Support the artists, not the thieves.

I’d always hoped I gave enough away for free, via my website and DeviantArt, to win enough favour so that people wouldn’t mess with my revenue stream.

When I started up The Apsara Portfolio, I knew that the comics I posted there would eventually find their way onto forums and image boards outside my control. That I would lose them to the internet. It’s the fate of all digital content: once you put it out there, it’s gone. What I never expected was that huge archives of my content would be collated, or how damaging to my endeavours those archives would be. Even my Patreon page is scraped wholesale, now, with anything I post there – and even the comments legitimate patrons leave – appearing on mirror pages that anyone can view for free.

There’s absolutely nothing I can do to stop it. I have neither the technical nor legal apparatus to prevent it. All I can do is make a list, Arya Stark style, and hope that at some stage in the future I gain access to such means.
There are a lot of very helpful people who point me toward these websites, and I read the comments that get posted on them. The mental gymnastics people perform to justify why it’s OK to undermine the attempts of others to make a living is…. depressing. As is the fact they would rather give money to those who run the offending websites than the creators of the material they’re ripping off.

If you’re not angered by the concept of another person’s work being taken without there permission, and used by another to generate ad revenue or as an excuse to ask for donations that line their pockets, I’d really like to know why. Because my sense of what is fair, what is right and what is wrong, just does not allow me to adopt that mindset.
If you like a creator’s work, you need to support them, if not by buying their work, then by not supporting or contributing to websites that steal it.