I can vouch for the irc method -- although much 
of the work done by groups doing digital fansubs 
finds its way onto various filesharing services, 
they tend to release what they do on IRC.  To add 
to the benefit of getting things sooner, it's 
also much easier to "queue" large numbers of 
files to download.  The downside to this is of 
course the learning curve, and the fact that (if 
you're really obsessive about it) you can wind up 
spending 2-3 hours queueing files 2-3 times per 
day.  Trust me though, it's well worth it all 
when you've got an all day stream of 15-20 
episodes of anime yet-to-be-released downloading 
@ 10-20 kb/s each.

Of course, I'm on a co-op at the moment & even 
though I have dsl, I haven't downloaded anything 
in over a month & my 1,000 or so cds of anime are 
now in the custody of my sister (who coincidently 
has become quite popular with friends online).