The exquisite Colleen Doran has an article up over on The Hill, which is a Congress-oriented newspaper. Her piece is about the damage that online piracy does to folks like her who are trying to make their livings creating comic books. She's absolutely right, though I don't expect a lot of the pirates or their patrons to get that. Some of them have the notion/rationale that it's like ripping-off a Beatles tune. Paul McCartney will never miss the lost income. And if Colleen had Paul's money, she probably wouldn't but that wouldn't make it right, either. There's also what I call the Hotel Towel Excuse, derived from those who think it's okay to take home a couple of fluffy ones from the Marriott because that's presumed in your bill. They figure the average person steals $8 worth of towels so they charge you $8 more. That ain't true nor are comic books priced with the expectation that you might just scan your copy and give it away free to a hundred thousand people.
Or some of them think (and these are the real annoying ones, heaping insult on injury) that they're doing you a favor of some sort to bootleg your work so that it reaches a wider audience. "It's good promotion," they'll say. That's a dubious premise but even if it is good promotion, we should be the ones deciding how and when our work will be given out as free samples. I've also seen folks with an attitude that roughly goes: "Anyone who is lucky enough to work in comics shouldn't complain about not making enough money." No rebuttal necessary.
Obviously, I have no idea how or if piracy can be stopped. The response by those who are swindled this way is usually to either pretend it isn't happening or to decide that they need to beat the pirates to the marketplace, offering legal, paid downloads before the buccaneers can pass out their free ones. I'm not sure that isn't like preventing burglars from entering your house by leaving all your valuables out on the front porch for them. At the very least though, people who steal ought to be made aware that they're stealing…and that while they may not put DC or Marvel out of business that way — especially since neither of those companies is really in the business of publishing comic books these days — they are hurting folks like Colleen who do depend on actual sales of comics.