The domain odex.com.sg was replaced with a message from an unknown hacker. The page has since been taken down. I have mirrored a copy of the page here.

This server was fully hacked because the things ODEX are doing are just completly wrong!
So I hacked them due to my deep abominate against this company.

The stupidity of the organisation can not only be seen in the quality of their products or in the disingenuousness of their actions, but also in their skills of web design, compatibility and programming.

You can see that by the fact that the server is now hacked.

Now, I don’t like to stereotype, but the hacker sounds Singaporean… I guess he wasn’t quite pleased with the latest development. (Even though it turned out to be a mistake.)

The colour scheme of the page also leaves much to be desired. That said, his command of English and aesthetic sense aside, I approve of his XHTML coding. He has the proper doctype defined and he uses <br/> as required. Too bad he made a typo (</head> instead of </title>) or the page would’ve validated.

It’s good to know that some people out there care about W3C standards, although I have a feeling that this particular individual will probably be behind bars soon.

UPDATE AGAIN: It seems that I wasn’t too clear. I have independent confirmation from a current Odex employee that the whole thing was a mistake. This is not based on any comments left in this entry, but rather first hand information from the employee himself.

UPDATE 21/11/2007: Read The New Paper’s article. LOL.

Okay, now the shit really hits the fan. After months of silence, Odex has resumed its attack, this time on an international scale. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past year or so and don’t know who Odex is, please refer to Wikipedia.

Godwin’s Law be damned

Reports are emerging that people from USA, France, Japan and probably various other countries are receiving warnings from their ISPs about illegal anime downloads.

In particular, the French ISP Club Internet and the Japanese ISP USEN attached logs from BayTSP, sent on behalf of Odex, with their warning e-mails. This clearly identifies Odex/AVPAS as the source of the infringement complaints. USA’s Comcast did not identify the right holder, but the timing of this whole thing and the similar format of the logs indicate that this is probably not a coincidence.

Odex is definitely responsible for the warnings.

Some important paragraphs from the e-mails included after the break.

Club Internet (France)

Club Internet – T-Online FranceName
address
FranceCountry

Dear Sir or Madam:

BayTSP, Inc. (“BayTSP”) swears under penalty of perjury that it is authorized to act on behalf of ODEX Private Limited/Anti Video Piracy Association (Singapore) (collectively known as ODEX/AVPAS), the exclusive licensees and/or authorized agents of the owners of copyright materials and interests (the Copyright Owners) that is protected in Singapore under applicable copyright laws in force and enacted pursuant to various international treaties. BayTSP’s search of the protocol listed below has detected infringements of exclusive copyright interests on your IP addresses as detailed in the attached report.

BayTSP has reasonable good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of in the attached report is not authorized by the Copyright Owners, their agents, or the law. The information provided herein is accurate to the best of our knowledge. The attached documentation specifies the exact location of the infringement.

Attachment:

Contact BayTSP, authorized agent for ODEX PRIVATE LIMITED/AVPAS at the address listed above or via email should you have any concerns or questions at compliance@baytsp.com. Also please note that this infringement notice contains an XML tag that can be used to automate the processing of this data.

Evidentiary Information:
Notice ID: 61192
Asset: Ouran High School Host Club
Protocol: BitTorrent
IP Address: 89.85.xx.xx
DNS: i07v-89-85-xx-xx.d4.club-internet.fr
File Name:
[Nerae]_Ouran_High_School_Host_Club_22_[57603381].avi
File Size: 370843648
Timestamp: 11 Nov 2007 06:17:33 GMT
Last Seen Date: 11 Nov 2007 06:17:33 GMT
URL: http://bt.nerae.com:7072/announce
Username (if available):

[ Source: bikasuishin ]

USEN GyaO Hikari (Japan)

株式会社 ＵＳＥＮ

いつも「GyaO 光」をご利用いただき、誠にありがとうございまãã€‚

この度外部より、「221.251.XXX.XXX」のIPアドレスにて各企業・個人が著作権 を有ãã‚‹ãƒ‡ãƒ¼ã‚¿ã‚’公開しているとのご連絡を受けておりまãã€‚弊社にて確認させて頂きましたところ、「ＰＩＮＡＮＳＫＹＳＡＭＵＥＬ」様のご利用の環境から送信された事が判明致しました。

著作者に無断で複製・記載・加工・使用等をãã‚‹è¡Œç‚ºã¯ã€è‘—作権の侵害にあたりまãã€‚弊社約款上、「 当社もしくは他人の知的財産所有権（特許権、実用新案、著作権、意匠権、商æ¨æ¨©ç­‰ï¼‰ãã®ä»–の権利を侵害ãã‚‹è¡Œç‚ºã¾ãŸã¯ä¾µå®³ãã‚‹æã‚Œã®ã‚る行為（著作権侵害防止のための技術的保護手段を回避ãã‚‹ãŸã‚ã®æƒ…報、機å¨ã¾ãŸã¯ã‚½ãƒ•ãƒˆã‚¦ã‚§ã‚¢ç­‰ã‚’流通させる行為を含みまãã€‚）」は禁止とさせて頂いており（第29条－(5)－ア）、規約違反行為に関しましては利用停止とさせて頂く場合もございまãã€‚

今後とも該当ãã‚‹è¡Œç‚ºãŒç¶ç¶šã•ã‚ŒãŸå ´åˆã€ä»–のお客様や外部のネットワークに対して迷惑がかかりまããŸã‚ã€æ—©æ€¥ãªå¯¾å¿œã‚’必要としておりまãã€‚

Attachment:

Contact BayTSP, authorized agent for ODEX PRIVATE LIMITED/AVPAS at the address listed above or via email should you have any concerns or questions at compliance@baytsp.com. Also please note that this infringement notice contains an XML tag that can be used to automate the processing of this data.

Evidentiary Information:
Notice ID: 35082
Asset: SHUGO CHARA
Protocol: BitTorrent
IP Address: 221.251.XXX.XXX
DNS: 221x251xXXXxXXX.ap221.ftth.ucom.ne.jp
File Name:
[Formula]_Shugo_Chara!_-_01_[h264][E1719697].mkv
File Size: 147505790
Timestamp: 12 Nov 2007 12:43:44 GMT
Last Seen Date: 12 Nov 2007 12:43:44 GMT
URL: http://tracker.scarywater.net:443/announce
Username (if available):

[ Source: Quarkboy on AnimeSuki ]

Comcast (USA)

Dear Comcast High-Speed Internet Subscriber:

Comcast has received a notification by a copyright owner, or its authorized agent, reporting an alleged infringement of one or more copyrighted works made on or over Comcast’s High-Speed Internet service (the ‘Service’). The copyright owner has identified the Internet Protocol (‘IP’) address associated with your Service account at the time as the source of the infringing works. The works identified by the copyright owner in its notification are listed below. Comcast reminds you that use of the Service (or any part of the Service) in any manner that constitutes an infringement of any copyrighted work is a violation of Comcast’s Acceptable Use Policy and may result in the suspension or termination of your Service account.

Attachment:

Evidentiary Information:
Notice ID: —
Asset: Gundam 00
Protocol: BitTorrent
IP Address: xx.xx.xx.xx
DNS: xx.xx.xx.comcast.net
File Name:
[Conclave-Mendoi]_Mobile_Suit_Gundam_00_-_01v2_[1280x720_H.264_AAC][871FCBC2].mkv
File Size: 361374904
Timestamp: 12 Nov 2007 04:56:59 GMT
Last Seen Date: 12 Nov 2007 04:56:59 GMT
URL: http://tracker.radicand.org:5190/announce
Username (if available):

[ Source: aldraek on AnimeSuki ]

The introductory paragraph which identifies BayTSP and Odex/AVPAS was removed from e-mails forwarded by Comcast. But since all three evidential BitTorrent logs share the exact same formatting, there’s not much room for doubt. They were all sent by BayTSP.

Comcast is known for actively interfering with BitTorrent packets on top of throttling, so they are probably overjoyed by this development. Bastards.

Does anyone know if Odex won its case against Pacific Internet? Judging by this latest bold move, I would guess that it did. But still, does anyone have confirmations?

Is this the beginning of the end of fansubbing? Will Odex succeed? Can they handle the backlash that is on its way? And is the cake really a lie? Find out in the next episode!

UPDATE: By the way, the Wikipedia article is outdated. The hearing for Odex vs PacNet was indeed postponed by the judge, but the rescheduled hearing took place three days ago on the 16th. You can read the court document in PDF. (Scroll down to page 19.)

I believe that the timing of this can’t possibly be a coincidence. So, once again, does anyone know what the ruling was?

I’ve made it no secret that I think distributing media through physical means is an archaic and rapidly shrinking trade. I sincerely believe that everything that can be digitalized will eventually be digitalized, whether you want it or not. It is a destiny that all media companies have to face and it can be an enormous opportunity for those who adapt fast.

And of course, it’s no different for anime. That’s right, it’s rant time.

Evolution

The theory of evolution has frequently been summed up by the phrase “survival of the fittest”, and indeed it is the perfect phrase to describe business models in our era of rapid technological growth. The “fittest” refers not to the strongest or the best, but the ones who can adapt and evolve to survive the next big change. Many mighty creatures had, over the millennia, fallen victim to the waves of biological revolutions in our planet’s short history, and yet the small and insignificant cockroach, whose ancestors once crawled in the shadows of dinosaurs, survives to this very day.

Today, technology has brought about such sudden but wonderful changes to our world that some of our existing frameworks which have existed for hundreds of years are starting to fail us. There will always be those who do not believe that everything they have held to be sacred truths for their lives is now change, evolving and improving for the better. Every effort will be made to build a dam around this torrent of change. At first they will succeed, but no dam can hold off the force of nature that is the power of technology. Pandora’s Box cannot be closed once it has been opened.

Okay, maybe I am getting a little too abstract here. Let us move back to anime.

Declining DVD sales in Japan

According to this ITmedia article forwarded to me by Soulshift, Japan’s DVD sales are dropping. Heck, I will agree with those people who claim that DVD sales everywhere are on the decline, even if I have yet to see conclusive evidence of it. Because it just makes sense. I for one certainly do not think that DVDs are worth their price tags, even if I do buy them for collecting purposes. I think a lot of people in the younger generations agree with me.

This is not to say that I think all media content should be free and no one should get paid for his/her works. I don’t. But I do think that the old way of doing things will not last for much longer. It has nothing to do with wanting to get things for free. I will pay for it if I have to, but the more important point is that I want it in my way, my format and at my convenience. You can air free anime on TV 24-hours a day and I won’t give a damn because I rather watch the shows I want to watch whenever I feel like watching them. Call it unreasonable if you want, but that is the kind of mindset that young people growing up with the Internet as their main source of entertainment will have. And those are the potential customers in this business.

当社のDVDが売れない最大の理由は作品の力不足だが、業界全体でもアニメDVD販売が不振だ。その原因は1つではないだろう」とGDHの内田康史副社長は言う。HDD＆DVDレコーダーのæ®åŠã‚„、YouTubeのような動画共有サイトへの違法アップロードの影響などが、DVD不振の原因として考えられるという。

The ITmedia article interviewed GDH, the parent company of GONZO, and according to them, the main reasons why DVD sales are dropping in Japan are because of the spread of HDD and DVD recorders and the popularity of video streaming sites such as YouTube. You can whine and cry all you want, but that is not going to make technology reverse itself and uninvent things that are inconvenient for your business.

And not everything can be solved through legislation either. Sure, you can waste spend money to hire a bunch of people who sit around and do nothing but send out takedown letters to YouTube, but are you then going to lobby for a law that bans people from recording TV shows with DVD recorders too? It is just not possible. And it should be noted that P2P filesharing is not even a blip on Japan’s radar. I know very few Japanese fans who have heard of, much less utilize, BitTorrent.

Old distribution model, new market paradigm

「当社がアニメDVDを海外展開ãã‚‹å ´åˆã€å­—幕や音声、パッケージなどを海外仕様に作り変えるæ‚間が必要で、どうしても日本よりも後のçºå£²ã«ãªã£ã¦ã—まう。このタイムラグのせいでビジネスチャンスを逃している面はある」

The same GDH representative goes on to say, “When we release our products overseas, it takes time to translate, dub and repackage, so the releases always end up being slower than in Japan. This time lag often results in many business opportunities being lost.”

I think this is a clear indication that they are slowly realizing the fact that the old system is showing its age. Foreign audiences are no longer contented to get slow and outdated releases. If they cannot get the series they want legally and fast, they will turn to the Internet. Illegal or not, the Internet is there and will always be there. Deal with it. The best way to go about solving this problem is obviously to cater to the global audience right from the start, instead of trying to pretend that regional markets are still clearly defined and segregated like they were twenty years ago.

The blame game

　ただ“犯人探し”に躍起になるだけでは、次のビジネスは生まれない。「æ‚代とともにメディアは移り変わるもの。最も多くの人に視聴してもらえ、お金を払ってもらえる可能性が高いメディアを試し、ビジネスを切り開く必要がある」

The best quote: “Just searching for the ‘criminals’ is not going to do any good. It will not create any new business opportunities. Media has to change with time. There is a need for us to try out formats that bring us the greatest viewership and increase our opportunities to make money. We need to open up our business.” Exactly what I want to say. GDH has created a YouTube channel called “GONZO DOOGA” and is asking YouTube not to remove content that infringes on GONZO’s copyrights as long as they can serve as promotional material.

The same article goes on to say that illegal downloading has, ironically, proven a global demand for anime. What needs to be done is not to destroy this demand by isolating potential customers and calling them pirates. The content owners need to re-examine their business strategies and find out ways to tap into that newly-generated demand using the technology that enabled it all to happen: the Internet. Indeed, the GDH representative acknowledges the fact that illegal sites that charge users monthly fees to download anime are very popular overseas and that GDH sees it as a huge business opportunity waiting to be tapped in its quest to expand globally.

Online distribution

That brings me back to Odex. Some people think that I am against Video-On-Demand. That is not true. I am an fervent supporter of digital media distribution that actually achieves its true intention—being convenient. In fact, when I first suggested VOD to Mr. Peter Go many months ago, he was unreceptive to the idea. I am happy that a small step has now been taken in that direction, but it is really small indeed. And the way Odex has sequenced its actions certainly has not helped to bring about much enthusiasm for the minute change.

I mean, it simply makes no business sense to assume that the tech-savvy downloaders are an insignificant minority, provoke them into a frenzy, and then roll out a service that is targeted right at the very same group of people while pretending nothing happened. But of course the people at Odex know what they are doing because they did their market research, right? I sure hope they do.

Conclusions

It doesn’t matter how good DVD sales were in the past. It doesn’t matter how well the system used to work. I see only the future and I think the future will only get brighter for anime. But not for DVDs. Filesharing will not kill anything that is really important and has real purposes, it is simply a new paradigm that will serve to weed out the unevolved dinosaurs that fed on past inefficiencies in the system and profited disproportionately off the physical bottlenecks of old technology that no longer exist. It may make sense for most people to pay for movies on DVDs today, but a new system replacing it will soon emerge to reward creativity in a new and better way, just as a different incentive system used to exist before the invention of the video cassette.

The ones who get to the new winning formula first will reap the most benefits. And I’m glad to learn that the Japanese studios are at least putting some thought into this. Perhaps one day we will pay $30 a month to download and watch all the anime series we want. A guy can dream…

According to a forum post by Stephen Sing, as of today (3rd September) no more backlogged letters will be sent out. Odex will not take legal action against you with old evidence. If you stop downloading from today, you are guaranteed, by the man himself, not to get Odex’ed ever.

Original thread on Odex forums:

If an individual stop downloading now, today, on the 3rd September, 2007, he will have no possibility of ever receiving any letters from the copyright holders, (aka the Odex letter) as we will not take anything that he has downloaded before this date against him. We will not send any letters to him.

If an individual continues to download and shows up on our investigation we will send him a letter to ask him to explain why it is so. If he cannot give us a reasonable explanation of why that happened, we will reserve the rights to take legal action against him, with all the evidences that we have collected before and after the 3rd of September (there would necessarily be evidence after the 3rd in order for this to happen).

Apparently an official statement will be released soon, but I think a forum post from xysing is as good as any official statement. I guess they have finally recovered their fees. Well that’s that for BitTorrenting anime I guess. I shall make do with Nico Nico Video.

On another note, I just finished rewatching all five seasons of Futurama. Good stuff.

UPDATE: The survey has been reopened! Please go do it now if you haven’t already! I also added some new questions, but if you have already done the survey then it’s okay.

After helping out some Sec 3 students with their school project, I have decided to conduct my own little survey to satisfy my personal curiosity. So, if you are a Singaporean anime fan, then please take this survey! And please help to spread it around to all your anime buddies!

Do the survey or Yuki gets it…again!

And in case you haven’t heard… Odex has roped in four Japanese companies, held a press conference that resulted in the first CNA article on the subject, and launched their new VOD service with a grand total of two titles up for download.

Anyway, please do the survey, okay? I need a titanic sample size.

Mr Graham [Ishikawa’s publicist] told Today: “Mark will be working with Odex to demonstrate that we were under contract to Odex and that our data identified the IP addresses of individuals who were downloading and sharing copyrighted material licensed by Odex.”

Now Odex just has to rope in the Japanese studios to establish its right to take civil actions. Read about it on Today Online.

And in a related development, ars technica, one of the most reputable tech blogs on the web, has posted an article on this incident. It doesn’t really offer any new perspective, but hey now we know that at least one other person on the global tube network knows of Singapore’s existence.

Okay, so we aren’t shocked. The whole situation (except for the recent judicial decision) has been sadly predictable and looks set to cost Odex plenty of bad press from its biggest potential customers before this is all over. Will it work out well for the company in the end? Time will tell, but if we judge by the RIAA’s example, cracking down on file-swapping could take years and a serious war chest.

Read the rest of it on ars technica.

Mr. Siew Kum Hong, a Nominated Member of Parliament, posted the important parts of the written judgement by District Judge Earnest Lau, along with some of his own opinions on the matter. He was formerly a lawyer at Rajah & Tann, the laws firm which is representing Odex. Pretty interesting read. IANAL, but it seems to me that the main basis for which the judge made his decisions were as follow:

1. Odex failed to prove itself to be the exclusive licensee for the list of works in question.
   Under the Copyright Act, only the copyright holder or the exclusive licensee can initiate civil proceedings against infringers. They manage to do so only for one title, Gundam SEED. Only the authorization letter from Sunrise was accepted because it was addressed to Odex and Sunrise is a right holder. The other letters were either addressed to AVPAS or were not issued by a right holder but by another distributor. So essentially the judge was only wiling to hear the case out over one title.
2. The laws in question apply only to civil proceedings.
   Apparently the laws invoked by Odex to call for pre-action disclosure of information are only used to aid civil proceedings. Since Odex cannot prove that they, being neither the copyright holder nor the exclusive licensee, have the right to launch civil proceedings against the list of infringers, they cannot request for pre-action discovery. Neither can they, using the same set of laws, apply for pre-action discovery in aid of a criminal suit because the laws in question deal only with civil actions. Furthermore, the court will only hear out a criminal suit if the case is brought to it by the Attorney General, and not Odex.
3. Odex failed to produce evidence of BayTSP‘s involvement.
   While the judge recognized the proven ability of BayTSP as an internet forensic investigator based on previous cases in the US courts, Odex provided no proof that BayTSP was responsible for the data presented. The judge was also of the opinion that the US court rulings were based on the testimony of BayTSP’s owner and not on the tracking data itself. And if Odex did conduct its own tracking operation, the judge was sceptical as to whether it has the technical expertise to do so properly such that the results are reliable enough to be used in court.
4. ISPs are obligated by law to protect their users.
   As Odex presented insufficient evidence to prove its claims, the judge is unwilling to force PacNet to go against its contractual and regulatory duty.

That is to say, either Odex has been treading on dangerous waters all this while, or they simply suck at preparing their paperwork. I find it hard to believe that they had a need to lie about BayTSP’s involvement, but why then did they fail to prove that relationship in court? At the very least, shouldn’t they be able to produce some kind of receipt after supposedly paying BayTSP so much money? This is either incompetence of the highest degree, or I am forced to conclude that Odex actually did the tracking themselves by studying BayTSP’s method, and they plan to pocket the so-called tracking fees they are collecting from parents.

Also, the most interesting part of the entire written opinion:

(a) For the Singnet case, the orders were made by consent. In particular, counsel for the Plaintiff mentioned for Singnet in those 2 applications to record the consent order before the court.

(b) For the Starhub case, Starhub was represented by counsel. However, the issues raised here were never fully argued before the court.

Starhub may have lost, but at least they put up a fight. PacNet’s case probably benefited from it. But Singnet settled by “consent”? Hey, do you still remember a certain The New Paper interview with Mr. Peter Go at the start of this whole mess?

The New Paper, 8 Aug 2007

Odex had to pay unnamed ISP. Since Starhub lost the case, there’s absolutely no reason why Odex would need to pay Starhub for what they had already won in court unless they were feeling particularly charitable. But Singnet settled by consent. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out where the money went.

Apparently a group of Secondary 3 students are doing a school project on the whole Odex Incident. I’m not exactly sure what kind of school project starts at this time of the year, but whatever. Anyway, they politely requested for my help in publicizing the survey, so here I am. What a nice guy. So yeah, go do the survey!

P.S. And in a related news, PacNet successfully defended in court the identities of its users. Local forum discussions go nuts. Odex is expected to appeal. Refer to Straits Times.

Dear anime blogger,

I am Tan Yan Sheng, a secondary three student of River Valley High School. My group members and I are currently working on a school project regarding the recent incident of Odexâ€s crackdown on fansubs. One of the requirements of the project is for us to suggest a feasible and possible win-win solution for two parties to solve a common problem they faced. The topic that we are working on is the conflict between the anime fans and Odex.

From what we knew, many anime fans have been downloading “free” anime from the fansubs, and their acts have enraged Odex, the licensed anime retailer in Singapore, claiming that they are losing much of their profits due to the “irresponsible” acts of the anime fans. Rising tensions between the two parties have caused Odex to take legal action against the anime fans who downloaded anime “illegally”.

As third party observers, we are curious to know why the anime fans chose to take the risk of downloading anime from “unauthorized” sites like fansubs, instead of purchasing Odexâ€s licensed products. We would also like to know the views of the anime fans for their conflict with Odex. This is because we feel that these sources of information will serve significant purposes that help us to derive at a solution that can satisfy the needs of the two parties.

Therefore, we prepared a survey to help us to obtain our objectives. Knowing that you are one of the well-known anime bloggers in Singapore, having over hundreds of people reading it everyday, we would like to seek for your help to publicize our survey to the anime fans through your blog. The link to the survey is: link

We find that this is an excellent method to help us conduct our survey, as we would be able to get enough people to take part in the survey. This will really help us a lot to complete our task.

We sincerely hope that you would answer to our request and we thank you for your time and consideration.

Yours truly,

Tan Yan Sheng

22 August 2007

PS: we hope that this letter will be publicized together with the survey link. thank you very much.

No problem.

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.