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Just joined this forum today, so I'm coming into this discussion late, but I thought that the original article under discussion was interesting.
I'm not someone who gets all verklempt over the thought of filesharing books. I sort of look at it as a public library on a world-wide basis; someone bought the original and is sharing it with whomever is interested in reading it.
I agree with the argument that the people who just download books via torrents and Usenet aren't going to be buying them anyway, so they are not taking sales away from anyone. But I would bet that the majority of people who do download books, from an informal survey of people I know online, also buy massive amounts of print books, and their downloading of books hasn't really changed their buying habits. In many cases it's increased them, because they subsequently decide that they want the ebook in print form, or they want other books written by the same author that are not available in ebook form.
Also, the availability of the books also serves as an introduction to the author and can, in fact, increase their readership, or in another situation bring a forgotten author back into public notice. So even though on one hand the author might lose some sales, they are gaining others from people who are just learning about them via a non-traditional means.
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