Modern authors should be compensated for their work. That's why I either buy a book in a store or on iBooks, or I receive it from the publisher (which also pays the author for it). Sometimes my awesome friends gift me books.
For me, it's important that I'm buying a couple of metaphorical cups of cappuccino for Neil Gaiman and Patrick Rothfuss (come on, write the third book already, buddy!), since I spend dozens of hours in conversations with them. It's strange when a reader feels that their time isn't worth such an honest and fair gesture.
As for Tolstoy, Goethe, and Walter Scott, there's no need to pay for their works anymore, but if I ever meet them — coffee's on me, no questions asked.