***It doesn’t matter that FUNi hasn’t released all the episodes under the sun for DC, the point of the matter is they legally own the rights for the distribution of DC *as a whole* through out North America.***
(And YES. That does include episodes you all claim they have no ownership over because they themselves haven’t released them.)
That said DCTP:
1) is not endorsed by FUNi by any stretch of the imagination and
2) not a licensed/legal re-distributor of the series. FUNi had every right to file a DCMA complaint, regardless whether they ever planned on releasing the remaining episodes or not.
E-mailing FUNi…:
1) Will not improve the situation in any way (might just make the situation WORSE)
2) goes against Jd-’s wishes and
3) is an absolutely terrible idea.
What you SHOULD do:
1) Stop complaining. It’s gone, it’s not coming back. You don’t live in North America? Oh well. A majority of us on this forum (including what I assume is a majority of the DCTP staff) do and are therefore bound by the laws.
2) Show support for the series in your home country by buying released DVDs/VHS/whatever if that is an option available to you.
3) E-mail not FUNimation, but rather legal streaming sites such as crunchyroll or Hulu to ask them about getting Case Closed for their sites. Perhaps if the streaming of the already released episodes by FUNi proves popular enough, FUNi would be willing to eventually start releasing later episodes sub-only for online viewing (akin to what they do with One Piece). It’s a long shot, but really, this would be a far better course of action than whining about how you can’t stream DC illegally anymore. :|
On a side note:
Viz Media owns the distribution rights of the manga in North America. DCTP currently removes all volumes that has been released stateside and replaces them with links to where the previous volumes can be purchased on Amazon BUT (just tossing that out there) the possibility still remains that, yeah, Viz could shut down all of DCTP if they wanted. Again, doesn’t matter that the newer volumes haven’t been released yet: Viz owns the distribution rights. DCTP does not.
Show support for the manga in your home country by purchasing volumes in your language from a primary distributor (read: book store/Amazon/insert name of online official bookstore of your choosing here) if the option if available to you. In North America, I recommend pre-ordering especially if that is an option for you. Please note that buying used volumes/pre-owned/not brand new or new but from just a random seller online will not really support the series. Yeah, you get a volume cheaper and you did technically buy a legal copy, but Viz (or whatever the distributor for your home country is) won’t get money from it.
Viz/distributor -> not getting money -> eventually decides to drop series if series doesn’t prove to be a money-maker = BAD.