Rallying Anime fans, are you Odexed ?

The Odex Saga may be old news, but I took some time out to revisit the grave in an attempt to shed some light on burning questions left unanswered.

YOU should, EVERYONE should ‘beware of what you download’, because the next batch of downloads could land you in hot soup facing charges in court. Yes Odex is in town and it’s notorious rise to fame as download enemy #1 has incurred the wrath of the general anime community, which raises doubts to it’s legitimacy over collecting fines from errant downloaders of anime.

Of course, this affects mainly the Neo-Anime public, and to a certain extent avid-hardcore downloaders have became increasingly conscience about the consequences of coming under Odex’s crosshair. So basically what is Odex, and what does it do? Odex is a non government related organisation/wholesaler/supplier founded by a group of people with monopoly rights to distribute/supply anime commercially to retail outlets in Singapore. It came to shore with a big bang claiming that they were given legal rights by main anime licensees to order fines on errant anime downloaders on the net, which has no doubt led to a big public outcry. Victims who are unlucky enough to be traced by their unique IP address through the BitTorrent client are slapped with letters demanding payment of ridiculous compensation sums of $5000. One note worthy of mentioning is that the letter also outlines the consequences of legal proceedings in the event that the poor soul defaults on his/her payment after the given dateline.

Enraged by the ridiculous sum and dismayed over their methodology, fans have took to the cyber streets in the form of E-Forums and have not stopped short of flaming Odex, insults and criticisms have expectedly been forthcoming in what has now been coined as the Odex Saga. Overnight, they have become public enemy No.1, and stirred up high levels of discontent not limited to anime users. People who had never watched an episode of anime have also came into the equation, actively voicing out their support for the victims, and general objections to the Odex clause. Lead by the bullish Mr Stephen Sing(Odex’s CEO), he even went on record of issuing threats of fine and legal action on public forums, claiming that his company will not back down on its endeavors to clamp down harshly(through fines) on people. In the process, virtually taking the law into his own hands, and behaving almost as though he enjoyed taking people down as his personal achievement. Mr Sing’s insensitive actions have no doubt angered the community and sparked an outrage among the fans who swore to boycott the company. He received hate mails and even death threats and as if that weren’t enough, Odex’s website being hacked, goes some way to show how much (LOVE) Odex is getting.

The chief complain regards to whether Odex (who is only a sub-licensee of anime) had the legal rights to collect fines and compensation on behalf of its parent company from illegal downloaders who break the law? Secondly, the company is critically lacking of transparency where it matters, people begun questioning where all the revenues from fines were going to ? Was is properly channeled to its main licensee or was the money misappropriated to fund the spiraling cost of its lawsuits? Where are the financial documents supporting its claims? Finally, Odex’s social ethics issue has been called into question by the community. It is already proven that innocent parties such as poor parents and ignorant young children were indeed made to pay despite the fact that they had little knowledge(not to mention money) as to what was going on. Is Odex morally right in collecting fines from poor aunties and uncles living on a tight salary? Or school-going children who even constantly have to worry if they have enough money to pay for their next meal? We are not talking about a few hundred here, it is $5000 in reality and serious questions have to be asked as to what really constitutes to that amount, is there a set formula justifying that figure or is it simply determined by Odex? Even the local Internet Service Providers have not been spared, and rightfully so. Singtel recently came under the spotlight over privacy issues, taking no less flak from Singtellers horrified over the revelation that their private information had been released to Odex without consent. The debate rages on among the general public as to whether Odex actually have the rights to demand private information from ISPs, and whether Singtel obligating to release information without even contesting it out in court was the acceptable thing to do. At least Starhub ‘DID’ put up a fight. In the infamous case of Pac Net, they blatantly said that ‘Odex had no case against them’ and their heroic efforts were rewarded in court, where the judge ruled in Pacific Net’s favour. Odex were told that they had no legal rights as sub-licensee which raises another debate, what about those who received the doom letter and had already settled payment? Were they legally entitled to do so? Contrary to the company’s policy, are they able to demand a refund if Odex never had the rights to collect in the first place?

Unsurprisingly, the media wasted no time in zooming into this saga in a bid to keep the cash registers ringing. Providing extensive coverage of the controversial Odex saga, from it’s lawsuit against Pacnet to calling it a ‘PR Disaster’. As I write, rallying cries have already started to ring around a group of anti-Odex protestors campaigning to raise substantial funds and exploring the possibility of taking Odex to court. Many disgruntled users (and there are a lot of high-spending power people in this category) have already boycotted purchasing Odex’s product whilst others are still very much not bothered by Odex threat and continue to download illegally. Such is the declining dominance of Odex’s threat and presence that people who received the letters simply throw them away and brush them off their minds. The general consensus is that people cannot be bothered anymore, not because they condone piracy. But the fact remains that Odex messed up big time, offended the wrong crowd, did not respect the values and passion of anime fans, while doing everything that could possibly go wrong. As a result, sparking off a revolution of magnitude never once experienced before, into a fashion where fans are never going to buy from them anymore, even despite them being the sole distributor. Coupled together with their poor quality animes comprising of bad subtitles and dubs, one just cannot help but feel that downloading(for the time being) is here to stay.