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Actually, before ebooks became as mainstream as they are now, I corresponded with an author who deeply resented the way Amazon was encouraging customers to sell their used copies of books, because she didn't get a cut. (My suggestion to her was to set up her own Amazon affiliate store, list all her books, and advertise that store heavily as a way for her fans to support her while still saving money on used books.)
I think we do need a more nuanced understanding of the issues of darknet distribution of ebooks (and other media). While I strongly agree that authors need to be compensated for their work, I'm not convinced that darknet downloads are seriously impacting the book buying habits of readers... or the incomes of writers. That's why I think terms like "theft" or "piracy" are misleading. They try to draw an analogy to the world of atoms, when we're talking about the world of bits. We need new metaphors.
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