Shannon

Witch Hat Artilier did not get an official English translation for FOUR YEARS after the fan translation. The ONLY reason the series got popular enough in the west to warrant an official translation was due to interest generated from fan translations.

In Japan, you might be able to check out a new series at a manga cafe or similar environment, in a language you understand, without paying for it really. Here, we only get 1-2% of titles published and you're expected to pay for access (and some transactions that are not popular enough to warrant the effort can just be dropped). I'm sure a lot of the fans who eventually paid for manga or merchandise tied into related IP began their fandom as pirates and it's certainly one way series, and the medium in general, has grown it's audience over the years. It is a very difficult balancing act, and certainly one that is hard to reckon for companies that would like to assume that every click or pair of eyes would have been a paying customer. The truth is, if the content was not available on these sites, or somewhere with similar easy access, most folks just wouldn't bother. There's all sorts of other forms of entertainment that are happy to have that interest, even at f2p prices (who recognize the value of allowing people access to their fandoms), instead.