>>80195520Some users may (especially since it makes the decision even more economically rational), most people pirate because it's simple economic rationality.
Option 1 (Buy): Lose money, gain product.
Option 2 (Pirate): Keep money, gain product
Now, there's a risk of a tragedy of the commons here (Where everyone pirating a comic issue means no more issues), but it's not really worth considering as a disincentive for the purposes of the example.
So, how do you fight this? You could try DRM, or you could try a more rational system (at least on a hobbyist scale):
Funding the product beforehand, then releasing it freely afterwards. The artist is remunerated for their time, and there's no need for piracy. There's no real risk of a tragedy of the commons after the product is created. (There is beforehand, if everyone assumes someone else will fund something before the deadline, but in most cases they'd realize towards the end this was mistaken.)
There's the problem that kickstarting every single chapter of your comic or whatever is unwieldy (and you probably do want to do this sort of thing in short bursts instead of 'I will write an entire comic for a decade if you give me $500,000'), but ultimately it provides much more financial security than trying to guess how many Patreon backers are going to back-out.
>>80195604>this is okay because we do it to corporations tooTechnically speaking it doesn't even have to be okay, it's just economic sense. I resent that more artists haven't seen it and tried varying their funding methods a little.
It's very simple.
>Seller (either individual artist or company) creates electronic files>Expects people to pay for them>One person does, and because they are electronic files, can duplicate them easily>Seller gets upset about the nature of electronic files instead of embracing this nature and changing their funding method accordingly. 
