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I'm a little late to the party on this thread, but I did want to relate an email I got a month or so ago from one of my fans, who told me that one of my works was present in a collection he had gotten on a torrent. No surprise there, and I don't mind much; my problem is not piracy but obscurity. But what did surprise me was to hear that the collection itself (called "Rosetta Stone," according to my correspondent) contains 3,500 ebooks. Some of them are PD things from Gutenberg but most are not. The collection is a DVD-ROM ISO, and once burned to a disc is just a monster collection of files.
I did not download the torrent--contributory infringement and all that--and don't know any more about it, but assuming it's true, maybe we need to worry a little more than we are right now. Ebooks are a very compact data format (unlike feature videos and some music) and the pipes are getting bigger by the day.
Not sure what to think. Big-money scorched-earth enforcement RIAA-style is a very bad idea, not only due to collateral damage to the innocently accused, but also to the danger of making the idea of copyright itself look elitist and corporate. Worst of all, if random checks on readers and laptops (at borders, for example) start to focus on ebooks, and if people are forced to prove that they did not steal a particular title, ereading as a concept will be seen as dangerous and the market will not grow as quickly as it otherwise might.
No matter what is to be done, creators must proceed cautiously, lest the grenades we're tempted to throw teach people to simply avoid us.
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