John Scalzi had a bit of a go at some of these attitudes the other day. He broadly agrees with Pournelle - if you are active on the web or at least easy to find, even free ebooks are a useful part of your promotional antics. He's pretty
scathing of DRM and piracy panics, with the usual attitude - if you give people a reason to buy they will combined with his usual "you pay me, I write" attitude. (To which I say "well, duuuh" and hand over my credit card details
).