>> I doubt that Doug receives much benefit from IP protection,
>> as the "harm" caused by piracy would tend to be small.
>
> Without it, his books would be on books.google.com (and millions
> other places) in a heartbeat.
That would seem to harm Verso way more than Doug. There's an absolute floor of how much harm it would have "cost" Doug to not have IP protections in place for his book. And it's a very small number. Doug is sort of stuck in a world where the only way to write a book is to do it the way it has been done for the last thousand years. That doesn't mean it would necessarily be much worse if it wasn't done that way.
I mostly have written software for a living, and I don't even think I get much benefit from that system, either. Except for a very few specific cases, writing software is mostly like making bricks: you can stack them up and (maybe!) they'll make a building, but it'd be worthless to take the bricks somewhere else to make a new building. You're better off getting new bricks. I've never once considered reusing old code for a new, unrelated project: the act of solving a problem means you're more qualified to solve it the next time, and you'll probably do it differently because of the circumstances.
Bill Gates hasn't even suffered much from piracy: most of Microsoft's billions have been made by being able to produce products that people want to buy long before many people figure out how to get it for free. You can pirate Windows 2000 all you want, but it's not going to work on your new computer that's 64-bit or has 16GB or RAM, so it's not that big of a deal to Microsoft. Soon the newer machines you'll buy for $200 won't support Windows XP. And on.
The only things that endure so far are marketing symbols: people still buy Mickey Mouse t-shirts, so Disney gains a lot from their IP protection. There are a handful of authors for whom millions are made via this system; likewise other content: music, film, etc. Almost *none* of it is actually worth a lot of money; most of it in fact loses money.
We're fortunate that Doug writes, but in no way has he been supported by this dumb system. He has succeeded despite it, not because of it.
/jordan