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If someone works really hard and pours their heart and soul into what they do... should they not be paid for that work? Just because he's made a lucrative career out of selling his stories doesn't mean he should then forgo any future compensation.
Besides, none of us know what his current financial status is. You can get a general idea of what he's made but you have no idea how much of that is left, what is going on in his personal life, etc, etc. It's arguments about how the artist has made enough money to last their lifetime and so doesn't deserve to be compensated that ends up with a lot of bestselling artists in any profession dying penniless in a gutter somewhere. And I for one am tired of seeing these kinds of heartbreaking stories on CNN.
Sure, if you're just taking a digital copy there's an unlimited number of copies left to be made, blah, blah, blah. But if he's got a set number in his head of how many copies need to be sold to make X amount of dollars and that's how much he needs to make a profit... then if people are pirating more than paying, he's got a reason to be upset.
And maybe he just took the plunge for the little guy. You know, the people like me and you? Because I'm sorry, but hiring lawyers and suing people is very expensive, and it's just something that a lot of small publishers and authors just can't afford. But pointing people toward the public Facebook page of some guy bragging about stealing stuff? That's easy.
Best advice: If you're going to pirate stuff, keep your mouth shut and don't advertise. Make it so the common joe on the street has to actually do some work to find illegal downloads; at least then they have time to pause and think and reflect "Am I doing the right thing? If I have to do this much work to get a book, then isn't what I'm doing wrong?"
Because if someone leaves their laptop computer on a sidewalk somewhere and I'm walking along with no one around, I might be tempted to steal it. But if that computer's inside someone's house, I would stop and realize that stealing is stealing, and if you have to go to so much work to do it it's probably a bad idea.
BTW, if you've purchased an ebook, changing the format isn't that big a deal because it's for your personal use. But then taking that ebook and posting it on some torrent site is kind of skeazy, and yes, you are taking food out of the mouths of the writers. Go ahead and say you're just sticking it to the "Big Monolithic Publishing Machines With Their Outdated Binary System," but that's just an excuse to do whatever. Because somewhere at the end of the machine is someone with kids to feed and rent to pay and they do have faces and names and maybe they're tired of digging ditches to make ends meet.
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