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I think there's a need to seperate morality from practicality on this thread. One can argue about what <i>should</i> be all one likes, but unless one can enforce that behaviour (be it through persuasion, cultural codes, legal enforcement or "technology") then its not terribly relevant. For a short period in the C20th publishing largely erradicated piracy. That period is ending. DRM can always be broke, file sharing will mutate to meet the latest attacks. So it doesn't achieve its desired purpose, unless its desired purpose is to get people visiting dubious sites to download "interesting" tools. It may even piss off your customers when they realise 5 years down the line that their color e-ink device will not read any of their old e-books. If people want to share copyrighted materials then they can, unless publishers prevent them from accessing it (tricky if you want to profit from it), or use proprietory formats that can not be reverse engineered (tricky also). The other solutions are so draconian and damaging to wider society (effectively locking down and policing the internet s.t. it no longer will exist in its present form) that hopefully they won't come to pass, or just unlikely to succeed (persuasion, or "education" as the music industry used to call it). And if you think the law can save you...well look at the success of the drug war.
For those who want to profit from writing (and really, most writers do not making a living from writing. If writers are financially motivated, then they're remarkably cheap) will just have to find ways of dealing with this reality. Which sounds harsh, and it is. The current publishing industry will not survive in its current form (it may of course survive in changed forms), simply because its current state exists purely due to the convergence of technology (distribution, retail and the physical nature of books and printing). As those change, it will change (or be replaced by something else) Many people will lose their jobs, but then that's been true in publishing for a long time. Hopefully something will emerge which will be better for readers and writers.
Secondly copyright is a completely artificial right that was created by society. There's nothing innate about it, and if its not enforcable, or not widely respected (and thus ignored), then there's not much that authors can do. The fact its been enforcable up till now is because pirates are largely commercial concerns who can be sued/shut down - and because books are physical objects that cannot be shared easily. That's changed, and its likely that copyright will change due to this, as the impracticailities of its current incarnation become more and more apparent (probably kicking and screaming; and slowly).
Thirdly, the idea that books generally are particularly valuable is kind of dubious. Most books make money in the first couple of years of publication, and most make very little money. Most books make almost no money after a couple of years. Books that do make money after a couple of years do so, <i>despite</i> being freely available (from the perspective of the publisher) in libraries and second hand bookstores. Which is interesting and something publishers should be reflecting on. The value of most second hand books in the UK, incidentally, is quite small now and has been steadily decreasing for a while. Which is also interesting.
Literary authors (including many famousish ones) typically survive on teaching/arts grants, journalism and the like. Many non-fiction books are more useful to the author as publicity (journalism/consulting/repuation), than as a source of income.
And academic publishing is messed up and has been for a long time.
The economics of publishing are weird, not terribly good for many people involved and inefficient. There are quite large warehousing and distribution costs, which ebooks will eliminate. So while piracy <i>may</i> be a problem, it may well be outweighed by the various advantages to publishers and writers of ebooks. I suspect different types of book will see different types of model opening up. We may well see more free books in certain areas. I suspect we'll see a return to the C19th model of installments that you subscribe to. We may see variants on the subscription model of the C18 and C19th century (only with sophisticated searches and social networks), and DRM may be socially acceptable there (much as it is for Cable/satellite TV). We may well see a resurgence of short fiction in places where people commute via public transport. Or essayists. Things will change, which will be fun and interesting.
And I suspect that the way to beat the pirates will be to provide excellent access (good search, lots of material, good meta stuff/community stuff), with prices that are effectively too cheap for <i>most</i> people to quibble about (the price of a magazine -> a cheap novel). The way to beat pirates is to make them redundant to all but the time rich/cash poor. And seriously, who cares about them?
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