Copyright infringement (DMCA) notices for unlicensed anime

[Calawain]

I finally have time to let off here, so long post ahead that summarizes most points.

1) As many have discussed, a DMCA does not mean you are about to get sued or that you owe any money. Whoever generated the notice only knows your IP address (it's really easy to pull up a torrent and find tons of IP addresses, and then send thousands of notices out to their ISPs), your ISP will not release your personal information without a court order. And in the US the chance of this happening in this particular instance approaches zero. Currently the RIAA is struggling to get this type of information released and they have the law on their side (it's very simple to see that you upload a song that's owned by Sony) and tons of money to throw at it.

2) The DMCA itself smells shady, not listing the copyright holder does not bode well. In order to send the notice you have to have the right to act on the holder's behalf legally through an agreement. In the US no one company would own the rights to any of these materials (in fact none of them have been licensed AFAIK) and so far Odex does not own the rights to all of these either. Some vague contract giving them the right to act to protect copyrights does not translate into such a right to pursue these claims in courts. US courts will not entertain suits unless they specifically are authorized to act as the legal agent of a corporation.

3) Even assuming they get the personal information of someone (which as noted before, is legally suspect and very expensive for a foreign company), the chance of a downloader getting sued is nil. In order for this to happen they would either 1) need to pursue an original claim in US courts, a very expensive process which will need to be fully litigated because of the many issues to be decided, or 2) win a default judgment in a Singaporean suit and try to get it enforced state side. Number 2 is even less likely, foreign entities have an extremely low success rate in getting a judgment enforced here mostly because of personal jurisdiction and public policy reasons. If you want a good explanation the wikipedia article on enforcing foreign judgments is actually well done. I could spend awhile discussing personal jurisdiction and the other exceptions but that would take too much time atm.

4) Comcast is engaged in shady business lately with their attempts to throttle bandwidth, much of which has been discussed by the slashdot types. No point in going into it, but their various traffic shaping and packet forging attempts have gotten them in trouble with the FCC and are being targeted by lawsuits.

5) Moral of the story- don't use BitTorrent naked, use PeerGuardian if you must use torrents. Otherwise use DDL and IRC.

6) Conclusion- basically this all boils down to Odex spending a small amount of money to try and scare the hell out of people. It costs them very little to do this, and look at all the attention it gets. So basically, don't panic, and if you get a notice, laugh at them until you receive a notice from a US court.

[Geass]

Originally Posted by Calawain

6) Conclusion- basically this all boils down to Odex spending a small amount of money to try and scare the hell out of people. It costs them very little to do this, and look at all the attention it gets. So basically, don't panic, and if you get a notice, laugh at them until you receive a notice from a US court.

I agree. Personally, I don't think this "crackdown" will last for very long, especially with Odex being behind it.

[Avatar_notADV]

In the US, they definitely do respect the second-tier rights-holder; that's what US anime companies are, after all!

The real issue is whether they intend to actually enforce the copyright over here. It's easy to just spam out DMCA notices, and I'd be shocked if the process weren't at least partly automated. The fact that said notices are ending up all over the place is evidence that, whatever else is going on, BayTSP isn't playing sniper here - and obviously they don't intend to bring legal action in the US and Japan and France too.

Actually suing somebody in the US is a much bigger step. Could Odex do that? Probably - depends on the text of the contract, but there's no outward reason why the contracts wouldn't have that provision in there. (Now, for titles where there was another licensor, such as in the US, you'd expect some sort of coordination going on. But none of these four have a US licensor as of yet...)

Does that mean they can afford to do it? Probably not. US anime companies can't afford to do it. It's not like Singapore is that much bigger than the US in this respect. Basically, they're in a hideously disadvantageous position, where they'd have to hire US council to file the suit, actually move it through the court, and attempt to collect on any judgment they won. (They'd probably WIN, assuming they really do have the evidence they do - which they seem to, since nobody here is reporting that they've received these things when they haven't downloaded that file!) The cost of the court case would probably exceed the kind of judgment you could exact, especially from an anime fan who probably doesn't have any money in the first place.

One points out that copyright in the US is automatic - you only have to register a copyright when there's a legal dispute involving it (so basically you'd have to send it in after filing the lawsuit, and you've got a whole month to do that.) Also, keep in mind that the Berne Convention was superceded by WIPO a while back, and that US copyright law didn't really change much in response to either; the major provision of Berne that you have to worry about holds that foreign copyrights and US copyrights are treated with the same rights in US courts.

[DemonEyesBob]

The guy who made the first post (the one who actually got the letter), said that they were using encryption, but I'm wondering if they were using forced encryption, and also if they were allowing incoming non-encryption connections. I'd also like to note that from what I've read, it's legal to download something to which you already have the rights. ie. if i've bought a copy of gundam00 it's legal to download a copy as backup, so companies have to prove that you don't have the right to download a file.

Also, and somewhat unrelated (actually, entirely unrelated), Comcast's Acceptable Use Policy is pretty screwed up (www6.comcast.net/terms/use/), it's actually worth reading so that you can laugh at it. According to the AUP you're not allowed to:
look at porn, distribute programs like bittorrent, host servers, use routers in order to get around being identified as a file-sharer (whoot for college wireless), DEGRADE SOMEONE'S USER EXPERIENCE (Comcast is doing that well enough on their own), and probably most important ->collect, or attempt to collect, personal information about third parties without their consent.... isn't that what companies that track torrent users are doing???? Yeah.... now for some sleep.

Cheers,
DEBob

[Xellos-_^]

In the US they would have to reveal how they collect the evidence and if it isn't in the up and up the courts could throw it out and leave the anime companies with no evidence. Then they would have to decided whether they want to spend a couple of more millions fighting through the appeal courts in the US.

While the avg anime fan can't afford the the kind of lawyer to fight these court battles. What they can do it appeal to the ACLU and other privacy concern groups for help. If a organization steps in favor of the anime fan over privacy concerns the fight is pretty much over as i doubt any US or Japanese anime company has the financial or political muscle of the ACLU.

[Calawain]

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

In the US, they definitely do respect the second-tier rights-holder; that's what US anime companies are, after all!

Yeah they sure do, if Bandai US version had the license rights for Gundam 00 there's little doubt they could sue and be successful. However, I don't think that merely having a license to sell anime in Singapore (and in this case they don't even have that) gives them a right to sue in US courts. They have to show a clear agreement for Odex to act legally on behalf of the original holders

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

The real issue is whether they intend to actually enforce the copyright over here. It's easy to just spam out DMCA notices, and I'd be shocked if the process weren't at least partly automated. The fact that said notices are ending up all over the place is evidence that, whatever else is going on, BayTSP isn't playing sniper here - and obviously they don't intend to bring legal action in the US and Japan and France too.

Definitely, sending out a mass of DMCAs costs very little, just harvest the IPs and send the numbers out to the ISP, a DMCA letter takes like 5 minutes to write. Just copy and paste the IP addresses and boom, done.

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

Actually suing somebody in the US is a much bigger step. Could Odex do that? Probably - depends on the text of the contract, but there's no outward reason why the contracts wouldn't have that provision in there. (Now, for titles where there was another licensor, such as in the US, you'd expect some sort of coordination going on. But none of these four have a US licensor as of yet...)

I'm not sure, the language quoted earlier in this thread is pretty vague and inconclusive. And you would be surprised at the extent to which people write stupid contracts that don't get enforced, my first semester contracts class told me that much =)

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

Does that mean they can afford to do it? Probably not. US anime companies can't afford to do it. It's not like Singapore is that much bigger than the US in this respect. Basically, they're in a hideously disadvantageous position, where they'd have to hire US council to file the suit, actually move it through the court, and attempt to collect on any judgment they won. (They'd probably WIN, assuming they really do have the evidence they do - which they seem to, since nobody here is reporting that they've received these things when they haven't downloaded that file!) The cost of the court case would probably exceed the kind of judgment you could exact, especially from an anime fan who probably doesn't have any money in the first place.

Definitely not, the cost is really prohibitive, and the affect of suing someone in the US on their bottom line would be negligible. Stopping people in the US downloading does not mean more people in Singapore will buy their crappy releases.

[Epyon9283]

Originally Posted by DemonEyesBob

The guy who made the first post (the one who actually got the letter), said that they were using encryption, but I'm wondering if they were using forced encryption, and also if they were allowing incoming non-encryption connections.

You probably don't need to successfully make a connection to someone to see that they're sharing a file over BT. Get a list of IPs from the tracker and send out DMCA notices to all the ISPs. Thats really not evidence that the user is actually sharing the file but I don't think they need real proof unless they're suing the person.

[cbmfive]

Originally Posted by Calawain

6) Conclusion- basically this all boils down to Odex spending a small amount of money to try and scare the hell out of people. It costs them very little to do this, and look at all the attention it gets. So basically, don't panic, and if you get a notice, laugh at them until you receive a notice from a US court.

Please realize that for most of us, this is approaching a worst-case scenario. You are pretty much obligated, at that point, to hire a lawyer to help sort things out. It's possible that you won't get out of the situation without either paying a few thousand dollars or getting dragged into court. Most people can't afford to ignore the problem until this point.

Even if it never reaches that point, the odds are that your ISP account would be cut off already. Most people aren't willing to let things go that far, either.

Maybe Odex doesn't have every right to crap in the swimming pool, but you can't exactly ignore it when a turd brushes against your leg.

[Messerschmitt_Bf-109]

Exactly. This can get expensive fast. At this rate, many will just have to quit watching period.

[valet]

If a big crackdown were coming, we'd be seeing a lot more C&D to fansubbers from studios. If fansubs were truly causing them to suffer and not offering any benefit, we'd have seen it a long time ago. It's certainly not as if the studios don't know all about it. As far as mobs of murderous cut-throat pillaging internet pirates goes, the anime fansub community is pretty well behaved and frankly not very well hidden.

I'm sure it's hard to measure the value of fansubs to the market, but it seems pretty intuitive that without them, a lot less anime would get bought. Trying to sell these shows in overseas markets to people who've never seen them is like trying to sell DVDs of The Office without ever airing it on TV. You just can't build markets without an audience. I get the feeling this is why the fansub community gets a finger wag every once in a while, but is by and large left alone despite being a pretty easy target.

I guess in short, this whole mess doesn't seem to me like a very big deal. The end is truly coming when the studios start actively shutting down the groups releasing the fansubs. That will mean that they no longer see any value in it, and that will be your cue to exit the theatre (or go underground, if that's your thing).

To add, from a technical point of view, encrypting your bittorrent sessions will not keep anybody from harvesting your IP address. Blocklists won't keep your IP hidden either. IRC and DDL distribution do protect the downloader (not the uploader, clearly), but they are as easy a target for takedowns as bittorrent, and they don't scale nearly as well. Anonymous P2P (a la Perfect Dark, Tor, Freenet) may work for a little while, but frankly, it's probably likely to make you *more* liable in the end than less once the legislation catches up with it. If you're going to share copyrighted content on the internet, you just have to be aware that you may be sharing it with a representative of the copyright holder at any given time. The act itself pretty much ranges anywhere from illegal at best to actionable at worst. I happen to personally think that in the case of unlicensed anime, it's a matter of going 60mph in a 55 zone - you're probably okay (even riding next to a cop), but you've got nobody to blame but yourself if you get pulled over.

I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing (download a lot of shows and buy what I like) until I start getting dirty looks from legally important entities. If that does happen, I guess I'll have to think about what to do next, though it's certainly not going to be 'wait a year to buy a bunch of anime dvds and hope they're good'. Still, I'm out of college now, and I've got assets to protect, investments to ponder, and goldfish who are going to starve to death if I go off to debtors' prison. I wouldn't be able to look those little fellas in the eye anymore if I ever had to risk their lives over an episode of Shugo Chara (for Claymore, I think they might understand).

Oh, and just for the record, though it's been said before, I'd be happy to pay $1 or $2 a subbed episode to download this stuff from the studios who are making it (or licensors) a la iTMS, and I know I'm not the only one. My money's on the table, you guys - bring the model and let's do some business.

[Geass]

Originally Posted by valet

If a big crackdown were coming, we'd be seeing a lot more C&D to fansubbers from studios. If fansubs were truly causing them to suffer and not offering any benefit, we'd have seen it a long time ago. It's certainly not as if the studios don't know all about it. As far as mobs of murderous cut-throat pillaging internet pirates goes, the anime fansub community is pretty well behaved and frankly not very well hidden.

I'm sure it's hard to measure the value of fansubs to the market, but it seems pretty intuitive that without them, a lot less anime would get bought. Trying to sell these shows in overseas markets to people who've never seen them is like trying to sell DVDs of The Office without ever airing it on TV. You just can't build markets without an audience. I get the feeling this is why the fansub community gets a finger wag every once in a while, but is by and large left alone despite being a pretty easy target.

I guess in short, this whole mess doesn't seem to me like a very big deal. The end is truly coming when the studios start actively shutting down the groups releasing the fansubs. That will mean that they no longer see any value in it, and that will be your cue to exit the theatre (or go underground, if that's your thing).

I agree, especially about the overseas markets. I'm the kind of person who, if I think an anime will probably be good, I'd never buy it. I want to know if it's good before I spend any money, and then I'd be buying for the subtitled version, not the dubbing (most English voice actors just aren't that good).

[Gamen]

I think what most people need to realize is that most ISPs, Comcast included, will not cut off your internet access for a single DMCA... Or multiple DMCA notices, for that matter. Despite how much they want you not to use your internet connection, they still want your money, and will just continue their capping and interrupting of service.

Second, they will not give your information away easily, and Odex/AVPAS couldn't do anything with it anyway for both legal and monetary reasons. These actions don't feel like they're coming from a company that has a lot of extra cash lying around.

Thirdly, if Odex is intentionally targeting international downloaders of fansubs, then the reason is likely because they're trying to reduce the number of seeds, making it harder for their domestic downloaders to get anime, or some other back-assward reasoning.

As for the DMCA notices being automated, it is more than likely. The ESA, for example, uses an automated system on DirectConnect that makes keyword searches and sends out DMCA notices to the ISP of whatever sharers have a large number of hits. No human involvement necessary.

In sum, there's nothing to worry about unless you live in Singapore.

[The_Dominion]

While DMCA notices may not do more then serve as a warning to those on Comcast, it is important to note that academic instutitions do put weight into DMCA notices, and I can speak from experience here, repremand frequent downloaders. So should these be sent to a college there is a good chance someone could be without internet until they speak with their OIT.

Also if Comcast keeps getting DMCA notices, they can use this as a power play for blocking all bittorrent traffic, which is what I think everyone is concerned about.

[Kyuusai]

Originally Posted by Gamen

I think what most people need to realize is that most ISPs, Comcast included, will not cut off your internet access for a single DMCA... Or multiple DMCA notices, for that matter. Despite how much they want you not to use your internet connection, they still want your money, and will just continue their capping and interrupting of service.

Incorrect. I know, because I've had customers' service cut off before. I didn't want to do it, but I had to do it. If an ISP doesn't stop infringement from occurring on their network once they've been notified, they can become liable.

Now, I've only done that in the case when I couldn't contact a customer after trying for some time, and I made sure the service was restored as soon as I could help them stop sharing the file.

Larger ISPs would, I'm sure, gladly drop service altogether for repeat offenders. They cost money every time the legal department intervenes, and they are a potential risk.

Originally Posted by Gamen

Second, they will not give your information away easily, and Odex/AVPAS couldn't do anything with it anyway for both legal and monetary reasons. These actions don't feel like they're coming from a company that has a lot of extra cash lying around.

Correct. In most countries, short of a subpoena, your ISP shouldn't be giving away your information. ...Shouldn't be. It's happened before.

Originally Posted by Gamen

Thirdly, if Odex is intentionally targeting international downloaders of fansubs, then the reason is likely because they're trying to reduce the number of seeds, making it harder for their domestic downloaders to get anime, or some other back-assward reasoning.

As for the DMCA notices being automated, it is more than likely. The ESA, for example, uses an automated system on DirectConnect that makes keyword searches and sends out DMCA notices to the ISP of whatever sharers have a large number of hits. No human involvement necessary.

In sum, there's nothing to worry about unless you live in Singapore.

All likely true. I won't see we shouldn't worry, though: The more attention and momentum Odex has, the worse they or some one else could be in the future. At best, it's a bad precedent. At worst, they could start extending their reach.

We have to be proactive about protecting ourselves.

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by The_Dominion

While DMCA notices may not do more then serve as a warning to those on Comcast, it is important to note that academic instutitions do put weight into DMCA notices, and I can speak from experience here, repremand frequent downloaders. So should these be sent to a college there is a good chance someone could be without internet until they speak with their OIT.

Also if Comcast keeps getting DMCA notices, they can use this as a power play for blocking all bittorrent traffic, which is what I think everyone is concerned about.

They can't block all bt traffic as not all bt traffic are illegal. There legi bt users.

[mxs]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

They can't block all bt traffic as not all bt traffic are illegal. There legi bt users.

Too bad. They can just throw out the baby with the bathwater. Many universities are already blocking BT traffic outright (especially on residential networks, but also in the main ones); some ISPs already attempt to kick you off torrents by resetting your connections (Comcast for instance), REGARDLESS of content, etc.

Sure, World of Warcraft uses it as its primary route for content distribution, but that doesn't really matter. Those linux junkies can find another way, they're sure. And besides, it would all be simpler if you just bought your content from Comcast and not surf around on the net so much. Big Brother needs more viewers, you see, and MTV really has to sell its pure and utter shit more

[Trance]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

The name was supposed to say it all.... P.S. I heard that "Share" was named the way it was to prevent people from easily googling a place to download it .

Well, I don't think that "share" and "Perfect Dark" are a secret now

[The_Dominion]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

They can't block all bt traffic as not all bt traffic are illegal. There legi bt users.

You seem to be under the impression they cannot do what they want with their equipment. I assure you this assumption is false. If you would like more info read up on the discussions of net neutrality. The whole debate is whether the internet, and connections to it are able to be monitored, and restricted as the ISPs see fit. So far, in term of legality, the Government's response was "let the free market work things out". So if Comcast wanted to blocked access to all .exe files online for one reason or another, they could. It would just mean you as the consumer may need to reconsider the company you are getting your internet from.

[cbmfive]

Originally Posted by Gamen

I think what most people need to realize is that most ISPs, Comcast included, will not cut off your internet access for a single DMCA... Or multiple DMCA notices, for that matter. Despite how much they want you not to use your internet connection, they still want your money, and will just continue their capping and interrupting of service.

Even this is a pain...colleges were already mentioned for taking kneejerk measures, for example. The DMCA notice itself can be a penalty. In my case, one cable modem supplies a network connection for both people living in this apartment. I pay half the cable bill, but my roommate handles the actual transaction.

It would be HIS name on the DMCA notice.

That's a pretty significant chilling effect. I don't think I'm prepared to have him walk up to me someday with a printout and a "WTF?!!!?!" look on his face. Maybe I can tell myself "awww, these guys are nobodies, probably nothing to worry about" but I don't think that reasoning would make my roommate feel any better.

Anyone who shares an internet connection can sympathize.

[Kaioshin Sama]

Originally Posted by Lesqual

Okay, this is a seriously seedy company. To the point that their directors post social condemnation on forums, they claim to be trying to save Japanese anime (which is 'bleeding to death'), have previously been arrested for copyright infringement themselves, and apparently have editted their wikipedia entry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odex's_...t_file-sharing

Their cases are getting thrown out of even Singaporean courts on the basis of not being exclusive distributor or copyright holder.

That's not a wiki article, it's not at all neutral and I'd go so far as to call it a bashing job.

All I can say is I'm glad I live in Canada where the whole file-sharing thing has been rendered a non-issue. I doubt some small-time company from singapore is going to spell the end for worldwide anime fansubbing.