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While thinking about piracy, it’s worth remembering that one view isn’t the same as a lost sale for a number of reasons. I’m not advocating for piracy but it’s worth trying to get an accurate sense of the impact.
Repeat viewing: if someone reads a comic twice on a pirate site, it shows up as two views. If someone buys a book and reads it twice, that’s just one sale. So view numbers can be higher than the number of sales they’d translate to.
Non-buyers: this gets misused to justify piracy, but some people just can’t afford to buy the comics. In the absence of pirate sites, they would just not read them. So that’s another factor that adds to the number while not necessarily taking away sales.
Utility: This is less common, but there are probably some people out there like me, who use pirate sites to find images for writing about comics they already read legally. I buy comics physically and read from libraries a lot, so if I need good images of books...
I go to the pirate sites, but I’ve already read the book, and most likely own it, so there’s a sale and a view (maybe multiple as I keep the tab open for days as I write).
So again, I’m against piracy, but the numbers don’t match up one to one.
