Sunday, August 19, 2007 - :

I know there's a thousand of odex thread and related topics out there.
But being part of the anime-community in singapore, it's only natural that the anime community has to stick together. =)

Firstly, for those out there who has no idea what i'm talking about.
The main distributor for 90% of the anime in SG is from "ODEX." If you google that name, you can pretty much find alot of criticism on them. So much so to the extent where the director of ODEX, Stephen Sing is receiving death threats and arson online. Partly due to the comments that he had posted online on SCORD forum (Scroll down it's the 3rd post; bottom up), under the nickname "xysing" gloating that he was too busy suing downloaders. Messages include "Me too busy sueing people~" and "Hahahahah! I double-6-ed so many downloaders~ serve them right!". This was reported in TNP (The NewsPaper), about 15 days (2weeks) after he had posted that comment. When interviewed, he claimed that the 'double-6-ed' remark was made 'two months ago' and forgotten about it.
(Didn't know his 2 weeks = 2 months)

They have been sending letters asking for money to reimburse their loses while threatening to use legal actions if they do not. Click Here to see 1 of the letters that had been send. After paying the sum of reimbursement that have been negotiated, they are also asked to sign a Letter of undertaking.


Secondly, we all know that downloading copyright stuffs is illegal. But why are we doing it?

Point 1 - Are we poor? Why dont we just buy their anime?
Reason: Their VCD quality is poor as compared to those of free fan-sub quality and the packaging is expensive. Not only that, the anime they release are 2 years back tracked. This cannot cater to the hardcore anime fans out there.
Most fan-subs are fast, effective, good quality video, has translator notes, and most importantly, they release them 1-2 days after they had been "broad-cast" in Japan. What's the point of having wait 2 years later, down the road, when you have become a busy man (NS/working life), and finally your local anime distributor decides to release that anime in low quality and wrong subtitles. And you're suppose to use this to cater to your anime desires..
I'm sure 90% (statistics is just my opinion) of the fans and fan-subbing group prefer to go for quality instead of speed. However, they provide us with low quality + 2 years late. -_-

Point 2 - (To support my point 1) We go for original figurines instead of fakes.
If you're implying that we, as fans, d/l anime because they are free and we dont want to use our money. How come we go for original figurines that can cost up to 80 SGD or more? The fakes cost merely like 5 SGD. So much so that some of us would pre-order them from figurine stalls.
If you need a reason, it'd be the quality and the collector's value. If you show your friends that you bought a fake figurine, it wouldn't be very impressive, am i right to say that? lolx

Point 3 - Okay Okay, even if we're totally wrong and have caused your sales to go down by 70% over the past 2 years, do you have to exercise your "legal-rights" to the maximum?
It's pretty frustrating to be waiting at home for the letter of impending doom. Asking us to pay 5k SGD to reimburse your loses, or you'll take us to court. Yes, if you do take us to court, we'll probably lose as you hold the "license." However, doing this will only create criticism over you and you'll probably lose your customers. (Bringing your sales even deeper)
If you has the time to hire admin staffs, US tracking teams, sending out letters for reimbursement, .. etc. Why not spend some time on your customer service? Get feedback from the anime community, why don't we buy your anime? You could have improve the quality of your anime, give student discount etc. All this could have boosted your sales and popularity..
Sadly, Odex chose to take extreme preventive measures that can destroy the entire anime community, or bringing them deeper (using other mtds instead of torrent). Imagine this.. If we all stopped downloading or watching anime online, how do we even know such anime exists? Wait for you to broad cast it on arts/kids-central? lolx. I think of the anime community, more of a free advertisement. If the anime is good, and the local distributors has them, and their quality is GOOD, i'm pretty sure we'll grab them.

Point 4 - Do we profit from those video clip that we downloaded?
There are 2 kind of people, those that download, watch, and delete.
And those that download, burn it on DVDs, and keep.
For the later, do we do retailing with those DVDs that we burned out? Do we profit from it?
Even the fan-subs discourages this action.. Thus we are not competing with Odex's retailing.

Point 5 - Infringing copyright law.
Those anime that are licensed and we illegally d/l them, we get fined. I got no complains.
However, downloading of unlicensed anime, I know it's oso illegal. But they could at least ask our ISPs to send us letters of warning instead of asking us to reimburse them on those anime that had not yet been release.. Guess we as potential consumers are already marked as "black" right from the start..
Either that, or they want to extort us of our parent's hard earned money. And those that ain't caught, will cause FUD(Fear; Uncertainty; Doubt) on them. Especially when most of the people that are caught are students, having "FUD" effect on them. (IMO - This will most probably bring down this year's examination results down a little if any)

This is the newspaper article on the 9 year old kid that got caught downloading.
Eletronic Newspaper:-
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/printfriendly/0,4139,137645,00.html
Newspaper Article:-
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/5727/whoagb4.jpg

Here's a post by someone on the topic, "Kicking kids for the profit?"
"Kicking kids for the profit?"

And this is a link for some1 whom looked at downloading of anime in another perspective.
http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Story/STIStory_148784.html?vgnmr=1

Lastly.. I guess that's so much so for the anime Japan Culture in Singapore.
Being black and white is good, but splitting them up will only cause conflicts.
Well, that's all i have to comment on the Odex Saga and wait for the letter of impending doom.

EDIT:

P.S.

EXTRA LINKS, open them at your own risks =)

This is the letter that you have to sign after reimbursing them.
Letter of undertaking

Ouch! Who got owned?
Link 1

Remember reading the newspaper that some bloggers send him death threats?
like... "We'll beat you up & burn your house" ?
Link 2

Shana, Flame-Haired Red-Hot-Eyed Hunter 8:23 AM