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I like Eric Flint's message, and I agree with his conclusions about DRM, but I think it's a logical fallacy to assume that the potential customers who obtain pirated copies of ebooks are the same ones who walk past the author's books on the shelves at the store. Someone who goes to the trouble to read a pirated book by an author probably would have at least picked up the book on the shelf and read the back cover.
I think this also ignores the recent development of suggestive selling tools at Amazon and other online retailers. I've actually "found" a number of new authors that I like based on these suggestions, and I think these tools work against the opacity Flint describes above. (But imagine how much more powerful they would be if I could read a chapter online and then immediately purchase the ebook if I like it?)
(I also think Flint could tone down the ad hominem arguments, but that's just me, I guess.)
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