Personally I don't think POD is good for the independent author, too much of it is authors publishing before they are ready and it buries the minority who are ready and just taking a different path, a great many readers seem to completely ignore self published authors because of it. The more traditional path of starting out with short stories in journals and the like gives the writer a chance to hone their skills, get feedback, and make contacts in the industry, skipping this seems like a huge loss for the writer.

POD is getting pretty good and it has enabled a great deal of specialty books to stay in print, Princeton and Cambridge have gone heavily into POD and both have good quality, I have a few ~1000 books from them which have held up very well. There is a good amount of garbage quality POD out there from what I have seen, but there is also a good amount of garbage traditional printing out there so I am not sure this means anything, finding well made books is easier for the reader with the traditional options.

I would enjoy finding my books being counterfeited, I doubt I am even on libgen or the like yet. I have never gotten a counterfeited book that I am aware of.