The Millions has an interview with someone who engages in book piracy; he scans books, runs them through an OCR program, proofs the output, and then uploads them to Usenet and torrent sites.
In truth, I think it is clear that morally, the act of pirating a product is, in fact, the moral equivalent of stealing... although that nagging question of what the person who has been stolen from is missing still lingers. Realistically and financially, however, I feel the impact of e-piracy is overrated, at least in terms of ebooks.
