Internet users who illegally downloaded episodes of the new "Fear The Walking Dead" series got notifications from AMC. No legal strings attached for the targeted file-sharers, the TV channel urges them to stop pirating. Besides, torrent sites are in the crosshairs too.

Fear The Walking Dead accounted for more than 10 million viewers and broke rating records for a series premiere. As it usually happens, this success directly translated to torrent downloads where more than a million people got the first episode quickly after its release. The TV channel couldn’t ignore this unauthorized audience and started to send out notifications to Internet service providers across the US.

AMC wants the file-sharers to remove or delete all illegally obtained copies of the series and never pirate again. The notification messages were sent through AMC’s anti-piracy partner MarkMonitor in the form of DMCA notices.

Aside from users of standard BitTorrent clients and Popcorn Time, AMC also targeted other P2P networks, including eDonkey. The notifications suggest that file-sharing can expose Internet users to great dangers, emphasizing a consumer alert issued by the US Federal Trade Commission a few years ago. The latter warned that illegal file-sharing exposed a home network to dangerous viruses, spyware and identity theft.

However, these kinds of DMCA notices are not dangerous for the file-sharers, because the copyright holder doesn’t know the identity of the alleged pirates. It looks like AMC just hopes that they will deter some from downloading future episodes. Perhaps, the company is right: some users may really panic when they see their downloads flagged.