"In my country there is no problem in sharing copyrighted ..."

I guess that means that each e-book only has to be sold once in your country? The U.S. laws might be overly protective of IP, but that's an interesting problem for publishers who in theory need to earn a profit if they're going to continue as entities as well as for authors who need to feed their families.

This obviously wasn't a problem when the books were printed on dead trees, because you'd only share copies that had been purchased, and if you're friend was reading your book you no longer had access to it. Curiously, I could rent my copy of a book to you in the U.S. without violating copyright laws.

"I guess that means that each e-book only has to be sold once in your country?"

No.

It means that you can read a book and, if you really like it, you can buy it. It means that you can discover new authors, topics and so without a huge investment.

This can sound demagogic: I have never had enough money to buy the books I wanted, nor to waste it trying to discover new books and topics. But with downloaded books I learned about tech and other fields. Eventually, I bough more books (a lot from U.S) than if I had not discovered these topics.

Allowing private sharing (as long as there are not profit) and supporting authors are not in direct confrontation. In my humble opinion and personal experience, they are correlated.

I was not passing judgement on either you or your country's laws ... And I think the ability to try a book out before you buy it is important to the market. I think there are a lot of us who spend time in bookstores simply for this reason.

"Private sharing" and especially recommendations are also my favorite ways to find worthwhile books.

No problem, smoyer. I take it to first person because I thought that my personal experience could be a interesting answer.

Recommendations are great once you both have some favorites books in common. Because of that, I always check the Amazon's "Other people also bough" section.