The french comic pirate scene has an interesting rule where they keep a ~6 month time lag on what they release. The scene is small enough that the rule generally works.
It's a really good trade-off. I would never have gotten into these comics without piracy but now if something catches my eye, I don't mind buying on release (and stripping the DRM for personal use).
Most of my downloading is closer to collecting/hoarding/cataloguing behaviour but if I fully read something I enjoy, I'll support the author in some way.
So copyright just with a shorter time limit?
The fact is that those comics are sometimes not available AT ALL anywhere apart from eBay (or equivalent). It is alreadu VERY tricky to learn that those items exist. And then, determining their value for you is simply not possible without those kind of "alternative" delivery solutions [aka piracy].
Are there any links you could share for.. ..ehm.. ..research purposes?
I've downloaded a few from yggtorrent, but there might be some more niche/less public sites I'm not aware of
You were not supposed to spoil the website behind my #WONTTELL hashtag ;)