They can yell that all they like but the other side of reality that they LOVE to not talk about is-how many ways to get these books at LOWER prices and not even at a comic book store.
Is that no different than me waiting till Half Price books gets a copy for $2?
Midtown Comics doing a 50-70% off one day sale?
Or wait till COmixology has the run on unlimited reading.
There are some things that can not be controlled.
Also just because 50K read the book from a pirated website-there is no PROOF that any of those would have bought the book.
Nor is the PROOF that someone who did that actually did buy the book but went there to read ahead of time until they could get their copy.