Odex, Throwing the White Towel?

Has Odex decided to step down and threw in the white towel? The local anime company, Odex has decided to soften their approach towards local anime downloaders after District Judge Earnest Lau dismiss Odex’s bid to force Pacnet to disclose it’s customer’s identity.

Mr Sing has post on the Odex’s forum that Odex won’t be taking action against the current group of Pacnet users or anymore anime downloaders unless they are still downloading after 3rd September.

As to why Odex is still going ahead with the appeal, Mr Sing disclosed that,“this is a completely different issue. The Pacnet case’s ruling, we disagree with the judge, that is why we’re appealing. There are many issues involved in it that I cannot discuss here since the case is in appeal now, (there is a law against it) but in time we will explain when everything has been resolved.”

This has caught me in surprise. What made Odex back off and resort to a softer approach in educating the public of the evils of downloading illegally? They have won 2 court bids, forcing the Singnet and Starhub to hand over the identity of the downloaders. In the case of Pacnet, even though Odex have lost, they are going to appeal against the ruling. Odex was prepared to fly in anime copyright holders just for this appeal.

Does Odex have a hidden agenda behind all this? Or is it because Odex suffered another embarrassing moment with the local authorities?

Mr Peter Goh had written in to the Straits Times Forum to counter the online allegations on the inaccuracy of the sub-titles in the animes series. The sub-titles was tweaked to conform to Board of Censors’ (BFC) requirement.

In respond to this, Mr Tan Lee Cheng, Senior Asst Director (Film Standards), Board of Film Censors clarify that poor subtitling has nothing to do with the classification process and it’s the distributor’s responsibility to ensure that subtitles reflect the true content of an anime.

Another cover up story being rebuked by the authorities? If Odex have decided to use the soft approach in the beginning, none of this unhappiness would have happened. Don’t you guys agree? I mean look at how Riaa handle the situation when they start to crack down illegal mp3. Warning letters are mailed out to the offenders and if they still refused to heed, fines are then dish out to them. This issue have cooked up a storm back then but it is better than shooting everyone without warning of a major crackdown.

Geekonomics did a good job summarizing Mr Sing forum post. Hop down to his blog if you want to find out more.

Quote from Mr Sing,

To wrap and summarise what I have been saying in this thread, Odex will from now on focus enforcement efforts on those who have continued to download illegally even after the publicity in the press on this issue.

If we find evidence that anyone has continued downloading, we will take action and rely on any evidence that we have on past instances of downloading. For those who have already been identified as downloaders but who have not received our letters, we will hold back our letters unless we find further evidence that they have continued downloading.

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