“My second thought is that I choose not to read free downloads because it seems in almost every case to be against the wishes of the creators or the people to whom they’ve ceded those decision-making rights. I’m not sure when that stopped mattering. I’m also pretty certain that second-guessing this, deciding you know what’s better for someone else’s creation, is kind of arrogant.”
– Tom Spurgeon, ComicsReporter.com
Thanks for summing that up for me Tom, I’d been meaning to get to that for a little while.
I have to say though, I’m a bit of a hypocrite in this regard. I’m not morally or ethically opposed to reading stuff that simply isn’t available for me to buy, the grey-area material like Scanlations and Legally Contentious Material That Is Unlikely To Be Published. But yeah, this week’s She-Hulk? When the dude asks you to actually spend money on it, if you like it? That’s a pretty easy choice for me. I know too many creative people for whom even a few hundred dollars of lost sales is a rent cheque for them, a rent cheque that they desperately need.
– Christopher