I was very surprised to read on Slashdot about Comcast apparently sending DMCA notices to torrent users who have downloaded fansubs of certain unlicensed anime (source). People who claim that no company can send out DMCA notices for unlicensed anime are, of course, mistaken. Just because no US company is licensed to distribute a series in the US does not mean that the copyright owners (in Japan) have no legal rights in the US.
Nevertheless, I am very surprised at the tactics employed by whomever is asking Comcast to send out these notices. First, well-established anime fansub groups have thus far been very respectful of the wishes of Japanese copyright-holders of shows the groups are fansubbing. A polite letter from the anime creators to the fansubbers generally halts the fansubbing (at least by “mainstream” groups) of that particular series, or even all series from that company.
Second, unlike Hollywood movies, software, and American TV shows, the spreading of anime fansubs via BitTorrent rely almost exclusively on a small number of and easy to track down trackers and indexers. Many groups use the a.scarywater.net tracker. Others use their own trackers. Most anime torrent downloaders also get their anime from a small number of indexers, such as AnimeSuki and Baka-Updates. These sites and trackers will generally respect any takedown notice from anime copyright-holders.
It seems that a few messages to these fansub groups, anime trackers and indexers will do a LOT more to curb copyright infringement of an anime series than sending out thousands of DMCA notices to downloaders.
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