BitTorrent Anime Downloaders Identified, $3500 Bill in the Mail
Written by enigmax on August 16, 2007A company that distributes Japanese animated cartoons has tracked down thousands of BitTorrent users it accuses of breaching their copyrights and has successfully forced their ISPs to reveal their identities. Next step - threatening letters: “Pay Us $3,500 or Else”
Odex Pt. Ltd is a Singapore-based company that distributes anime in South East Asia. Created in 1998 it started distributing anime in 2000, later with titles such as Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, Mobile Suit Gundam and Chrono Crusade.
In 2007 a decision was made in the company to start targeting people who share their material via BitTorrent after they claimed their sales had dropped 60-70 percent in just 2 years. After using a tracking system to collect the IP addresses of sharers, they have successfully forced StarHub - an internet service provider - to reveal the identities of 1000 BitTorrent users they accuse of breaching their copyrights. It had previously forced the ISP SingNet to reveal its customers details.
In all fairness, StarHub did put up a fight to keep the privacy of its users but it was little use. According to StarHub spokesman Michael Sim, although the company originally said they had “an obligation to protect our customers’ information”, the pressure from the courts was too great. A court order against StarHub was obtained in a closed chamber session in the Subordinate Court which forces them to hand over their customer’s details.
“In the instance of Odex,” said Sim, “they have satisfied the court of their need for the information. As such, we will comply with the court order”
The next step for Odex is a familiar one to file-sharers: they will use the list of names that StarHub supplies to send them threatening letters(pdf) declaring that they’ve been caught sharing anime, such as the hugely popular ‘Bleach’, and that the only alternative to being dragged through the courts, is to pay a $3000-plus ‘fine’. Not that they’ll have much time to think about the next step - Odex gives around 9 days for a response before it threatens legal action.
According to Stephen Sing (a director of Odex) the “downloading situation” in Singapore is very bad: “We have engaged companies to track illegal downloads in Singapore, and ratio-wise, we’re actually right up there in the illegal downloads in the world, in terms of Japanese animation.”
Interestingly, Stephen Sing is also a director of the AVPAS - Anti Video Piracy Association of Singapore and has become very, very unpopular. Just after the Odex anti-BitTorrent campaign began, Mr Sing made the mistake of using an online forum to joke about how many sharers he was taking action against, and the guys over at HardwareZone caught him at it, via their dedicated (Official) Anti-Odex Club.
Mr Sing has been dubbed ‘the most hated main in Singapore’s anime community’, with anime fans putting up his photographs and personal information onto the internet, making wanted posters of him, posting pictures of his wife on the internet, threatening him with violence and promising to set fire to his house. At this point, Sing called in the police.
Next ISP on the Odex hit-list is Pacific Internet - if they win, that’s another 1000 BitTorrent users about to get threatening letters and demands for $3000 - thats 3000 users in total.
Should everyone pay up, Odex stands to collect a massive $9 million. No wonder the death-threats didn’t deter Mr Sing.
Previously: Anti-Piracy Lobby Pressures Police to Take On The Pirate Bay
Next: Comcast Throttles BitTorrent Traffic, Seeding Impossible
107 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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Use Rapidshare. Forget Torrents.
I dunno why people use torrents.
Probably becuz Rapidshare gets its thing from users who donwload them using torrents and then upload it over there.
Odex doesn’t even put out dvds or use good translations. They put out crap vcds. Who the hell puts out vcds? Maybe if they ran their business in a better way they wouldn’t have such a problem. Of course people are gonna illegal download, but the things Odex puts out I wouldn’t take for free let alone buy.
Is that 3500USD or 3500 Singaporean Dollars?
I don’t have to worry about anything since I’m in Sweden ;)
[quote comment="148036"]Is that 3500USD or 3500 Singaporean Dollars?
I don’t have to worry about anything since I’m in Sweden ;)[/quote]
3000 to 9000 sing dollar…
It seems like the majority of posters here are forgetting that piracy is illegal …
…. and it seems like the majority of posters like you here are forgetting that they should shut the fuck up …
Singaporean here as well. As far as i know, there are no releases of Bleach with english subs here. They’re all in chinese. So they honestly shouldn’t be going after people who download bleach with english subs cause its not like they sell them anyway.
[quote comment="148048"]It seems like the majority of posters here are forgetting that piracy is illegal …[/quote]
Everything is legal till you get caught…
The majority of japanese anime is not licensed at the time of airing and will not be available retail in US/Europe for months or even years after.
There is a grey area because for all intents and purposes, the program doesn’t exist outside the broadcast region. So it’s fair game until a company buys the rights and releases it internationally, and most fansubber groups will cease distribution once a show is confirmed to be licensed. That still won’t stop people from making a text or subtitle file for a raw recording though.
Having someone’s IP Address doesn’t mean squat. It doesn’t mean anything in court, or anywhere else. Sing could make just stuff up: that’s an old scam. Prove otherwise. In the US the RIAA has had their asses whipped because NAT means you can’t match an IP address with a particular user in a world of dynamic IP addresses and open wireless nets.
Sorry your Anime business if failing Sing because of your crappy low quality subs but suing a half dozen people won’t do you any good.
You reap what you sow, and thanks to your gloating everyone knows who you are. Here’s a hint: If you book at a restaurant, do it in a false name or you might get a little present in your dinner.
I still don’t understand why people consider fansubbing a bad thing. First of all, if a renowned group like dattebayo or shinsen-subs decide to fansub your work, you should feel renowned and proud that those famous groups are going to fansub your work. Second of all, fansubbing an anime improves the anime’s popularity greatly, even if the anime sucks, it still will get a little bit of popularity boost. Also, why do you think people buy so much anime dvd when they can just download it off the internet? Because on peer networks like BT and limewire, things are only seeded/uploaded while they are popular, after the dvd comes out or around that time, it is almost impossible to find the anime on peer sharing networks. To conclude, fansubbing isn’t that bad, instead of looking at its bad side, look at the benefits.
I’d like to point out that most of these fan-subs being downloading are recorded from TV, if it’s DVD rips then it’s a different story, but getting sued for something that is freely available on TV for anyone to record is ridiculous.
Meanwhile Odex has been licensing every anime they can to gain a monopoly, and they mostly release old shows, badly subbed in VCD quality. There had also had been suspicions about them using fan subbers work before they started fleecing all these people.
They don’t care about distributing quality product, now they have this cash cow they’ll reap as much money from it as they can.
That ShIT Sing Fak up ! I am pity on you Singaporeans, well this kind of action soon will be emulated in Malaysia 1 day.
However, what is wrong with sharing movies with frens on the internet?
I just downloaded Hide IP Platinium just to be sure…
So now i have:
1. Changed MAC address
2. Hide IP Platinium
3. PeerGuardian 2
so it will be pretty hard to track me…and also, couse i can anytime change my IP address just pressing CTRL + Q,so noone can say some IP was mine…
And i really hope that peoples understands the fack that you cant be judges by your IP address, so dont pay!
most_uniQue
You do understand that none of those measures does anything to protect you when downloading? Only a tunnel that moves all your data via another IP and a script blocker would make you safer.
What you have:
1. Well this helps some if someone already recorded your mac and is after you.
2. Only helps on webpages and you will still be vulnerable to scripts.
3. PG2 only stops people from connecting to you, you don’t become invisible.
yea i know that i’m not invisible, but those helps…
sure you can get more something but it would probably be harder to set…
so this is good inaf for me…
but the thing that i can change my ip helps if someone would accuse me refering to my ip address…
But fackt is you cant accuse anyone just with IP so doesnt matter
Well people… There is a solution =D Go simlim tower and buy some Hidemyip software. DDL or IRC the anime you want! Do not use BT now unless unlicense anime=X
I do not see how you being able to change this IP that shows when you surf the web will affect anything.
Scenario:
You go download anime.torrent. Your REAL-IP shows. Your PG2 does nothing as they can still see you. You get a letter with your name and REAL-IP on. Are you then going to say, well my “real” IP is this other one I get from hidemyip?
This would only help if you’re posting threats or other stuff that might be illegal on webpages. I would go as far as to say, you’re not 1% safer with all the things you’ve done then before you did them.
But I do agree that you can’t really prove who used the computer at the given time. Even if you know who’s paying for the internet you can’t prove who used it, at least not with only an IP.
As I tried to explain in an above post get yourself VPN through Relakks and you’re a 100% anon. No seed loss, your own ISP won’t even be able to see what you’re doing coz the connection between you and Relakks is encrypted.
Want more information about Anti-Odex ? Visit http://xedodefense.org/smf/index.php
$3000 for a fucking cartoon??? they can fuck right off!
[quote]couse i can anytime change my IP address just pressing CTRL + Q,so noone can say some IP was mine…[/quote]
Your ISP probably records what IP was used by who at what time. Changing it won’t change that. Someone records what IP they found uploading or downloading something at what time and your ISP knows who it was :P
“$3000 for a fucking cartoon??? they can fuck right off!”
It’s not the value of the cartoon. It’s the severity of the crime. $3,000 bucks is chump change in big picture of legal litigation.
And I’m getting kinda tired of people claiming teens don’t know what they’re doing is illegal. Who here really believes the plugged in generation of now isn’t completely informed? Hell, the younger you are, the more you should know better!
So does that means that only ppl who download from bittorrent have a gd chance of getting the dreaded letter and having to pay a fine?
[QUOTE]It’s not the value of the cartoon. It’s the severity of the crime. $3,000 bucks is chump change in big picture of legal litigation.[/QUOTE]
While it is the right of companies to get paid for their work, it is not the right of companies to earn as much as their target sales figures at any cost.
It troubles me when logic like this is used to justify “punitive damages” and “lost sales”, which can be arbitarily declared. I do not believe the punitive value of an anime series is $10,000 per episode - this would assume that greater than the population of Singapore, 4 million people, will benefit from each download at the expense of the company, when it clearly isn’t possible.
Even $3000-$5000 is a stretch, and assumes you’ve taken over a full theatre and shown the fansub there.
Respect through fear, unfortunately, works. Not that it will cow everyone under the sun, but it works.
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