Pirating copyrighted etext on Usenet and elsewhere is going to happen more and more, for the same reasons that everyday folks make audio cassettes from vinyl LPs and audio CDs, and videocassette copies of store-bought videotapes. Partly it’s greed; partly it’s annoyance over retail prices; partly it’s the desire to Share Cool Stuff (a motivation usually underrated by the victims of this kind of small-time hand-level piracy). Instantly going to Defcon One over it and claiming it’s morally tantamount to mugging little old ladies in the street will make it kind of difficult to move forward from that position when it doesn’t work. In the 1970s, the record industry shrieked that “home taping is killing music.” It’s hard for ordinary folks to avoid noticing that music didn’t die. But the record industry’s credibility on the subject wasn’t exactly enhanced.

— Patrick Nielsen Hayden (from alt.binaries.ebooks, quoted by Cory)