I'm all for information being fairly transparent. I don't think book pirating is a huge problem. Brian Aldiss once showed me one of his most treasured possessions, a second carbon somebody had done in Russia of one of the 'Helliconia' books. But people aren't too interested in pirating novels these days too much hard work. It's easier pirating CDs or videos.
Novels are fairly safe.
It's certainly different from reading for pleasure, because you're actually trying to 'get' the book, rather than flow with the book. One writer I enjoy is Brian Moore, who writes really nice short books. A lot of that kind of traditional hard science fiction becomes very comfortable. The unquestioning mode of hard science fiction. All rights reserved.