I've never understood the distinction between 'stealing' and 'infringement' to be especially useful or actionable. In either case, you're violating the law. It used to be that copyright violation was civil but I believe digital violation is criminalized--so you go to jail in either case.
The notion that you don't take anything material from an author when you download because there is nothing physical involved is an interesting philosophical case, but again, I don't think it's relevant to the law. I also don't think it's relevant to morals. I mean, suppose you stole the formula for Coke. Coke still has its formula, so you could argue they hadn't lost anything. Same case for drugs or whatever.
If you want to argue that creators of intangible goods don't deserve any rewards because their creations don't take physical form, again, you might be able to make an ethical case--but it's a case that framers of the US Constitution considered and rejected (again, not saying they were right).
As both an author and a publisher, I have strong feelings that, lets say someone downloads my book and then sells it to ten other people, there's something wrong even though the original customer really did pay for my book. Whether it's moral to steal/infringe on an eBook because you already have the paper is something you need to wrestle with in your own value system. Clearly it isn't consistent with the law.
In terms of Harlequin's price reduction--their cheap eBooks seem to be short stories/novellas. So that's not a competitive price reduction, but it is an entry into a new category--one that really hasn't done well lately. But they do seem to be one of the few mega-publishers who systematically offers (slightly) lower pricing on eBooks than on pBooks which, if you remember, was the origin of this whole thread.
(Lots of small publishers, including me, offer lower eBook pricing but the megaPublishers are too afraid of the bookstores and the traditional sales structure).
Rob Preece
Publisher,
www.BooksForABuck.com