" sure,while anime DL is illegal and what the company is doing is right in some sense, but, getting ISP to reveal over a thousand IPs, forcing each violaters to pay up 5000 dollars or face Court charges is NOT THE WAY TO HANDLE THIS CASE. furthermore, a 9year old kid had to pay 5000 dollars for illegial anime DL, A F***ING 9 YEAR OLD. what would his parents feel. like f***s! thats right.
the company way of handling things is just out of hand, hell do we even know where all this money goes too? I would speculate the company is gonna bag all the money into their banks....."
-NCH, a Singaporean deviator on DeviantArt who does not download anime and WAS maintaining a neutral stand until this happened.
ODEX HOLOCAUST by =NCH85 on deviantART"Odex Burning Ceremony on August 25th @ Youth Park CHANGED TO CD RECYCLING DRIVE."
What some parts of the community think."I actually have nothing much to say about the whole fiasco of ODEX since it has been over run by so many people lately including me during the past two months. However, the latest blog entries surrounding this issue about Stephen Sing reeks of mere punitive naive flaming."
By Impz. His post here.
Now, I think this whole thing is kind of stupid. It is pretty obvious to the lawmakers that the anime community has pretty much shot themselves in the foot by ILLEGALLY downloading anime, but it appears that they are shouting furiously against the matter by saying that ODEX sucks, ODEX is shit, ODEX is a dictatorship, Stephen Sing is a bloody arsehole, etc. This does not help their case. It's obvious who is in the wrong: The community, having downloaded anime in the first place, is considered pirating and infringing copyright laws, and this is pretty much obviously not in our favour when brought up against ODEX. Heck, if they were the ones in the wrong, would it have been possible to obtain a court order in the first place? There's no law against shoddy work or whatever, so we can't do anything about it. Wearing a black ribbon and trying to obtain funding to go up against the company won't do anything, they've got the upper hand.
Of course, ODEX did shoot itself in the foot by trying to kill off the local anime downloading community. Of course, they have a list of licensed stuff that they search for, and send out those lovely little letters (now nationally recognised as "The Odex Letter"). Anything outside that list would be spared. Basically, if you had paid, even bought DVDs from overseas as do most of our local high-profile anime bloggers, and downloaded only those that are unlicensed and impossible to find, then you would be pretty much safe. They're pretty lenient in that aspect - they're only protecting intellectual property rights. Now, I'm not saying that what they're doing is right - the oft-stated example of fining a 9-year old for downloading anime when he probably did not know sh*t about copyrights pretty much means you're off your rocker. Also, if you've got the telcos fighting against your advances, it might be time to check your actions.
Now, I download anime myself, I admit that. I enjoy my stuff. But I'm not an idiot to think that I can go up against ODEX just by arming myself with a black ribbon and proclaiming war on them when the whole case is obviously against me. Burning their stuff may be a way to show them what the community thinks, but the money's in their pockets, we're just making a loss by burning off the product that we paid cold, hard cash for. Some guy making a comment on a local anime blog said "I would rather buy American R1 DVDs than buy ODEX DVDs, no matter that it costs double." Shit then, BUY IT. Don't just spout out remarks that you aren't going to work on, that's killing your own credibility.
Our community is quite fine in thinking it can boycott ODEX. It's been doing that for a long time. However it is tiny, naive and stupid in thinking it can fight its way against international copyright laws, overseas companies, and most of all, the Singapore Government just through willpower and a few thousand dollars. The difference here is that the people running ODEX know that by taking the legal side, it can gain the upper hand. We people are useless against them, but people don't understand that. Just face the truth, we can't fight it. Even if we can blow holes through ODEX's case, remember this: In any debate the side that is on the opposition of any "do not have the right" motion only need to prove one point and justify it to win. This is the sort of battle that is going on now.
Face it. ODEX is smarter than us, and that is not going to change. Putting Stephen Sing's face on a WANTED poster is definitely not going to change that.
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