Odex having your cake and eating it too
Here is my summary of what I think of Odexs 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 its 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 animes 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 aint packaged in silver. Are their employees being
issued similar letters?
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
Odexs 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.
Lets 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 Odexs purpose (e.g.
employees, friends and/or relatives). We are still left with about
1,300 or so targets. Lets 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 doesnt 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 dont
work for free. In other words, Odex created this elaborate scheme
to instil fear, uncertainty and doubt into fansub downloaders, but
they dont 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
[b]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 dont think so. Mr. Peter Go also mentioned in the TNP
article that Odex sales fell 50% in 2006. Well, whos 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 wont ever again. How exactly was this supposed to be a
response to poor sales again?
[b]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. Its very sad when such an
unpleasant undertaking becomes your companys 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.
[b]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 Odexs stated goal of fighting illegal downloads.
http://www.darkmirage.com/2007/08/19/odex-having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too/
