If you are creating something on which your livelihood depends, do so ‘under a promise of financial reward’. It would be foolish to do otherwise, isn't it?
But if you choose to publicly distribute your work—accept inevitable risks. Don't like that—go get a real job. You can do contract work writing music, or doing illustration / design.
More generally, if you want to be paid then do work under a contract. There are many cases where you will willingly accept promise of financial reward - look no further than Y Combinator - but you're a fool if you don't accept the risks or pretend you should be immune to the illegal actions (rather than seeking compensation after the fact, anyway).
Even in something like retail, your product can be stolen and there's no guarantee you'll get recompense. Yet laws regarding shoplifting have remained rather constant and non-draconian in all that time. The problem with the internet is that it's all too easy to get something without paying for it, but people all-too-often forget that the benefit of the internet is that nobody can deprive you of your goods (bandwidth notwithstanding).
Yeah, piracy sucks, but look at what other sectors of the economy have to deal with. Risk's everywhere; deal with it.
Another comment on HN[0] said it better, by citing Francis Ford Coppola:
> "We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it’s only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.
> This idea of Metallica or some rock n’ roll singer being rich, that’s not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I’m going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?
> In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you’d be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, “Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money.” Because there are ways around it."
But if you choose to publicly distribute your work—accept inevitable risks. Don't like that—go get a real job. You can do contract work writing music, or doing illustration / design.