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Nate, your argument doesn't take into account the more expensive library bindings or lending payments to authors (in those countries that have them). I also think the difference between the number of times a book will be checked out of a library and the number of times the same book will be downloaded from the darknet-- even by people who will actually read the book-- is off by several orders of magnitude. It is not so much that a book could be loaned a near-infinite number of times from a local library (even assuming physical degradation does not apply), but the number of times the book is usually loaned from any given library that is at issue. This number is already factored into the cost of books, along with private loans. If the assumption is that only one person will ever buy a copy of a book and will share it freely with everyone else, the cost of that one copy is likely to go up.
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