This recent news bit from Anime News Network, got my attention:

Funimation has sent a cease and desist letters regarding fansubs of number of titles that had not previously been associated with Funimation. These titles are XXXholic TV, Ragnarok The Animation, Mushishi, Suzuka, Sakura Taisen: Le Nouveau Paris and ATASHIn’CHI (Not clear if the C&D refers to the Movie, TV series, or both).

At this time we have not been able to receive an official comment from Funimation regarding these titles. In the past, when Funimation has sent out C&D letters, they have informed us that the letters did not necessarily mean that Funimation had acquired rights to the properties in question.

Now normally when a company licenses a title the good fansub groups stop subbing and distributing the title without even getting a cease and desist letter. Additionally many of the main anime torrent trackers, such as Scarywater, remove any existing torrents from their sites as well. Funimation, however, doesn’t seem to understand this, or perhaps just doesn’t want to understand it. They’ve done this at least once before that I’m aware of, in December of 2005. The actual news item for it is on this page and it says:

Funimation recently informed fansub group Shinsen-Subs, “We own or control various exclusive copyrights and trademarks related to the animated motion pictures, including but not limited to, the series known as “Speed Grapher,” “Trinity Blood,” “FullMetal Alchemist,” “Dragon Ball,” “Solty Rei” a.k.a. “Origin,” “Detective Conan” a.k.a. “Case Closed,” and “Tsubasa”.” This was after Funimation had contacted the registrar for Shinsen-subs domain name, resulting in the registrar, Joker.com, freezing the domain name. Solty Rei and Tsubasa have not yet been announced for release by Funimation.

Read on for my thoughts on this whole thing.
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