I am dealing with this almost daily.
To your question: " is there another way?" My experience is no, unless you have a relative from the Corleone family and give them an offer they cannot refuse, or see my comment in 3) below regarding Federal judgement.
To your question : Is it effective? My answer is yes, but with following caveats.
1) you need to have a proper takedown notice with ALL DCMA required info.
2) the site can be anywhere ( even in Russia) as long as the hosting company/ server is in USA or EU. They usually do not respond to the first take down notice, but once the hosting company is cc'd its gone the next day and on the next pass ( new pirated content) its usually quick. We have actually converted a couple of pirates into Affiliates.
3) unfortunately the biggest pirates in the world are ( and in this order): Amazon, E Bay and Youtube.... They ask for a Federal judgement or similar crap. Now tell me who out of adult producers can hire a law firm in Delaware to issue an injunction only to be appealed? Can you "spell" several 100's of thousand dollars per case?
A) with Amazon we threaten the suppliers to the Amazon retailers usually with 50/50 success/ failure rate.
B) E Bay ditto as Amazon
C) Youtube? No luck with their DMCA department, they will find an error with your form 1000x over, but just report the video to their "morality policing" department that the video exploits / insults women, African Americans, Jews etc....and its gone the next day...
