"If you’re worried about people pirating your short online, then the only real protection afforded to any filmmaker is making a terrible film. Nobody will care. I promise."
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. No. Pirate sites get flooded with bad films which top the charts while they're fresh. No film is safe. Pirates are also those who are the best critics, and you can easily measure how good a film is to a very wide variety of audiences by just counting the #seeders vs the time since it's been released.