Copyright infringement (DMCA) notices for unlicensed anime

[Slice of Life]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

Whoa. Looks like someone's angry.

I sure hope he knew his/her proper grammar and sentence structure, though... It's a pain in the ass to read that.

LOL. And I was expecting to read some press statement from Odex. Who needs anime when the big soap opera that is real life is so interesting.

[GriS]

Originally Posted by Ascaloth

O_O

And of course, the hacker was stupid enough to mention IRC and HTTP.....right where Stephen Sing can see it. (-_-")

They already knew about it (i.e. statement from those who met with him for settlement).

Hacking website is a silly thing, though

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by Ascaloth

O_O

And of course, the hacker was stupid enough to mention IRC and HTTP.....right where Stephen Sing can see it. (-_-")

theoretically BayTSP is only capable of tracking the UPLOADERS in the IRC and HTTP cases. And since almost all the uploaders are not living in Singapore, there is nothing Stephen Sing or Peter Go or anyone at Odex can do about them. And judging from the timing, I bet "Nanakinorashi" might have had something to do with this little prank. Let's log his IP and sent a letter to his ISP! Just for the irony of it!

[X10A_Freedom]

Originally Posted by NanakiNoRashi

Sadly no relevant email transfer concerning baytsp could be secured

O_O...

[Green²]

Originally Posted by dodgethis_sg

Let's just say reading anything by the reporter leaves a sour taste in my mouth after looking at what articles she had written in the past.

But it's not presented such as something of FoxNoise material. Take the pictures in the paper for example... As FoxNoise would likely put it, as from left to right would be:

A great big nuclear bomb blowing the shit out of everything.
A blood stained white flag.
And last, Haruhi bringing destruction to the WTC.

And question marks? Get the $^%& out of here... Change that shit to explanation points! And then spice up the article with mention of terrorism, gays, and Britney Spears. That then only helping to generate more reaction from what everyone now assumes is a bay porn site. ...And more paper sales in the process.

[Saleh]

I certainly hope that things won't escalate any further than this. Sadly, defacing Odex was possibly one of worst moves atm.

[GHDpro]

Okaaay, concerning this post:

Originally Posted by NanakiNoRashi

Hey,
I just thought I'd inform you that your all time favorite anime vendor has been 0wn3d. Sadly no relevant email transfer concerning baytsp could be secured
However the hackers made it clear that corporate bastards like odex will NOT destroy our community.
Fight Back!

[standard disclaimer]

Just for the record, let me make one thing very clear: as admin & owner of AnimeSuki and creator of this thread I must note that I nor any of the AnimeSuki staff & moderators (that I know of) had anything to do with this hack, nor do I condone it, etc.

I'm not against taking action against Odex in some way (like boycotting their products etc), but defacing their website is certainly not the way to do it, IMHO.

[/standard disclaimer]

[DarkMirage]

Originally Posted by WanderingKnight

Whoa. Looks like someone's angry.

I sure hope he knew his/her proper grammar and sentence structure, though... It's a pain in the ass to read that.

Definitely Singaporean. The server is hosted by Pacific Internet too. (Intentional?) Going to receive a visit from the police soon, I guess.

Originally Posted by Ascaloth

O_O

And of course, the hacker was stupid enough to mention IRC and HTTP.....right where Stephen Sing can see it. (-_-")

As if Odex doesn't already know. Some of its employees are the most hardcore fansub watchers I know.

[mt-i]

Originally Posted by DarkMirage

In fact, there's really nothing wrong with the facts in this particular article.

Well, it mentions bikasuishin.org as a "popular anime blog." That's some lousy fact-checking

[NanakiNoRashi]

Originally Posted by GriS

Hacking website is a silly thing, though

No doubt that it's a silly thing.

However when you (or your parents) get a letter from odex, mentioning that you have to pay a lot of money for something that you used to do every day.
When you stand then in front of your parents you loose lots of things.
You loose the trust in your ISP.
You even loose the trust in your legal system.
And maybe you loose the ability to decide what silly is and what not.
Or maybe you think that just boycotting them is not enough and want to do something.

[bayoab]

I am wondering if other ISPs ever got the notices and discarded them on seeing they were from singapore or not. I have a theory on why only comcast but I cannot find a list of which ISPs own which /17 and /20 netblocks.

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

theoretically BayTSP is only capable of tracking the UPLOADERS in the IRC and HTTP cases. And since almost all the uploaders are not living in Singapore, there is nothing Stephen Sing or Peter Go or anyone at Odex can do about them.

Without packet sniffing somewhere in the way of the bot, yes. It is impossible* to detect downloaders on IRC unless the bot is faked. (They could easily put up a fake bot with real files.) HTTP has other issues like C&D'ing the host provider for logs.

*If they get a packet shaper anywhere in the middle of the transaction on either side, it would be easily detectable.

[valet]

Problem is, you don't 'get' somebody by hacking their website. In the case of Odex and BayTSP, bad press and humiliation were the perfect retribution, and most anybody who reads about it in the news will come off thinking that they acted incompetently. Now that they've had their site defaced, they look like the victims of a bunch of unruly pirate hackers. Seriously, if this sort of thing actually worked, Microsoft would have died off in the late part of the 90s.

No matter how frustrating they are, it's a shame to see this kind of response. No points awarded.

[Calawain]

Originally Posted by hobbes_fan

Walk away. It's the only way. I don't think anyone here has not bought anime dvd's/merchandise, but it's not like the process was easy or affordable particularly if it was unlicensed.

Season 5 of 24 boxset (7 dvd's aired jan-may 2006, boxset release december 2006 ) = $50 Aud
GITS: SAC 2nd gig (aired in 2004-05, dvd release in Aus 2007)= $120 AUD
Macross: DYRL 2 hour Movie, raw no subs unlicensed or rather licensing is a mess = Cost me close to $150 AUD to import. Plus the time I had to spend get a translation.

I'm lucky that I got to see GITS on Cable, but to ask me to pay that sight unseen: get real. DYRL that's a price gouge, as much as I love it though, I was definitely ripped off. But even then I saw this on VHS fansub in the early 90's. I already had a hard time paying this and I love this franchise, but if I had never seen it get real: not paying that and I'm definitely not doing the paperwork again to import that sight unseen. What 20 year old 2hr movie in the west costs $100USD? None.

24 seen on tv allowing me to become a fan, per episode the best value around $2.00 per episode. Let's look at entertainment in general, series shown on tv, music radio airplay/MTV, what's the similarity? costs nothing to become a fan. Anime seems to be the only genre that charges people to become fans. Now I'm lucky and can afford those prices, but asking the demographic of anime watchers (late teens/college students) in the west to pay those prices sight unseen for a product that has had much of the hype disappear because of almost a 3 year delay is a big ask.

Just walk away guys, it's not worth the heartache of potential lawsuits. You all seem to be young with your lives ahead of you. A criminal conviction and a mountain of debt is not worth it particularly when no one seems to care about us the viewer. No-one wants to listen to our needs. People want to buy their product I sure as hell would rather have something to hold than some files on a HDD. Maybe then they'll listen when no-one cares about their product anymore

Whoa whoa whoa, hold your horses here.

1) Downloading anime does not in any way lead to a criminal conviction. Please keep in mind the difference between a civil suit and a criminal indictment. Copyright/trademark/etc violations of this nature are civil cases, which means if you lose you owe them money, that's it.

2) Anime is a niche market, of course it's going to cost more than 24. The producers of 24 have millions pouring in from TV deals and commercials, the DVD sales serve to make a little money on the side and to get people to watch the show on TV. Anime is primarily a DVD profit zone that serves a much much much smaller audience, so of course it costs more. While I really can't speak for the Australian import costs, that's just the consequence of having so few fans of something in your country maybe?

3) And last time I checked, watching a show on cable costs money, so yeah, watching a show on TV "costs something to be a fan." My cable bill is 50 bucks per month, dunno about yours.

4) I really don't see what's wrong with paying for a show to be stored on your HDD, that's what fansubs are right? If you want it on DVD you pay more per episode because it's a higher quality. Actually, you can currently buy some already licensed anime shows that are medium quality from Viz, ADV, and Funimation, although the selection so far is limited. What that needs to progress to is offering it downloadable as it airs, and subtitled.

[Impz]

well, the odex site is getting fixed now, i think.

Anyway, I laughed when I was surfing around bored, and posted the image up on my own blog.

For those who sadly cannot see the image, you can check out the image here.

Darkmirage also has his entry about it earlier (i didn't notice :P)

[mist2123]

WTF that dude just pissed ODEX and they might really BECOME serious about this. (Guess those hardcore Fans w/ hackings skills are preparing for war)

[minhtam1638]

Originally Posted by mist2123

WTF that dude just pissed ODEX and they might really BECOME serious about this. (Guess those hardcore Fans w/ hackings skills are preparing for war)

I think some people are already at war right now... expect this to become a huge problem for both Japan and the United States.

[WolfCoder]

What an insane fool! That's it, let's run for the safe IRC tunnels! I'm getting out of here, the internet is a battlezone!

[mt-i]

Originally Posted by Calawain

1) Downloading anime does not in any way lead to a criminal conviction. Please keep in mind the difference between a civil suit and a criminal indictment. Copyright/trademark/etc violations of this nature are civil cases, which means if you lose you owe them money, that's it.

That's usually the case in Common law jurisdictions (although the WTO TRIPS treaty does require a measure of criminal liability for breaches of intellectual property rights), but there are countries such as France where any kind of copyright infringement is actually a criminal offence (punishable of 3 year imprisonment and fines of up to €300,000). The IP lobbies are pushing similar policies everywhere they can (see e.g. the EU IPRED2 proposal).

[chiyoko]

Originally Posted by GHDpro

Over the past few days some disturbing news has reached the AnimeSuki email box: it seems several Comcast (an US internet provider) users have received DMCA notices for unlicensed anime. It seems there might be some fact to the news reported in the Japan Asks America to Stop Illegal Net Releases of Anime thread after all.

So far DMCA notices have been reported involving the following anime (Japanese anime studios in parenthesis) [fansubgroup in brackets]:
- Suteki Tantei Labyrinth (Studio Deen) [OOM]
- Gundam 00 (Sunrise / Mainichi Broadcasting) [Conclave/Mendoi]
- Seto no Hanayome (AIC / avex / Gonzo) [?]
- Nagasarete Airantou (feel / Starchild) [Ayako]
- Shugo Chara! (Satelight) [Raw]
- Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai (Studio Deen) [Philantrophy]

As you can see there is no real pattern, other than that the anime was unlicensed and the people who received the notices were Comcast users.

See update below the quoted section -- it's no longer just Comcast users getting these notices.

I wonder if this is a trend, so I'd like to ask if anyone else has received a DMCA or similar copyright infringement notice from their ISP or third party recently for downloading anime in the US or Europe?

Forum member aldraek's thread about this issue was deleted because he misinterpreted the notice as a the series being licensed (which is possible, but seems terribly unlikely considering not all of the series seem like likely license candidates to me). Here is the contents of his post, which shows how the DMCA notices look like:


Update November 19:
A new report has come in where BayTSP sent a copyright infringement notice to a downloader in France (who was downloading French fansub of what I presume was an unlicensed series in France). BayTSP is a copyright enforcement company btw, that does the detective work for their "clients".

Update: to be precise, the original notice from BayTSP got forwarded by the French ISP to their customer, unlike the Comcast notices where they reformatted the information. BayTSP is not sending these notices directly to users, as BayTSP only knows the IP of the users they "caught", not their email address.

The interesting bit however is that the notice also includes on whose behalf they're sending their notices, which (as had been suspected) appears to be Odex (Singapore), which had also recently taken action against downloaders in their own country. Why Odex is now targeting international downloaders is a bit of a mystery considering international sales should be negligible for them.

Here is an overview of series mentioned in the BayTSP notices (which mention Odex):
- Ouran High School Host Club (BONES) [Nerae - French] (Licensed in US, but not in France?)
- Shugo Chara! (Satelight) [Formula] (see this post)
- Nagasarete Airantou (feel / Starchild) [?]
- Claymore (Madhouse / avex / AVP) [Eclipse]
- Shakugan no Shana II (J.C. Staff) [Eclipse]

Update November 20:
While I'm not sure how reliable this news is exactly, one visitor indicated that (again as had been suggested) it may have been BayTSP that has gone beyond what they were instructed to do by Odex by sending out notices globally, and not Odex themselves ordering them to do so specifically. This could be very good news: if Odex "fixes" this by asking BayTSP to stick to Singapore only, this means international fansub downloaders (outside Singapore) should once again be pretty safe. Of course for some the "damage" may already have been done.

Update November 21 - The Conclusion!
The news above has now been officially confirmed by Singaporean newspaper The New Paper who contacted Odex and BayTSP about the issue. Sending notices to downloaders outside Singapore was a mistake on the part of BayTSP. Read the full article here: http://www.darkmirage.com/blog/wp-co...1_odex_lol.jpg (courtesy of DarkMirage).
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.
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is there any way you guys could email me ANY new links or news or ANYTHING on the matter of the mistake? if you could get an email address of someone who actually is responsible for those stupid apology letters that would be great, too. I'm currently fighting my school's DMCA over the matter, who is not only undereducated about the matter, but demands some sort of hardcore proof that he or she is an absolute moron.
thanks guys!!

[Zeroryoko1974]

carry on, false alarm. Resume downloading (like anyone stopped )