How not to foster foreign relations

Does anybody remember that scene in Top Gun when Tom Cruise gives the Russian pilot the middle finger but later refers to the action as "keeping up foreign relations?"

I got served a cease-and-desist in my inbox today for a property that hasn't been licensed in my country (or anywhere outside Japan as far as I can tell). My ISP received a C&D through BayTSP - a copyright enforcement agency working for MediaFactoryINC. The file in question? A fan-subtitled video of Queen's Blade (not that it's an anime really worth writing home about). It was in my torrent over the weekend.

Everyone knows it but nobody does anything about it. Fansubs fall into that legal gray-area. If region locking is meant to control distribution, then obviously Media Factory does not want me to buy their Japanese DVDs. Fansubs as a rule are illegal, but they are also the easiest ways for fans to share properties that aren't immediately available. Now, if Media Factory were to sell the rights for overseas, distribution, then the best way to maintain foreign relations would simply be to sell the rights for an acceptable cost. Then the foreign distributor would deal with the fansubs. Most often, that is to turn around and ask the domestic fansub community to quit throwing away their property to free...

And you know what's really great about that arrangement? Often times, it works. Reputable fansub groups will stop subbing licensed properties. And trackers like Animesuki will unlist known licensed titles.

Unfortunately this isn't a perfect world we live in. Look hard enough and you will still find licensed titles floating around illegally. But that can be said of pretty much anything on the 'net. What is most unfortunate however, is the fact that MediaFactory has seen fit to enforce their international rights through a rather heavy-handed tactic... which, sadly, kind of turns me off on their stuff from now on.