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After my blog entry on “Odex Beaten @ Their Own Game” I was wondering if I had a chance to read the 13 page grounds of decision by District Judge Earnest Lau – the knight in shining armour to the local anime world.

In yesterday’s copy of the free newspaper Today, the latest happenings on Odex Saga was published, District Judge Earnest Lau ruled that Odex had no right of civil action as the company was only a sub-licensee for the titles. His 13 page grounds of decision was released to the media on Friday.

Not only did District Judge Earnest Lau threw out the bid, he had ordered Odex to foot the legal costs of more than $7,000. The summary of the decision could be found on todayonline and on Zhane’s Blog

So what prompt the Judge to dismiss Odex’s bid?

1. Odex was just a sub-licensee – not the copyright owner or exclusive licensee for most of the anime titles sold here.
2. Judge Earnest Lau was unconvinced of the investigation method Odex used to uncover the IP addresses and pinpoint the wrongdoers.
3. Out of the 13 letters Odex produced to claim that it was authorized to go after illegal downloaders, only three parties – all distributors themselves – had directly appointed Odex to act for them. The other 10 letters had authorized the Anti-Video Piracy Association (Singapore) to do so.
4. In Odex letter of demand, it hinted of criminal prosecution should the downloaders refused to pay up. But under the Copyright Act,”only the copyright owner and the statutory exclusive licensee … have the right to take action against copyright infringers”.
5. Mr Goh director of Odex had no proof that his firm had engaged the services of BayTSP and neither did BayTSP give evidence in favor of Odex.

What made my blood boil was, Odex had the exclusive license for just one title, Mobile Suit Gundam Seed. They only had the right to take action against copyright infringers for that title and not others! You can find a copy of the darn letter here in pdf format. Odex had been wielding a feather as a sword all along.

The other was that Singnet did not engage lawyers to resist Odex’s application. Some great talk about the protecting customer’s rights and privacy. Makes me wonder if Starhub engaged any lawyer to resist Odex’s application.

What makes your blood boil and blood pressure to go up in this Odex Saga?

• The lack of transparency?
• The arrogant Ah Sing?
• Singnet who claim to protect it’s customer’s rights and privacy but didn’t even engage lawyers to resist Odex’s application?

Here’s some good news for anime lovers in Singapore. PacNet does not have to reveal names of subscribers who downloaded fansub of the Japanese Anime. The Subordinate Court had handed down its decision on Thursday. If you are still in the dark about what is going on, read more from here and here.

But that doesn’t mean downloading the fansub is legal. District Judge Ernest Lau believes that Odex is not the right party to make the application despite having the go ahead on the behalf of the Japanese anime studios. At least this have confirmed what some of the netizens been speculating.

The Odex saga not only bring about the unity of Singapore netizens, it had inspired creative works from talented people. Here’s a short video of NCH85 uploaded on Youtube.

If you think this is not talented enough, some netizens came up with the idea of selling T-shirt and a recycling event to dump your Odex products in exchange for a black ribbon. The blog seems to have been taken down when I tried to access it. I wonder if the event is still on this Saturday.

Oh well, there’s always another site to seek help and opinion should you receive that wretched letter from Odex. Try keying in Odex in your search engine and I’m sure there are thousands of blogs/websites on this topic.