Moving this here after I saw the creation of this new thread...
I suppose this is a message to any KK creators who might stumble upon this.
Many creators will argue that it isn't fair that their hard-work is essentially leeched off of them by users who refuse to support them, and that is easy to understand. But what they don't realize is that piracy
can help them more than they believe it hurts them. There was one artist of the music industry, whose name escapes me at the moment... who decided to conduct an experiment. Before the release of his next album, he announced that he welcomed piracy, rather than bash it like most other artists. He was surprised to discover that his sales had skyrocketed with the release of his next album, and has been pro-piracy since. If other artists could share this same viewpoint, I believe they'd be surprised to discover a similar result.
A pirate who either can't afford... or refuses to spend money on content, will find a way to pirate no matter what. There is no escape from this, and it has been in existence in some shape or form since time immemorial. However, a pirate that
can afford the content, might just spend their money
after pirating the content... just to support the artist they had stolen from. And through this sharing, the content reaches out to a larger audience that wouldn't have come across it otherwise.
What I'm trying to say is that there
is merit to be gained in stealing, even if artists refuse to see it that way. Although, as we all here know, there are bad actors within these communities who will steal the content to profit for themselves. This very problem kind of throws this viewpoint out of balance. Unfortunately, all one can hope for is that some could bully one into submission, or sites like Pixiv could step up and squash them.
Now, if you'll excuse me... I must get back to gooning.