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This is one of the all-time stimulating (and perhaps controversial) discussions here. Thanks to pruss for clarifying the dimension of morality in this context.
In some of the societies in which I have lived public morality is contingent upon consanguinity. If you are my brother I will treat you with all the care and honesty of which I am capable. If you are a stranger you can count on me cheating you if I am able. This is a fact of life in countries with high populations and pervasive poverty. Public morality is, unfortunately a luxury of affluence.
For many of the authors I have read over the years, I have a feeling of awe, reverence, maybe even love. They are wonders to me and I feel like I want to take care of them. We have a concept of boundaries in our western culture. We have physical boundaries (person and property). We have intellectual boundaries (creative works, properties of our labors). And we have emotional boundaries (sense of self, pride).
We interact with the boundaries of others along a continuum of respect. Aretha Franklin said it well a long time ago. When we have a sense of caring about our fellow man, we take care of his boundaries because we feel a kinship and a sense of what is right. This restates the morality argument in a psychological dimension.
In some third world nations, we will not find pirated books in the bookstores because there is no demand. But on every little street there are shops selling DVDs for less than a buck. First-run movies are available, sometimes even before they hit the theaters in the west. Now that is industry!
We don't create social systems because a few people demand them. We create them out of a sense of fairness, and unfortunately sometimes greed. If we are going to promote a system of compensation for authors that satisfies, we need consensus that the present systems do not serve anyone well. We need to respect the boundaries of creative people, even if only out of self-interest. We want more books, more paintings, more films, more tunes, and a world of ideas.
We cannot stop theft in poor countries, because respect for intellectual boundaries is an expensive commodity which they cannot yet afford. But in the comfortable places in our world we can create systems that encourage creativity at a minimal cost to ourselves. Authors and the like bend to their labors out of enthusiasm, or hope for profit. That is not clear, but clearly there are fewer of them able to quit their day jobs because the system shows them no respect.
What treasures are we losing?
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