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First of all, I believe that it is right and proper to purchase your books and not get pirated books. And to be clear I am NOT advocating anything illegal or immoral here. I support buying books and I oppose pirating them.
However ...... Maybe we have been looking at this wrong.
It has always been my understanding that copyright law applies to the distributor. If I own a book that is copyrighted, then I can not sell copies of it, or distribute it for free to others, without permission from the copyright holder.
I do not see how copyright applies to a person who aquired a copyrighted book.
It is a thin line and very unclear where exactly that line is drawn, but it is not necessarily a copyright violation to 'get' an ebook from someone unauthorized to distribute it. The violation is on the unautorized distributor.
It is perfectly excusable for a consumer to purchase an ebook from a company that later turned out not to have the rights to sell it. But that buyer can not distribute it because it is copyrighted material.
This is why the crack down has been on people distributing copyrighted materials and not people who simply aquire the material.
There have indeed been cases of people who were prosecuted for having downloaded music from unauthorized sources, but they were prosecuted because the music they aquired was in a 'shared' directory whre they were sharing the music, probably unaware that they were doing so.
This is a very difficult discussion and very nuanced. And numerous very intellegent legal minds have very different opinions that can only be decided in the courts.
First of all, you should never share copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder.
Second, if you aquire such material, you are denying the creator of his legal due.
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