UPDATE 20/11/2007: Note to foreign readers. This article is about Odex’s local copyright enforcement actions that took place in Singapore in mid 2007. This is not directly related to its latest international efforts. Please refer to here for discussions on the latest development.
Here is my summary of what I think of Odex’s grand scheme to dominate the local market in one daring move, and why I think they will fail terribly and spoil it for the rest of us. As some of you may or may not know, I met with Peter Go, director of Odex, twice before and had some discussions with him long before the start of the on-going fiasco (after he read my letter). At that time, I promised him that I would not reveal anything that was said during our private conversations, so I shall honour that promise. Not that I have a need to, now that Odex has shown its hand and everything has been made public. Anyway, just hoping to clear up some FUDs that have been making their rounds in every single forum thread on the topic.
Anti-Video Piracy Association of Singapore (AVPAS) is not affliated to the government.
Never was, never will be.
Odex is the sole active member of AVPAS.
Although Odex is inconspicuously in the middle of the member list of AVPAS, it is not too much a stretch to say that AVPAS is essentially Odex and not much more. Basically it’s like how music labels use RIAA to redirect the bad publicity away from their brand names, except that Odex is failing horribly at it because they were too lazy to create a letterhead for AVPAS and decided to use their own instead. Big mistake.
Odex is not, and has never been, the dominant proliferator of anime in Singapore.
They may be the one with all the licensing rights, but exponential growth of anime’s popularity seen locally was not their doing. Odex VCDs and DVDs have never received the level of acceptance and respect given to R1 DVDs by the American anime community. With or without BitTorrent.
Odex employees download fansubs.
According to various personal blogs belonging to related individuals. Or just common sense. I mean, the only reason why those people are working for Odex is because they are anime viewers. Where do almost all Singaporean fans get their anime fix from? Hint: it ain’t packaged in silver. Are their employees being issued similar letters?
Not all the AVPAS titles are licensed for local distribution.
Although Odex is the only active member of AVPAS, it does have the consent of the Japanese studios to act on behalf of them. Odex is empowered, through its own creation AVPAS, to defend the copyrights of these studios, whether or not the works in question are licensed for distribution by Odex. This can be said to be very unfair because many of the items are not legally available in Singapore except through expensive parallel importing and the actual damages done by illegal downloading to Odex’s business is therefore zero for these particular titles. Still, it appears that Odex does indeed have the right to represent the interest of those Japanese studios and thus it is within their abilities to sue for certain titles that they do not hold the distribution rights for.
The Japanese studios are not directly involved.
As far as I can tell, the Japanese studios did not initiate this. They probably do not care about what Odex does since Singapore is an insignificant market to them. From what little information is available, it appears that AVPAS was created initially to target commercial bootlegging, for example in 2004 they won a case against a local retail chain to raid their warehouse. This suggests that the Japanese studios authorized Odex to represent their interests so as to fight what they perceive to be commercial piracy. Whether or not this authorization is now being misused by Odex for their own agendas is highly questionable.
Odex did not send any warnings.
When a local blogger first mentioned in passing that Odex was going to take legal actions, they denied it and refused to comment on it. Then one day the letters started flying out of the blue and immediately started to demand money. This really makes one question Odex’s intention.
As a private entity, Odex cannot file a criminal suit.
Although they mentioned “fines of $10,000 per item and imprisonment of 5 years” in their letter, Odex can do nothing of that sort. They can launch a civil suit against you and if they win they can claim damages incurred. But they cannot force the relevant authorities to press criminal charges against you. That is up to the government to decide.
Neither can Odex prevent any criminal charges.
Even if you pay Odex their $3,000 or so, there is nothing to stop the government from pressing criminal charges against you. Copyright infringement is a criminal offence in Singapore. Odex can do nothing to interfere with that. In fact, even if they promise not to sue you themselves, there is nothing that legally prevents them from reporting you to the relevant authorities. In fact, it would be illegal for them to make such a promise.
Odex claims $3,000-$5,000 settlement is for legal and tracking fees.
With 1,000 subpoenaed IP addresses per ISP for SingNet, Starhub and PacNet, we end up with exactly 3,000 IP addresses being affected. Let’s very generously estimate that PacNet manages to appeal successfully and protect the identity of its subscribers and that 1/3 of the addresses are either duplicates (due to dynamic IP assignment) or otherwise unsuitable for Odex’s purpose (e.g. employees, friends and/or relatives). We are still left with about 1,300 or so targets. Let’s assume that everyone only has to pay, on average, $3,000. That is a total of 3.9 million dollars we are talking about, and that is the low end assumption. It can potentially be twice as much if you change a few variables.
According to this The New Paper article, Odex enlisted the help of a US company in tracking BitTorrent downloads. It doesn’t take 3.9 million dollars to run a bunch of servers to auto-scrape at regular intervals every torrent file posted on AnimeSuki and TokyoTosho using their RSS feeds. As for legal fees, Odex mailed their letter using their own letterhead and, from the accounts of people who received the letter, there is no indication that a lawyer was present during their meetings with Odex representatives. Which means that Odex only had to pay for at most legal advices, if anything at all. Certainly not worth 3.9 million dollars.
All that money has to go somewhere. I wonder where…
Odex has already paid all the necessary fees.
At least, that seems to be a logical assumption, since people don’t work for free. In other words, Odex created this elaborate scheme to instil fear, uncertainty and doubt into fansub downloaders, but they don’t want to have to pay for it themselves. So now they are asking you to pay up. They want to have your cake and eat it too. Also, what happens when they have collected enough to make back their original investment? I doubt it was anything more than $100,000, unless people really do pay millions(!?) of dollars for someone to scrape torrent trackers, in which case I shall end my rant here because I have a company to start up. After making back their investment, will Odex cease this futile fear mongering or will they earn some profits while they are at it? Have they already earned back their investment? I think there are a lot of questions in this area that need answering.
Odex does not have a foolproof case in court.
There is little precedence to work with, but there are many holes in their argument. The only evidence they have of your infringement is the IP address, which may not be enough. Various people have also reported that they were turned away when they went to talk to Odex with a lawyer, which is an indication that Odex is uncertain about the validity of its claims. At least one person was advised by his lawyer to ignore the letter and delete all the things he downloaded. So far Odex has not taken any actions against him. If more people refuse to pay up, Odex may be forced to either sue someone to make an example of him or to give up on this whole endeavour. If they do sue, there is no guarantee of victory and it is very hard to guess how much damages the court will award even if they win. It may even be less than $3,000-$5,000.
You are not guilty until proven so in court.
You are not obligated to show anything to Odex just because they send you a letter. You do not have to admit to anything and you should not incriminate yourself. Ask them for all the evidence they have against you. Ask them to explain clearly how each piece of evidence proves their claims. Ask them for a breakdown of the payment and why the amount varies from person to person, especially since they claim that it is supposed to be for the fees they have incurred. Do not sign anything. Seek legal advice if possible.
Odex is attempting to launch a Video-On-Demand service.
Prevent people from downloading and then launch their own service. It seemed like the perfect plan. Unfortunately, it was delayed (perhaps indefinitely), leaving people with nothing but an empty “under construction” page. Also, consider the next point…
The Odex brand is permanently tainted.
Who is going to utilize a VOD service if Odex does manage to get it up eventually? The same teenage anime fans that are defacing pictures of Stephen Sing, the other director of Odex, on HWZ now? Somehow, I don’t think so. Mr. Peter Go also mentioned in the TNP article that Odex sales fell 50% in 2006. Well, who’s taking bets for 2007? In the unlikelihood that sales actually improve, it can only be attributed to market demands generated by certain pyrotechnic displays. Seriously, I have bought Odex VCDs before and now I won’t ever again. How exactly was this supposed to be a response to poor sales again?
My General Paper teacher read about this in the papers and he thinks that Odex is just being greedy.
This is the first time my teacher has heard of Odex. His opinion is that if Odex was really working for the public good, they should have given sufficient prior warnings. It’s very sad when such an unpleasant undertaking becomes your company’s sole source of publicity for most of the population who has, until now, been completely oblivious to your existence. Contrary to the popular old saying, there is such a thing as bad publicity, especially when you are trying to sell something.
Most other forms of downloading are not affected.
HTTP, FTP, IRC, video streaming sites and a whole lot more. BitTorrent just so happens to be easily monitored due to every torrent file having its own tracker and swarm. But no US company is going to be able to log your HTTP downloads without violating some much more serious laws. While P2P file-sharing networks are vulnerable, they are much less so than BitTorrent due to the different nature in file distribution. Ultimately, this crackdown will only serve to increase the popularity of crunchyroll and similar video streaming sites, which is indeed a terrible prospect for those of us who somewhat value video quality, but does nothing for Odex’s stated goal of fighting illegal downloads.
Well, that’s a lot of typing. Maybe I’ll update this when I think of more things.
can someone enlighten me on whether downloading of japanese drama is illegal???
WKSim,
wat’s yr status?
http://www.todayonline.com/articles/207450.asp
ANIME distributor Odex had “no right of civil action†against illegal downloaders because it was just a sub-licensee — not the copyright owner or exclusive licensee — for most of the anime titles sold here.
.
Odex appeared to be the exclusive licensee for just one title, Mobile Suit Gundam Seed, the judge added.
.
.
Noting that the firm was also in no position to initiate criminal prosecution, District Judge Earnest Lau — who on Thursday ordered Odex to pay legal costs of more than $7,000 — expressed unease over the hasty manner in which Odex tried to go after some 1,000 PacNet subscribers.
.
.
But the judge said Odex director Peter Go — who filed the affidavit — had “no proof†that his firm had engaged the services of BayTSP in this matter, and neither did Bay-TSP give evidence in favour of Odex.
So up to $5k compensation for investigation fees were again another big fat lie! Surely filing for court order to force ISP to reveal names and appeal don’t amount to a million dollars.
Sorry just came back from a chalet..heard that pacnet won their case. i haven been thinking much bout it this 2 days.
Anime case: Odex had ‘no right of civil action’
http://www.todayonline.com/articles/207450.asp
And with this ends the story? no one knows… LOL
well with this tells me we can still keep downloading anime XD (kanna letter just tear) or will Mr ODEX run crying to those japan company?
WoW Singnet failed to turn up lmao. owned me straight. Anyway now i know i dun haf to pay them…but do i still need to find them to settle things?
those that with letter from odex or already paid can use to sued back odex . don’t tear the letter . the letter can now be consider as black mail (cause without any legal rights)
time to digg out money from odex
LOL i guess odex will go bankrupt after all… well only time will tell
I read the straits time on sat and found out that Singnet revealed customers detail without any qualm. I felt a sense of betrayal by this company. Ya i know Singnet is linked to the government body but it should be pretty much privatized to be more concerned abt its customers’ rights than the legal rights?
OH ya btw i did receive the odex love letter and i questioned abt the actual occurance of the court case so I called up Singnet to check with them. To my surprise, the higher management replied to me they nv disclose my particulars to the company named Odex AND THEY WILL NV DISCLOSE ANY INFORMATION of their customers. Funny isn’t it?
Man.. I switched from starhub to singnet only to find that their technical supports were inferior and now even their treatments too.
Now I need to plan on jumping too
hey holyshit what do u plan to do about the letter we’re on the same boat.
WJSim & Holyshit read this article if u haven’t
http://www.todayonline.com/articles/207450.asp
odex loss the rights to actually sued anyone or getting any information from isp . if you believe that your ISP reveal your information to odex , then you can make complain to your isp to force them to take legal action on odex.
keep the letter . it may useful to get some compensation from odex.
Yes i knw about it. Reason i haven really done anything is because they still have a chance to appeal.
Hi There!
I am back from my eat and drink with my Police friend. Since the last time I comment here, got quite a few emails send to me to ask my friend. I do not know how they got my emails. I was at Lai Garden at Chimes having a interesting conversation with him. I was told that since Singapore Law cannot have proxies. Meaning ODEX cannot represent the Oversea Parties to sue, unless they have a Local Branch or office with the same company, all else what they reported “Copyright Owners” or “Exclusive Rights”, they cannot proceed with the law suits. Second, the Police aren’t gonna to issue them warrants to search because under the terms of seeking the IP from the ISP, “SingTel” or “StarHub”, they cannot use it for criminal proceeding, but only for Civil Lawsuits. Since there no proxies allow, means they cannot ask you for any monies. They cannot do anything to you. but if you pay up, there will be proof that they are extorting monies from you, “BLACKMAIL”. Presently, the Police cannot investigate because no one reported any case. So Ladies and Gentleman, please do your part if you all wanna ends this fiasco.
Odex is sinking
Holyshit
So how? What are your plans?
So at the end Singtel did reveal yr IP la…
Please enlighten me.
Singnet definitely did! Or else how did Odex get to know my name. NRIC, home address etc?
The funny thing is not even the higher management party knows about this and they reassured me that singnet would nv betray customers’ identity. It seems that the chain of order at singnet is very disrupted, or maybe someone in singnet were in conspiracy with Odex, you know, something like the NKF scandal with the architecture stuff?
Ok anyway I did have a voice recording of the service staff whom assured me this. So wat is the confusion here??
Well…I guess we have to suck thumb for all stinknetters…
Someone with the letter wanna try going to the police station and report a blackmail? Hopefully eveyone hu has a letter does… LOL
the reaction of singnet is understandable , this is because singnet now in very bad position because of odex lost the case. if odex appeal and lost , this will become worst for singnet cause this mean they indirect help in crime by revealing customer information (this also mean they breaking end user agreement ) . if this happen someone in singnet will have to take this responsible . on the other hand if singnet announce publicly that they never reveal the information and if odex win the appeal , that mean all letter that odex send can be consider as void in laws. by then singnet will also have to take responsible .
either way , singnet in really bad situation now .
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Look at this
http://www.todayonline.com/pdf_main.asp?pubdate=20070827
The revelation of the BayTSP charge only $25per month for 100 images.
It doesnt cost more then 3k even for 1000 images. does they need to show their intention this clear?
Anyone know what will happen to Starhub user since they have alreadly lost.
Will XedO still carry on with the “Love Letter”?
lol….Odex is trying to self-pwn themselves…Slow and steady win the race :D
Hahaha…AnimeFreak!!!, sounds like some game with 4 different endings. Someone should start doing a mini flash game regarding Odex XD as our way of saying “thanks you enlightened my life my intruding my privacy where other investigaters stand beyond that boundary”. I prefer another alternate ending, some random businessman appears and starts to build a company to take advantage of the situation only to be found out, it’s one of Odex’s followers =^__^= Meow~!
@Yan: lol the chance of someone coming out and take advantage of the frasico is 0%
even if there is… it’s gonna close down shop after a few month… nyaa~
Sad isn’t it? Everyone loves a Hero but none dare to made a Police Report. Death threat and so forth. Talk here, reasons there but none got the bravado to come out and point the finger at the Old Lamer. Destroy DVD, Black Ribbons but when come to made police report, all like turtles hiding in their shell. Maybe we could called it “Turtles in the Shell”. Be very scare, the old lamer is getting you. Please, the police wouldn’t eat you up, they are very helpful persons. The police knows the youngsters are having a hell of a nightmares, and they wanna help. Please do your part.
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most people are waiting for the result of the appeal before making any move.
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Okay, I seriously think that if Odex wants to gain more customers, they should upgrade their product rather than crack down on illegal downloaders. I mean, Odex stuff is overpriced(60bucks for 12VCDs aint exactly cheap) and their sub quality is bullshit…this is just going to get bad publicity for themselves and nothing else zzz
Do they count foreign student? because i’m a foreign student and have many Gb anime… from torrent
I am sorry….. guess you will be included.
claymore safe for download ?
Probably, it’s not on the AVPAS list of Authorized titles anyway.
why not boycott singnet as well ? XD
surely they know they are as good as tearing the contract apart when they give your names…they are not suppose to give away customer private information… in the case of starhub and pacfic its different couse they has gone to court and did what they could
This is the first time but I just realised that I have been coming to this site during this “crisis” and not posted a word yet. Anyway, to botcott Singnet or Odex is up to one’s own decision. Personally, I think the only one who needs getting botcotted is Odex. (Don’t follow me just because I said so as I am very biased…against them that is.) Either way, Odex has not made any significant movements in Singapore of late. I think they are finally getting what they deserved. But whatever you guys out there do, don’t send them a death threat. The death penalty or life imprisonment is not worth it for them. Btw, I am from SG too.
Just out of curiosity, right now, most people are hammering Odex because the judge ruled that they did not have the right to pursue offenders..
Wonder what people will say, now that 3 big anime companies are supporting Odex? In other words, people can no longer use their previous excuse, now that Odex has the backing and support of the original copyright owners.
As for those people who want their money back after finding out, I wonder what they might say IF the judge rules that all reimbursement are to be handed to the rightful copyright owner instead to the “victims”. After all, they DID infringed the companies’ IP. Wonder if all the howls about Odex making money through settlements will stop? Or will people come up with new excuses that seeks to put anime companies in a bad light instead?
Still, I think Odex is a horrible company. Bad quality, bad pricing, slow releases… they should get locked up for the crappy products they produce.
Umm… Excuse me but are you sure you are not one of the secret Odex lovers (employee) cause your stand seriously makes you look like that. This being said is to no offence, of course.
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