My 2 Cents’ Worth on the ODEX Saga

On the 16th of May 2007, the first filed lawsuit against a downloader has been issued.

Satan’s Coming.

Apparantly, the letter stated that they’ve been authorised by the Anti Video Piracy Association of Singapore(AVPAS) to file such lawsuits, and claim to be in ‘enforcement and protection of their rights in Japanese animation titles’. Now here’s the painful part: pulling a threat that each infringing article of such a copyrighted clause were to invoke a criminal license which would rake 10,000 singapore dollars by itself, and an imprisonment of 5 years. (On a sidenote, ODEX happens to only have license over Gundam Seed, and/or Inuyasha. The Bleach and Tsubasa Chronicles included hetherto are just their greed and belief that Singaporeans are a bunch of fools who would panic at first sight of such lawsuits.)

Concerns from that incident onwards were those of the Otakus(fans) and anime-downloaders and what will be of their fate. The question was of how ODEX PRIVATE LIMITED, a private corporate by itself managed to dwelve into the IPs of so many customers(namely the 17 and more who were ‘threatened to be’ sued), and as seen from the letter itself, will SingNet be the only harmful ISP(Internet Service Provider) out there which pose as a threat to the Anime Community? Throw a comparison now between the AVPAS and the RIAA(the Recording Industry Association of America). Now even the RIAA has to go through legal actions in court to dig out IPs of the downloaders so as to not infringe Consumer Privacy. However, there was no news of whatsoever when ODEX suddenly issued a lawsuit letter(which made headlines a week after) containing  SingTel’s lease on the IP whic

h supposedly downloaded the likes of Bleach, Tsubasa Chronicles, and the likes.

Then, interestingly, here’s the highlight (as taken from DarkMirage.com):

Of course Odex is a legitimate company that is trying to protect its rights under the current intellectual property rights law (flawed as it may be). But my point is that if a private entity can obtain such information without the prior knowledge of the people involved and without the authority of the court, then what exactly in our legal system is protecting our privacy from abuse by some unscrupulous characters? And if such protection of personal privacy does indeed exist, what exactly allows Odex to bypass it?

Let’s pause here, in case you people have still ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what’s going on. Firstly, all downloaders via a client named BitTorrent or any of its likes ‘kena‘ the letter of Odex. However, so much for the fight for anti-piracy on Odex’s ‘noble cause’, other forms of downloading such as HTTP, FTP, IRC and a whole lot of others just aren’t bothered at all. Well simply because Odex probably didn’t bother to go through that much of a hard work just to get what they want, which indefinitely in this case happened to be the money from such potential lawsuits. As for me, I’m not very much an Otaku or Japanese animation supporter, (although I do fancy some of their intricate storylines,) but the attention and ambiguity of this case really appeals to my ‘kaypoh’ conscience.

And there are also a few interesting pointers to note, refer back to the letter, and compare with this list that DarkMirage.com has also come up with,

• Odex is not, and has never been, the dominant proliferator of anime in Singapore.
• Not all the AVPAS titles are licensed for local distribution.
• The Japanese studios are not directly involved.
• As a private entity, Odex cannot file a criminal suit nor prevent any criminal charges.
• Odex claims $3,000-$5,000 settlement is for legal and tracking fees.
• Odex has already paid all the necessary fees.(legal fees)
• Odex does not have a foolproof case in court.

And last but definitely not least, and uber the hax0r importantly,

• You are not guilty until proven so in court.

Which was one of the main reasons why Odex is doomed to fall in the next few weeks…

One week later, Illegal downloads fall by half, but returns to normal the following week because the scare was just so temporary…

In the months of June and July, the Empire Strikes Back - Odex returns with their SWAT team to deliver the new batch of threats of treason, catching many by surprise…

8th August 2007,
http://img510.imageshack.us/my.php?image=odex08aug07zh7.jpg

Then recently, on the 14th of August…

Click here for the full article.

For many, this was a huge defeat. For another one of the biggest ISP providers in Singapore has lost the Battle of the Letters. But this raised another question, why didn’t Singtel even send one lawyer to face the case? Surely a government affiliated company wouldn’t have its decency to hire a lawyer to face up to such a queer insult. But hey, look what we found, on the 8th of August New Paper deal from one of the previous articles above featured:

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.

- DarkMirage

 Also, see the ST article above about Starhub having to give up the names of 1000 illegal downloaders… Say Odex is able to get $5000 from each downloader, 5K multiplied by 1K, you do the math. Exclusive of other downloaders paying homage to Singnet or PacificNet. It’s no longer about ‘Oh my pocket’s sore ‘cos of my losses from Illegal Downloading’, it’s about that corrupted money involved.

This sparked off a series of humour and action within the Anime Community of Singapore because obviously, the youth and the consumers are definitely not gonna sit around and get bossed around by such Authoritarian methods. One of my favourites include NCH85’s flash animation:

There was also the Youth Park Odex Rebellion March:
http://textfiend.net/zerohero/?p=453#more-453

At the same time, PacificNet was also fighting with the Odex Empire for the same offence Starhub was sued for. Meanwhile, the HardwareZoneForumers found the mastermind behind it all letting off some hot gas in forums all around…

http://atalude.wordpress.com/2007/08/12/how-do-i-gotten-pwnt/

Then over the previous weekend, the Odex saga gets tighter, as they lost their case against PacNet.

Anime case: Odex had ‘no right of civil action’ 

Company was only a sub-licensee for titles, says judge’s ruling ANIME distributor Odex had “no right of civil action” against illegal downloaders because it was just a sub-licensee — not the copyright owner or exclusive licensee — for most of the anime titles sold here.

- TODAYonline, 25th August 2007

Also, from Straits Times,

District Judge Ernest Lau released his judgement to the media on Friday – a rare move in itself – and outlined his reasoning.

He compared a request for an Internet service provider’s subscriber information to what is known as an Anton Piller order in the law world.

An Anton Piller order allows the plaintiff to enter someone else’s premises, halt all activities, make a search – for days if necessary – and then seize all incriminating evidence found.

Because of its ‘draconian’ nature, such orders are only granted when the plaintiff can prove it had an ‘extremely strong prima facie case of a civil cause of action’, wrote Judge Lau.

He said he required a similar standard of proof in the Odex case to protect the ‘public interest’.

Service providers like Pacific Internet (Pacnet), he wrote, owe it to both their customers and regulators to protect subscriber information. Singapore has no privacy law as such.

Odex, said Judge Lau, failed on two counts.

Only copyright owners – that is, the studios that made the anime – or an ‘exclusive licensee’ for the anime being downloaded, can take legal action under the Singapore Copyright Act.

Odex is a sub-licensee and had letters from rights owners authorising it to take action on their behalf, but the firm was neither a copyright owner or an ‘exclusive licensee’.

An exclusive licensee has the sole right to distribute a product in a certain market.

Even the MP blogger, Siew Kum Hong, wanted to say something. He of course, pointed things out in the almost drastically ‘I am the one ring to rule them all’ manner. Of which the gist of it all were conveniently summarised by DarkMirage once again:

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.

Of course, one should only realise that the Judge’s reply is the most GOSU and that you should really go check it out only if you are truly bothered with this entire case.

I guess it’s high time to conclude anyway.

There are many lessons to be learnt from this entire prima facie. (Of which, I shall include my own versions to be truly original to my own sense of creativity.)

1. Fuck Odex.
2. Bureaucracy is the One Ring to Rule Them All.
3. Illegal Downloading CAN NEVER BE STOPPED.
4. Every company should have the decency to uphold a PR department.
5. I once held my stand that Singaporeans are Nazis and forever will stand true to it, so should you. (joke)

Might continue if I truly bothered about this. (Although I already have)