two extremes who assume that everyone else is a) against them and b) not worth listening to. I sometimes wonder how often anyone ever learns something new or changes their position. (I do occasionally, which I guess is why I bother participating.)
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