Singapore, Odex & fansubs

[lwin]

http://odex.com.sg/

If you were to visit the site above, it shows an article penned by Odex to clarify matters on the crackdown on anime downloaders.

They mentioned animesuki and said that sites like animesuki are not legal. Hope this site doesnt get "Odex-ed"!

[nadare]

Originally Posted by parrywrinkle

Odex is not representative of the government of Singapore. Therefore they do not PROSECUTE.

This is very important. Please spread the word. They do not prosecute. They cannot send you to jail. They can only as you to pay for damages for their loss of profits.

But, SG has copyright laws right? If they have proof of license of X anime. They can sue you for infringement.

[wao]

Oi, what the hell. After Singnet and Starhub gave away the information of all their customers....

A judge rules that ODEX does not have the right to get such information from PacNet.

Wa lao!
Okay, so I feel a little cheated. Gah.

Amusing how this sort of thing gets onto the 2nd page of the newspaper...

Still haven't gotten a letter though.

[M L Monster]

a friend of mine got a letter from Odex for something that was dled 5 months ago.



This is ridiculous. Can't believe the government are allowing them to blackmail

[Latrommi]

In Short,Odex's a load of bullshit

[suguru]

It's hard to believe Odex is so stupid they think this is going to make their sales grow like crazy, just by suing people. Fansubs are the best publicity they have--all fansubs do is allow me to do the same thing any Japanese otaku with a VCR can do, watch anime before it hits DVD to determine if I want to buy it or not. Yes, but if I download a fansub I can watch it over and over! Right...but how is that any different than if I lived in Japan and taped Nagasarete Airantou off TV Tokyo with a VCR?

People in Japan still buy the DVDs because they provide a quality product and deep down I think most fans who can afford it want to support the industry--and that seems to be the part Odex doesn't understand. If your product is the same quality as a VHS tape, it's not hard to figure out why people aren't lining up to buy from you. It's a sad situation for everyone in Singapore that a company like this has a monopoly...they don't seem to realize it but they're kicking themselves in the balls with this approach.

I'm just waiting for the day ADV pulls the same crap in the US, they seem to keep getting more and more shrill about blaming fansubs for their woes--never mind the fact they overexpanded during the boom thinking the market would grow 50% a year forever. Business doesn't work that way--if the market had kept going at that rate soon everyone in the US would be an anime fan, and as cool as that would be it's never going to happen. Anime is a niche market--sure, it grew a lot earlier in the decade as anime DVDs became widely available, but now the market is more mature and fansubs or no it's not growing 50% a year again anytime soon. I think part of the slowdown in sales is also that a lot of fans are in the same position I am--we have big enough DVD libraries now that we're more picky about what we buy.

[parrywrinkle]

Originally Posted by nadare

But, SG has copyright laws right? If they have proof of license of X anime. They can sue you for infringement.

A lot of people misunderstand copyright laws.

1) First there is the civil action between the copyright owner and the person who infringes the copyright. In this case, Odex has the licence but not the copyright, it merely claims to enforce the copyright of the copyright owners.

2) A little into the nature of the copyright is in order: a copyright is an unofficial declaration to the world that you have rights over a certain intellectual property and that you reserve the right not to allow people to copy it. It is unofficial in the sense that there is no register for you to register it. Pretty much anything can be copyrighted. You can draw a picture of a dead squished frog and copyright it on the spot by putting the (c) symbol.

3) The Singapore government can prosecute you for infringement of copyright under the Copyright Act. Specifically it will rely on s.136 of the Copyright Act. Generally the act is to prohibit sale, hire, rent or trade, or for public exhibition of copyrighted material. The part that affects normal downloads for private use is s.136 (A) and s.136(6). s.136(7) states that if you possess more than 5 pieces of work that infringes, the onus is on you to prove that it is for private use.

4) s.136(A) deems it an offence if:
- the infringement of the copyright in the work is wilful AND
i. the extent of the infringement is significant and/or
ii. the infringement was done for a commercial advantage

5) The penalties can be severe (up to $20,000 or 6 months prison or both). So far the AG has not pressed charges on these, but they could.

6) There's a lacuna for a legal argument here that has not seen the light of the courts: suppose you download Anime A (and infringe Jap Animation Co's copyright). You like the anime and decide to buy it, but being a discerning consumer, you bought an unsubbed high audio and video quality DVD from the internet instead of the POS company in Singapore.

- By buying this DVD, you can argue that your previous act of download was not wilful (in law wilful means to do something without "reason", a very complex thing here). You can prove that your previous infringement was for the purpose to checking it out before buying it.

- Another argument is that in fact have been given the right to ownership of this piece of intellectual property by buying it. Since copyright is the right not to allow others copy, through your purchase you can argue that you have been given permission by the copyright owner to own this intellectual property once you buy it.

Of course those are my own opinions derived from my limited knowledge of the law. But I think if at the very least you have purchased copies, you can refute the wilful part and mount some arguments.

[JayF]

Today is a great day for Singapore anime fans

Check out today's (25th August 2007) The New Paper pg 5.

You ready?

ODEX LOST IN COURT!!!

The District Judge Ernest Lau said in his released ruling that he was not satisfied with the way Odex got the identities of the alleged downloaders and that under Singapore's Copyright act only the original copyright holders (the Japanese companies) and the exclusive licensee can pursue legal action in any case.

Therefore, Odex being a sub licensee cannot pursue legal action under the Singapore Copyright Act, and all the money they taken is now under this ruling money not owed to them legally and if you get a letter from them, ignore it since according to the ruling they have no legal authority or right to pursue this.

Judge Ernest Lau ftw!

[parrywrinkle]

It does not detract from that the AG's office can still prosecute you for infringement of copyright if it wishes to.

To be on the safe side, either buy loads of the stuff you downloaded or don't download at all.

Still, Odex lost. Haha.

[JayF]

Correct, The AG can prosecute you if they wish to.

However, here's something to consider.

1)The AG in Singapore will prosecute only those they feel are wiful downloaders, ie ppl who they feel are downloading on purpose and also in full knowledge of the fact it's illegal.

2)There is no pressure on the SG govt to take action other than Odex, which is a small company to begin with. So unlike movies or music, the govt has no real stake in this fight and in reality could care less. Sure, they may prosecute a downloader and uploader for show, but the vast majority of downloaders are safe.

Remember to the SG govt anime= children cartoon. So the possiblity of them catching downloaders like they go after movie or music downloaders are really, really slim.

Odex was the only one with the reason to fully go after anime downloaders and with this ruling they have no legal right to do so. And if the AG isn't too interested, you can bet the police can't be arsed to go after what are mostly students and minors as well.

Still, it helps to be safe, but yeah with Odex taking a beating from Judge Ernst Lau you are safer now.

[Latrommi]

Today's the day to celebrate!Apparently Odex's unable to fine anyone as they are not the copyright HOLDERS of anime

[parrywrinkle]

Re: JayF

Not quite right. The government has incentive to act because most of Singapore's financial success rests on its stable political climate, good policies and it's "clean" reputation. Trust funds, investments and a whole lot of money goes through Singapore just for the reason that businesses feel that if the money has gone through Singapore, it has the sanction of being legal.

That's the impact of our reputation overseas. It's like a stamp of approval in the region that once your money has been exchanged in Singapore, you feel better about where the money came from. You feel that your money is good money. Legal stuff. Thus there is still incentive for the AG to act on this charge, just so to show that Singapore protects copyright holders and respects intellectual property, so that business know that if they establish their copyright in Singapore, they can enforce their copyrights in the courts of Singapore.

However specifically in this case, we're looking at consumer infringement of copyrights as oppose to commercial entities infringing copyrights for trade. The AG's office can act, but it would be a draconian and very very severe response. In the midst the Odex saga, such an act by the the AG's office would send a very negative message not only to Singaporeans but overseas as well on the nature of the government of Singapore. It is a bad time for them to act, because it would sully their reputation through association with Odex. Not only that we're looking at a criminal offence of up to $20,000 proportions and/or 6 months of jail.

I think for the moment until the Odex saga dies down, this piece of legislation will remain a toothless tiger. But should such a situation arise where Jap ani coys start to establishes make their presence in the region (think millions of dollars of investments and a creation of industry) and require the law to clamp down on copyright infringement, I think a "kill one silence one hundred" approach will be taken through s.136 of Copyright Act so set the climate for this enterprise.

Originally Posted by Latrommi

Today's the day to celebrate!Apparently Odex's unable to fine anyone as they are not the copyright HOLDERS of anime

Not exactly.

They can request from the real copyright holders for the fiat to act in the capacity of the copyright holders to enforce the copyrights.

[JayF]

And according to Judge Lau's ruling on the case, they will have to be Exclusive licensee of the copyright in order to do that. Meaning that the Japanese copyright holders will have to release all the rights to their own property in the Singapore market.

As you can guess, they're very reluctant to do that with a company that is not a subsidary of theirs. So it boils down to whether the Japanese companies wish to sign away all their rights to their own series in Singapore just to sue downloaders. Take note they aren't making too much money in the first place and the market is still small
so there really is little incentive to make Odex their exclusive distributors for the SG market especially since there are two other companies (Poh Kim, BlueMax) who are reporting good sales without the legal and PR fiasco.

After this ruling, the Japanese companies are less likely to give them exclusive rights and cut off two profitable sub licencee of their series.

[parrywrinkle]

The Jap ani coys don't give rights, you have to buy them.

A civil action can still be brought by AVPAS with sanction from the Jap ani coys; question of how damages are calculated and will be distributed will hamper the action, thus render it unlikely.

Prosecution brought by the AG is irrelevant as to whether Odex has rights or not.

[Thinker]

http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2...ry_153203.html


Odex stands firm on pursuing illegal downloaders of anime By Jermyn Chow , Aug 30, 2007
ANIME distributor Odex is standing firm on its stance to pursue illegal downloaders.
Clarifying its position in a media conference on Thursday, the company even brought in the muscle of anime copyright holders from Japan to back its case.

Odex said it had to take legal action because of the large numbers of illegal downloaders of the Japanese anime titles it brought in.

The company revealed that over 483,000 illegal downloads had been made here over the past 10 months alone - making Singapore 10th on the list of countries worldwide with the most illegal anime downloaders.

Compounding the problem - 59 per cent of households here have high-speed broadband access.

So Singapore has the highest percentage of anime downloads per capita, far ahead of countries like the United States, Australia and Hong Kong.

Odex's aim, said its managing director Peter Go, is to bring down the number of illegal downloads to about 85 per cent.

Odex authorised to act on behalf of copyright holders


To further bolster its case, Odex brought in representatives of four Japanese studios, which own the copyrights of blockbuster series like Naruto, Dragonball, Tsubasa Chronicles, and Romeo and Juliet.

The representatives told reporters through an interpreter, that they support Odex's legal action.

All four studios had in fact issued authorisation letters for Odex to act on their behalf, before the company went to the courts.

Said Mr Yukio Kawasaki, manager of TV Tokyo Corpration: 'If there is a necessity from the courts of Singapore requiring us to come down (physically), then we will come.'

The studios appealed to anime fans to stick to original copies.


Appealing court orders

Odex is currently in the midst of appealing to get a court order which will force Pacific Internet to supply the names of illegal downloaders using its service. A judge had turned down its request last Thursday (Aug 23).

To date, Odex has sent out 300 letters, from the 1,000 Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that SingTel had provided. An IP address is a string of numbers that can identify a user, although web addresses are commonly shared here.

StarHub has also been served with a court order to provide Odex with another 100 ISP addresses.

The Odex fracas has led to fervent online chatter with some anime fans vilifying Odex and others voicing outrage over the court orders forcing Internet Service Providers to reveal the names of their subscribers.

=================================================

Looks like Odex is going to win this one--with the blessing of the Japanese companies. This is happening in Singapore, but if it goes through it will set a precedence that may have implications in anime fansub communities elsewhere.

Hope you guys are ready for the future, for it ain't bright.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by Thinker

Odex's aim, said its managing director Peter Go, is to bring down the number of illegal downloads to about 85 per cent.

85% of what?

Did he mean they want to reduce downloads "by 85%"? It certainly doesn't seem likely that they'd engage in all this fuss if he meant reducing the number of downloads to 85% of their current levels, i.e., a reduction of 15%.

I wish journalists were forced to take more math.

Did any of you really not expect that the production companies would back Odex in this campaign? Odex is their licensed distributor in Singapore. What other option do they have? What other options do people in Singapore have for obtaining legitimate copies of anime? English speakers can buy R1 releases; I don't know what's available legally for Chinese speakers. What about anime on free or pay TV? Is it not possible to watch Naruto or DBZ on television in Singapore?

I've read a number of complaints here about the poor quality of Odex's releases. Does that subject come up in media coverage of the issue, or is it all focused on "piracy"? Perhaps a couple of anonymous (and well-written) letters to the editor outlining people's legitimate objections to Odex's work might help. Or write a letter to Mr. Chow setting forth your views about Odex. The problem as I see it at the moment is that, whatever legitimate criticism you may have of Odex, those objections are submerged in a sea of anti-piracy discussions.

[DwArD]

This definitely ain't looking good. Oh well....I suppose anime will die out sooner or later in Singapore if this situation continues. As if anyone will buy any dvds (or vcds in Odex's case) if they didn't even know how its like in the first place. Since Odex really have the support of those japanese studios, there's really no point in arguing any further. What I'm more interested in is the future. If the japanese studios are really that 'desperate' to actually give the rights to Odex to take action on their behalf, it won't be long before they'll decide to do the same thing in countries outside of Singapore. After all, they did mention that they started with Singapore first because its a small country. Let's hope this doesn't spell the end of the anime community.

[Thinker]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

85% of what?

Did he mean they want to reduce downloads "by 85%"? It certainly doesn't seem likely that they'd engage in all this fuss if he meant reducing the number of downloads to 85% of their current levels, i.e., a reduction of 15%.

I wish journalists were forced to take more math.

Did any of you really not expect that the production companies would back Odex in this campaign? Odex is their licensed distributor in Singapore. What other option do they have? What other options do people in Singapore have for obtaining legitimate copies of anime? English speakers can buy R1 releases; I don't know what's available legally for Chinese speakers. What about anime on free or pay TV? Is it not possible to watch Naruto or DBZ on television in Singapore?

I've read a number of complaints here about the poor quality of Odex's releases. Does that subject come up in media coverage of the issue, or is it all focused on "piracy"? Perhaps a couple of anonymous (and well-written) letters to the editor outlining people's legitimate objections to Odex's work might help. Or write a letter to Mr. Chow setting forth your views about Odex. The problem as I see it at the moment is that, whatever legitimate criticism you may have of Odex, those objections are submerged in a sea of anti-piracy discussions.

A lot of people have written in to the press regarding the poor quality of Odex's products. The only reply Odex gave the press was "perception problem". Even academics and senior writers have written in the media about the role fansubs play in promoting the anime market, and how they're different from downloading MP3s and software. But Odex is in no mood to listen, and are only bent on further enforcing the crackdown by fining hundreds of dowloaders. With the Japanese companies behind them there's little anyone can do, except speculate why they'd want to come down so hard on an insignificant market.

But it'll be interesting to see if Kadokawa and Bandai turns up, given their recent admission that fansubs have boosted Haruhi sales in the US.

As for catching the latest anime here, fans here can either import R1 from the US or R2 from Japan. A few other distributors besides Odex have decent DVD releases too, but the titles are far and few. There are a few shows on TV, t they're supplied by Odex, and there are talks of boycotting that as well.
But fans here are just like those in the US--they want to catch the latest available, least of all, uncensored ones. Most are willing to stop downloading licensed one, but Odex, via a piracy watchdog they created (AVPAS), literally has a blanket ban on any shows under the Japanese companies, regardless whether they're licensed or not. That alone is 400 over titles, including the latest series out there.

That's the 85% Odex is talking about--they want to kill off fansub downloads. They've made it clear this is just the beginning, and has even talked about going after fans who watch streamed anime off YouTube. That's how draconian it's become.

[Heron]

I realise this might not be the best way to do things, but I fear the worst in Singapore's anime scene due to the recent actions of Odex against us.

Just today, Odex held a press conference with 4 anime distributors stating that the Japanese studios support Odex's actions and will come down to the Singapore courts if necessary to suppress illegal anime downloaders. It also said to the anime community in Singapore to support the original. Link to article

Apparently, they wanted to stop Singapore from becoming a piracy hub for anime. But what I do not really understand is why they are trying to do this. I personally got the letter from them, so I am now under immense pressure to give up the fight, but all this is making me just wanting to support the manga, never mind all the new stuff that will be coming out.

Fansubs are being labeled as illegal, a movement by pirates and Singaporeans are being asked to support the original. But a look at the shelves of the stores of Singapore says a lot, as many titles are not even found. Odex itself also have a lot of translation problems being highlighted, but what has Odex done for the fans?

Yes, the Singapore market is small, but have those people know WHY? The fact is that many of our anime titles come very late. The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi is one such anime. After all the fuss and buzz about this excellent anime, we are not getting it. A support of the original is necessary, but when we can't even get it, that's something to be asking about.

Not everyone in Singapore can get parallel imports due to a prohibitive price. This compounds the problem more as we are stuck with only 2 choices, Odex VCDs or fansubs. Now, Odex is forcing its hand, making sure that we will have to consume their inferior goods. What can we do?

And that's why I am asking for the global anime community's help. I have no qualms of supporting the original. But give us something on par with the rest or this will not work! It will only hasten the demise of the anime market that is in Singapore.

I hope this message can get through. It merely could be a precursor to the danger facing us all......

[sos-dan]

u might wanna take a look at these materials
www.odex-rebellion.blogspot.com
www.xedodefense.org
Heron, I agree with you totally. Personally I'm for originals, anime and merchandise alike. The amount of merchandise I have can probably prove it, but anime-wise, I would buy in the official if I could. However they are not available in Singapore generally. Im talking about Bandai , Kadokawa releases. Those with bonuses, omake, basically good stuff innit. Not some barebone tattered copies of "self-proclaimed" originals. IMHO, the studios involved do seem to be aware of the fact that such piracy is rampant, but they do not realise wad is causing it. demand>supply, its pretty simple, actually. I just have no idea why Odex would wanna choose such a suicidal route in handling this situation. are they dumb?