15th
MAY
GG, fansub downloaders in Singapore.
Posted by tsubaki | Filed under Anime
It’s finally here.
The Overlords of Singahpoo haet animu. And has summoned someone to smash anime downloads.
EDIT: My entire post has been removed because I was warned to not warn anyone about it. So gg people.
I think the only thing I was really bothered about was Code Geass. JESUS I WANT TO WATCH MY LAST 2 EPISODE OF CODE GEASS. WHY MUST THIS HAPPEN? Gah. Forget it. I give up. It’s pointless to watch anime anymore, with this kind of shit looming around. I think the local anime blogging community will slowly die. I mean, if you blog about those shows it only means you’ve been downloading and watching them and it’s going to make it so much easier for them to catch you since it’s like a fricking open confession.
Guess I will just have to spend more time with Granado Espada and my guild for my 3 months holiday then. Tomorrow’s the launch for those who have the special 2 day advance passes, and I am one of the winners. I’ll see everyone else on the 17th of May. So erm, sayonara?
Tell me when it’s safe to come back and start raving about Lucky Star or something.
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May 15, 2007 -
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Let’s all go into hiding :/
Damn, sorry to hear about this man. I would say the same thing too if this happens in my country. I should burn them on DVD for you and mail it to you. You can’t miss Lucky Star and Code Geass. (’^');
Do you know if Tor would help mask your torrents? It works pretty well over here for bypassing the tracker connection blocking, don’t know about your ISP though.
Yeah, alot of those are licensed in the US as well. Doesn’t stop people from downloading and watching them anyways.
There will always be some ways to download data anonymously but I think the main problem here is that even after downloading, people won’t be able to publicly talk/discuss/blog about theri downloaded animes especially if the law enforcers are serious about preventing “illegal” downloads of licensed anime.
Just watch em from Japanese TV (aka claim ur not dling)
That site seems to be focusing a lot on pirated VCDs and DVDs, and the Straits Times article it gleefully links is possibly the only indication of any intention to take down fansub downloaders. Anime episode blogging is probably going to die, but I don’t think it is possible to police private downloading without going medieval on privacy. Then again, this is Singapore we’re talking about — nothing stands in their way in their quest to enforce unquestioned rules.
Surely governments and corporations alike should have learned by now that a bit of slack must be cut for the online community, and that such things as fansubs help the industry rather than help it. Then again, it is the Singapore anime industry we’re talking about: one which was stuck in stagnancy for years, is unprecedented in its close-mindedness and its detachment from the general anime fanbase, and one which does not hesitate to align itself with the authorities in an RIAA-like grab for profits. These practices are tantamount to forcing people to eat your shit by starving them.
Unless such happenings cascade on to other countries (and I sincerely hope not: surely Singapore is not such an influential force as you like to believe), Singapore is going to be the only one with a rotting anime industry, whilst anime continues gaining popularity and profitability elsewhere.
Yeah dude, mask your torrents or stick to downloading from XDCC or HTTP.
I can try and help you out when I have a fiber connection, I’ll gladly upload stuff for you
I guess this ruins my plans to move to Singapore and become a famous anime blogger.
But seriously, as long as you don’t SAY on your blog that downloaded it, how they make that assumption? And are they really going after people who, in the end, probably only serve to increase the amount of anime consumed by giving what amounts to free reviews?
Anyway, good luck guys, I hope this blows over and turns out not to be a big deal.
I keep expecting this to happen in the US too, that one of these days there’s going to be an RIAA-like assault on fansubs. I thought the end was near when Media Factory sent C&Ds across the Pacific (
http://www.animesuki.com/doc.php/legal/mediafactory.html ) but that was two and a half years ago and no other Japanese company seems to have followed suit–maybe they realize it would just do more harm than good. Hell, just about every DVD I own (and I’ve been buying 20-30 a year since I got a DVD player in ‘99) I bought because I saw it fansubbed and really liked it–it’s a fact if fansubs didn’t exist, I wouldn’t have as many DVDs.
Fansub downloading is illegal, but what about watching anime on youtube? (I know it’s shit, but with no choice in the matter…)
THIS IS MADNESS!!
THIS IS SINGAPOREEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
Wow, that’s a surprisingly big list of licensed anime titles.
But, you know, something being illegal usually doesn’t stop people from illegally downloading stuff. I’m not sure how good the police in Singapore are at finding out who dl stuff, though. Good luck!
Funnily enough, you’ll find anime uploaded on DivX Stage6 as well.
If you search harder, you’ll find full Hollywood movies.
Oh my… This is bad. But it didn’t explicitly say anything about fansubbing or who’s gonna be licencing them in Singapore and losing business from downloads.
AT LEAST THIS IS THE LAND OF THE FREE. LOL
Why Naruto’s not in the list while BLEACH is…
Macross isn’t licensed. LOL
Just watch everything off Nico Nico Douga :-
http://www.nicovideo.jp/
“D.Gray-Man”
“Seto no Hanayome”
“Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS”
Now Nanoha is LITERALLY a ‘jailbait’ …
Where there is a will, there is a way. Look what happened to DRM.
Sorry to hear about that. Hopefully they will stop and you can keep doing what you do. LONG LIVE LUCKY STAR.
full version of motteke! sailor fuku is out btw.
oAo
Sucks.
*Counts the number of Kyons head slapping in the picture*
So it means that downloading Raws of the animes listed above would be against the law too?
I thought that the previous Odex incident was the last we would see if this kind of crap. Who knew some sort of crap like this would turn out? I seriously wonder what the hell is going on in their brains. Thats it,I’m going to start to planning to move to Japan. lol
Man Fuck that shit I mean for real Fuck that shit!!!!! Thats bullshit. Yall need to stand up for your right to watch Anime. I will say it one more time Fuck that shit!!!!
On another note man I love the site. I want to recommend an Anime to you if you can watch it Claymore and Lovely Complex please watch Lovely Complex if you dont like it you dont like anime. Im so sorryto hear that man keep your head up!!!
wish you were here, then.
with all the publicity of singapore blogger on the JP magazine. It wouldnt be hard to track these guys now and they were so proud to be featured on the magazine previously. hah.
“I’ve been informed that a number of people have been caught and slaughtered to death.”
Really? Has there been publicized cases of downloaders caught? I noticed that a lot of Singapore based blogs have become inactive, but there are some that continue to blog episode summaries. Are they truly cracking down or is this just a scare tactic?
ouch :
argh..i forgot can’t use that emoticon -.-
anyways…hang in there man
Without anime, i wouldn’t even be buying the shana and ZnT novels lah, wtf.
Oh well, i’m not really caring, still gonna download.
Let’s just see how big this gets.
Could be an idle threat… but, this is Singapore we’re talking…
^_^;;
that’s why Singapore sucks.
I am not sure if this will help you but you can go to this site: http://skygrasper.com/ah/forum/
It’s a site that I help run that uploads anime for direct download. We try to upload the latest series that gets released such as lucky star. I have been a big fan of your site and I would hate it if you can’t watch anime anymore. Because anime is the source of all life itself. Cheers! :)
Now this sucks. The problem with Singapore is that since we’re a tiny island, it’s relatively easy for them to find, trace and persecute.
Problem with youtube is that they’re also taking anime off the servers as well. joost (http://www.joost.com/) seems like a possible alternative, but you need an invite to get in.
Yawnz .. there’s tons of way to get anime. this is just pointless scaring people. Look at drugs, how long has it been illegal and people are still doing it.
I missed the original post. I assume that it has something to do with government crackdown on dling fansubs and raws. Peerguardian FTW ^^
I don’t know, if you watched from youtube / crunchyroll or other sources that doesn’t require downloading, technically you wouldn’t be doing anything illegal right? Although youtube has been cracking down anime fansub episodes for quite awhile, i think you can still catch the newer ones right after they are released…
Meh, lets hope this is just a small thing that the gov will forget within a few week or something like that >_
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjdWGp0tcYI —> Radio Rip of the Lucky Star Full Opening
Sure, it’s not something you can completely rant about but maybe it’ll give you something to listen to and cheer you up.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Can not do this to me! Anime is the source of my life
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Can not live 2 year NS Like this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Singapore can not do this to us !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!THIS IS MADNESS!!
i do not care, still gonna download. I LOVE ANIME LIKE IT IS MY LIFE
i am Not Going to let Singapore take my life Away from ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LONG LIVE LUCKY STAR.LONG LIVE D.Gray-Man
LONG LIVE SETO NO HANAYOME,LONG LIVE Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS
LOVE LIVE ANIME THAT I AND WE LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Man, how stupid can people here get ?
I’ve just offered an alternative source of free anime on a sliver plate right in front of y’all posts back. And y’all have not noticed ?
Y’all deserve a ban on anime D/L then.
we see the Sliver plate OK !!!!!!!!!!!!!
we are not stupid
it is that we are not happy how singapore do thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
why why why
to the people who read this site(overseas ppl mainly): continue ur dl of animes..upload them to stage6.divx.com and from there, we can either watch it or dl it..so, ONEGAI-SHIMASU!!
TO THE ANIME AND TO ALL WHO LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Orochi, you from overseas? Gotta understand us abit. As if all the rules and laws are not enough already, they start to target anime also.
Our’s is a real bunch of VERY VERY supressed country of citizens. We are all law-abiding and nice outside, but once we get pissed, its really ugly. every single shit gets let out.
The worse thing about having the license gone to them means CENSORSHIP! I would like to see them publish chocotto sister. or ikkitousen for the matter.
And seeing how they warned tsubaki means they are really keeping a lookout.
waa? what happened? how come i’m the only blur person here =(
OMG. There are alot of anime titles on that pic over there.
No matter how they ban animes DL, animes sales in singapore will never go up, in fact, it will plummet, due to less people getting exposed to new animes. When will they see this point?
possible solutions:
1) Stage6? they provide good quality videos(think of it as dled quality). take sometime to load though…
2) YouTube? they provide lower than average quality videos. fast loading time…
3) Call some overseas ppl who download animes, fileshare with us through Virtual Lan servers like Hamachi or some other type.
4) Buy dvds..T.T
5) quit anime..T.T T.T
DAMN U SINGAPORE, U JUST TOOK AWAY A REASON FOR US TO LIVE
1. It wasn’t wise to link the avpas site. Trackbacking would be easy.
2. It would defeat the purpose of avpas in asking to downplay this post. They operate by fear. (They call it education) So far Tsubaki and his posts have stopped more SG folks d/ling than IPOS has.
3. AVPAS would target the commercial front first than anime downloaders. Consider that a grace period.
4. It’s bye bye to the auntie at the counter in KKnM.
5. There’s a reason why many SG bloggers (anime or otherwise) remain anonymous. (No it’s still possible to track them down but why make your job harder when there are those with readily available pictures/real names splashed all over their blogs?)
May Haruhi bless all of us.
some industrious members of our community can now take the risk and download the anime, burn to dvd and sell. =D, not me though.
O.O;;;
DOES THAT MEAN NO SCAMMING ANIME OFF YOU?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!
…I assume that I am to pick up where you are leaving off, making summaries and comments on episodes, worshipping seiryuus and whatnot XD Seeing that if you say fandub to anyone where I live they would say:
Fan-wha? Hey, isn’t AFL on today?! AFL! AFL!
==
-goes to see how much downloading her connection can take-
so….we’re all doomed beyond recognition? I didn’t get to read the post so I have no idea whats going on. D: Whatever it is, lets burn down parliment.
Why is it bye bye to the auntie in KKnM? I never went there before, but isnt she just selling files, accessories and stuff?
Also, if anyone from AVPAS is reading this. For good grace. WE have all the rights in the world to know what’s license. I don’t know why they have to be secretive with the licenses in the first place. It’s like as if they wanna CATCH and eliminate us instead of STOPPING us from downloading.
Tsubaki has done you guys a good deed by warning us about this to ask us to stop. Warning him to remove the link is downright lame and not logical. I can presume this one post alone and stop at least a considerable sum of people already.
The most ironic thing about the website was they say piracy exist because of the lack of communication between the content holders and the distributors. they got that right on the spot, good job.
Odex never update their site for ages. new releases pops out without us knowing. series gets discontinued eruptly cuz it’s not approved by authorities. Jesus christ. And now a blogger is communicating with us to stop the downloading you warn him to withdraw the links, what differences does that makes the content distributors who dont communicate with us and you guys.
But i dunno why other bloggers like darkmirage has no comments about this. Why the silence?
This is perhaps interesting news, particularly on the clamping down of fansubbing and downloaders of anime. The thing that I feel is that other bloggers like darkmirage either do not really care or are not keen to reveal that they are in fact Singaporeans. There is really no point to discuss it when it’s apparent that there has been a plan on it for quite a while.
As much as it is, I guess that there is perhaps why that it is often a good tactic to catch a few downloaders and kill the other people, particularly the more popular bloggers in the region. Just in the ab.net community, there are already a few bloggers who are Singaporeans, and some of them do have a decent reach.
I guess it’s sad that Tsubaki is asked to remove the links, as I did not have time ahead of time to read the article. I am still interested to see how they place the conclusion. If it is in terms of economic success, I will be really wondering how the thought process has been created and set up.
Anyway, it’s a good thinking time ^_^;;;
I posted a mirror of the list on my blog, have fun guys.
Btw I went to Germany to post this. Tsubaki can verify that.
I’m a Singaporean lah and I’m not kan chiong about caught.
Look at y’all worms whining and Kow Beh Kow Buu. Instead you should been thinking about how to get around, like all good Pirates should.
In the mean time, I still would continue to preview my stuffs off Nico and D/L the worthy ones from Winny & Share.
huh omfg… i’m also in singapore… can anyone give me a link for this article? Besides how accurate is this news, i didn’t read it on the papers nor hear it on the news…
someone go talk sense to the ppl up there…
Lol,you can’t fight against the authorities.They’ll slam u back down if you even try a little bit of resistance.If you could,its not Singapore.
Hm… That’s it IP hider… Then again it screwed my computer the last time I used it when there was an attempt for a “Anti-fansub revolution”… Oh well I have a stack of burned CDs so that should be able to occupy me for the time being…
hmm, so anime outside licensed shows can still be downloaded….???
lol…
come to think of this, which company has so much $$$$ to license soooo many show????
wah…a visit to animesuki and tokyotosho made my heart swing…it seems that hayate wasnt licensed..seems ok…or am i wrong?
and 1 word to them: If you can so call “authorized” so much animes titles in such a short amount of time, make sure they come out in DVDs/VCDs FAST!!! or else, ppl won;t like the way you work.
for those that want an ip blocker and continue to be pirates http://phoenixlabs.org/. All my years of pirating the MPAA and RIAA hasn’t knocked on my door yet. I am curious has anyone been prosecuted yet?
Hey I was torn between laughing and feeling heartbroken as I saw your collage. My friend’s and my dream of starting our own aniblog is shattered now. I can’t believe they’d go so far. Doubt it’d even help the home viewing industry they appear to be so worried about.
Blessed be the fallen they say. I sincerely hope something will be done about this.
Why are they doing this.
Ouch that’s hard out. I wonder how much longer before Malaysia gets it. Oh what the hell. Why can’t they release it faster over here too? I will buy the originals, if they came out sooner. But nuuuuuuu they have to prevent you from watching it until they decide they have made you wait longer. UGH. DIE.
go watch raws XD
learn jap and watch raws or find alternate source of teh goodies.soon enough anime is going to be the next big drug (if it isnt already….so addicting). i could so imagine it
Actually, RAWs cannot be downloaded too. Bottom line is we’re not suppose to download these as long as they are licensed.
pardon me but… this situation seems abit weird.
Why isnt any other bloggers whining about this? So far, tsubaki warned us about it and i have stopped. But darkmirage, and gang couldn’t have not seen this post yet right?
It all seems to silenced or something. And would it be wrong to say that the site of the overlords was there pretty much a long time ago?
“pardon me but… this situation seems abit weird.
Why isnt any other bloggers whining about this? So far, tsubaki warned us about it and i have stopped. But darkmirage, and gang couldn’t have not seen this post yet right?
It all seems to silenced or something. And would it be wrong to say that the site of the overlords was there pretty much a long time ago?”
They are being silent because it’s not exactly the smartest way to do if you do not want to gain too much attention. Why do any of the writers want to write something about it if the only thing is to get them back into the spotlight? I doubt any popular Singaporean blog will be dumb enough to expose itself completely and allow scrutiny as well as attention from the perceived authorities, as much as the chance of being recognized is so low.
For all who thinks that downloading raws, unlicensed is fine, no, it isn’t. As long as a work is copyrighted, it is considered illegal to share and download. That’s right, any television program in the world is definitely copyrighted and illegal.
I wouldn’t be so upset about this if not for the fact that the local distributors, especially Odex, produce absolute garbage. Monaural sound? VHS-quality visuals? Does this look like the 1970s to you? And don’t even get me started on the translation.
Remind me again why I should pay them for such a shoddy, substandard product? In the US, people are (more) willing to stop downloading fansubs when the series is licensed because the DVDs are at least of decent quality. Hell, when DVD pirates are selling higher-quality product than the local legal distributors, there’s something VERY WRONG going on.
I say we just leave them to die in an entirely legal manner. Don’t bother downloading – why take the risk? – but tell all your friends not to buy anything from them. Go back to playing games or whatever.
It’s not like the series from this season will completely disappear, right? You can always watch them after Odex’s sorry ass has gone bankrupt.
btw, forgot to add – if you want to find out what’s been licensed, Google is your friend.
Damn the Man Tsubaki! Rise against! Keep your love alive! Form a Resistance! Do something to keep your anime viewing going!
Byebye singapore, hello north korea.
lol, 78 comments and still going strong
Darn. if the govt do these do they think they can save the local publishers n enable more to buy anime frm erm
the prob is anime frm local suppliers r exp ( $26+ for half a seris, usually only like 13ep) n low quality
i wld rather order online or fly to HK n buy dvds frm there which i normally do, there the dvds cost $26+ for entire series, better quality also
argh!!! Darn it!!!
i had a post up a while ago, but when i click submit, it doesnt appear. So i think they might be monitoring the whole community at the moment. So i better stop for now lol.
I would really wish this was april 1st. honestly, the whole situation seem so wrong. no news, no reports, no people tlaking about it except tsubaki. 99% of my anime frens had no idea. with the 1% being me having to inform them.
like… what the hell?
worse come worse
guess will hav to head down to sunshine to buy the HK/TW DVDs frm erm
but tat wld mean hav to wait for the latest animes
or someone frm overseas d/l n burn for us whie we pay them T_T
no matter wat, to hell wif the local pubilshers
The Gahmen(Goverment) is watching. All i can say is… V for Vendetta. ;)
WTF? I read this kind of late so the original post had been deleted again but this is outrageous! People post entire episodes on blogs in Korea, which is closer to Japan and has more anime related products, why should they go so far to stop people from watching them in Singapore? What the heck, what would happen to the many blogs from Singapore then?? How worse can this get?
This sucks
hm.. does anyone know where can we find this piece of news? i wanna know more abt it… still from wad i see its really getting out of hand here… otakus from all over singapore will form a strike against the govt throwing durians at them and have a strict melon-pun/choco coronetto diet or something lol
Oh well after falling my Mid-Years BIG time, I have lost the willpower to stop downloading, I know it’s a pretty WTF type of reason. Also I’m sick of putting a series on hold because of this issues. Well once I get out of my minor emo moment I might stop downloading and start re-watch this series and that series. Also I’ll start watching Aria which has been neglected for almost a year now.
It’s not even the cost. Hell, I wouldn’t mind paying $1 or $2 per ep just for the right to download the fansubs legally. Saves them a lot of time, effort and money, and we get our anime faster.
What is especially galling is the fact that they have little respect for the source material AND their customers. They release crappy VCDs for the vast majority of their licenses (DVDs for a miniscule minority) and expect people to choose them over the higher-quality fansubs. It’s as though you’re shopping for a handbag and see “Prada” and “Prata” brand bags… and the “Prata” brand bag is beautifully and meticulously handstitched with genuine leather, while the “Prada” bag has loose threads all over, smells funny, and has stains here and there. (Disclaimer: I haven’t shopped for handbags before, but you get the idea.)
Basically, Odex and their pals are treating their customers like cash cows to be milked. Let’s show them that these “cows” have BALLS and won’t take any of their bullshit. ;)
BTW, I just realized… I personally know the (nominal?) president of AVPAS. Anyone got any messages to pass on to him? (Relatively polite ones only, please.)
seriously? Please tell him that i’m willing to pay a sum every month to legally download anime thru BT. I’m serious. I don’t want a website that they set up with super slow servers.
Paying a sum means having the rights to download fansubs. odex can fade. I want my nicely done fansubs with karaoke openings and endings.
I would glady register and pay like 20-30 every month for the rights to dl with BT.
If they insist of having odex make money. better packaging and MUCH faster anime transition with cheaper price! At most 3 months after the japan slots. not 1 to 2 years after it’s broadcasted.
Thanks alot. lol.
Of course, english subs, that are timed properly, original japanese voices, opening and ending karaoke, on dvds, doesn’t have to be cheap, but i can probably afford. And yes, fast.
About the KKnM auntie selling DVDs. You think they dunno… you are very mistaken… trust me they noe, they noe… infact her place is quite, how should i say it, famous…
Licensing is not easy… … that is wat i’ll say… but its going to be more of a possibly in the very very near future.
WTF
Its not going to end well. For either side.
I agree. It would be great if they have a monthly fee for downloading anime. I meant that’s how it is with WebTV and music now right? Or paying a small fee for each ep sounds good too. Their not letting us watch the anime in due time or at all and still making them so awesome is a very legitimate reason for us to download. Its not as if its available here yet, or if its ever going to be. A faster Amazon.co.jp ftw
5parrowhawk:
Kindly inform Dr. Toh that it is in the interest of consumers and the industry in general to increase market competition and reduce barriers to entry, instead of protecting incumbent firms who hide their incompetence and inefficiency behind these legal impediments that give them pseudomonopoly powers. These firms blame piracy for their own shortcomings in their production and distribution models, and only alienate their client base. Instead of protecting Odex’s (et al) underperforming business model, more effort should be put into trying to better cater to and profit off established online consumption patterns. This means investing some time into reaching an understanding with the anime community. The market is there, and consumers are willing to pay, but the products available are subpar, and the present firms are clearly unable or unwilling to provide them at a reasonable quality within a reasonable timeframe.
money first. passion later.
that is why some of my foreigner friends say singaporeans have no culture.
Yeah, i totally agree that odex’s quality really aren’t even better then the worst fansub grp out here… just where did they get their staffs to do the subbing?
Also, did anyone watches Shakugan no shana on Cable vision Ch56?? Y is it 4:3 instead of the usual 16:9?? Anyone brought the DVDs/VCDs and the quality?? also 4:3?? Wanna know before i think if i should actually buy it…
Odex doesn’t really knows wat quality means to all animefans out here…and anyhow do craps on their product…, their falling isn’t really our fault…
Example: BlueMax did quite well in their Naruto i think…, the video quality is good, + chinese dubs sounds ok too…
Just my 2cent…
forget to say that i actually brought box 4 till 9 of blueMax’s naruto release…(ard $29.90 to $36.90)…
They’re really serious about this…. what do you make of this? a friend of mind got the letter already, addressed to his father.
dear mr llk,
1. we are writing to you in connecion with various instances of online piracy that appears to have been committed by you, based on the evidence we procured. IN this connection, please be informed that we have been authorised by various japanese licensors and members of the anti video piracy association to represent them in connection with the protection and enforcement of their rights in their japense animation titles, a non-exhaustive list of which is at APPENDIX B annexed herto. Such protection and enforcement powers include the institution of proceedings leading to the execution of search warrents and raids, as well as the commencement of civil and criminal legal proceedings against infringers.
2. we have gathered and are in possession of clear and independently obtained evidence that you have been downloading copyright titles belonging to our principals, licensors and AVPAS members illegally. For reference purposes, a sample of such evidenece can be found at APPENDIX C hereto. This sample represents just a minute portion of the totality of evidence we have procured which show that you have been engaged in illegal downloading activity. We will, if necessary, adduce evidence of the full extent of your activities at the right forum and time – eg. in the course of any legal proceedings which may be commenced against you. such evidenve is currectly being preserved in accorance with foraml legal requirements as to the admissibility of electronic evidence.
3. please not that the infringement of copyright may constitute a criminal offense, which are punishable upon conviction by fines of up to $10 000 per infringing article and/or imprisonment of 5 years.
5. should we not hear from you before 25 may 2007 from the date of this letter (16may 2007), we will proceed with our intended legal action according without further reference.
It is not Odex’s Wish to do it. Personally I have worked part – Time in Odex Before, Its not their wish to do this but rather AVPAS that is initiating this action. If you checked out their site, they have almost licensed most big titles (Bandai Related or more) and not doing anything about it. I have sadded to see that Titles like Xenoglossia is already up on that site. They bought over the license but not doing anything to release it at all.
As their “Partner” in Singapore, Odex have only to take such actions.
Its just time before a big revolt happens in Singapore against this kind of “unfair” online Law to happen. Even thought we have being saftly Downloading it in the past, its actually illegal to begin with.
But as what its always said, best to avoid trouble when they come find you. So for the time being its best to just stay hidden.
And be anime Deprived. T_T
OMFG, shadowhawk, seriously do something about this man. tell him what to do, this is getting out of hand. At least INFORM US. that letter was in no way a warning letter man. They don’t want people to warn us and they are not warning us themselves too.
What the hell do they want? Do they treat us as some hunting animals? Get a system of everyone paying to buy the rights from them so we can download it freely, i’m sick of living in this kind of shit place, where life is fucking crap enough and now they wanna do things to my anime.
I thought Gintama was obscure enough not to get licensed but it turns out that I’m wrong. >_> Somatic, if what you say is true, that really sucks. Licensing a title but not even releasing it. What do they want to achieve in the end? We can’t buy but we can’t download either.
Maybe we should write a damm big petition and shoot it right up straight to the goverment…Atmost is that we will have to pay for wat we download…, there’s no reason to make us get soooo outdated with japanese animes…Even america gets their DVDs faster then us././
Ok time for me to stop downloading… For good…
I will stop downloading too…just feeling unjust for some organisation to licensed shows and they didn’t tot of releasing it….
Oh and I totally agree with 5parrowhawk I won’t mind paying a dollar for every episode realised I used to have a policy for myself. If I like the Anime go buy the fricking DVD and delete the fansubs. Unless the subs are good then I’ll get the DVD and burn the fansubs into a bunch of CD-Rs Chrono Crusade is an example, I decided to be a good boy and I bought ODEX’s DVD for Chrono in the end I’m still waiting for ODEX to realise volume 2, so yeah that ticked me off and I started downloading again…
Either way the letter thing really got me scared so yeah I’m gonna stop downloading. Maybe I’ll use youtube for now and write down a list of Anime I like and go on a DVD hunt muhahaha… (After I’ve saved up $1000)
bye bye anime desho desho hello GE desho desho..seems like uTorrent got block by some firewall thingy. maybe its from AVPAS. erm, SparrowHawk, tell this to the person u know:
thanks for making our life so miserable. we shall hid your advice of go hiding..
Huh? My utorrent is still working fine. Maybe tiny red man didn’t portforward correctly. But I suppose it doesn’t matter now because Utorrent doesn’t seem to be useful anymore. What other legal stuff can you download with Bittorrent anyway?
I think the so called IP thingy is a bit extremely into catching home downloaders and not to mention animes and from that licensed anime listing from http://www.AnimesVeryProtectedAreStupid.com.sg, wonder why that website is .com and not .org or .gov, even those new animes that are currently being aired in Japan are listed LOL
Ok, here is what I feel might be a bit long.
IF … they start catching downloaders from home, the scenario is as below …
1) The first to suffer would be the ISP providers lol, I mean they are catching their own customers and cause them to get fined and jailed, so I bet their internet business will suffer a major blow, I mean who would want to pay for their internet monthly and end up getting “stabbed” by their ISP and get caught for doing downloads?
The ISP would also end up with ppl not willing to pay for higher broadband DOWNLOAD speed since What is the POINT? If they end up not having the chance to utilise their so called high end d/l speed? and they would get caught for doing downloads????? So yes our nice country protected the IP rights of companies, but the ISP companies suffer as a result of that? Since ppl won’t need to subscribe to ISP to surf the internet :P They can do it FREE at MacDonalds unless anyone doesn’t know that they can surf for FREE there?
2) Angry comsumers like us, those who are banned/restricted from downloading stuffs(*to be honest most things for internet d/ls will be considered “illegal” under the IP law*). Will they support the people who actually restrict or even jailed/fined them for infringing the IP law, buy the “products” from the IP/Copyrights owners? I think most probably not, they would resort to other means of getting the illegal/legal stuff else where instead of supporting the local vendor who owns the rights to sell the product, there is always E-bays and other online shopping mean to get the products. Will the local company who have the distro rights earn “more” as a result of catching more home downloaders? Probably not.
My Suggestion:
Solution to the download issue is to make it legal and payable to the IPs/Copyrights owners. A nice example would be MobTV from TCS, that’s a legal and payable way of asking ppl to pay for video d/ls. The anime company should get an online site to sell their anime eps online, this way, the ISP profits, the IPs/Copyrights owners profits and we would have lesser ppl infringing copyrights since it becomes “legal” to download the anime content from web. It’s a double win situation.
The cons to my suggestion would be, the anime company will say, the jap studios don’t allow them to do that, etc…, I think it’s up to them to fight for it. Like telling the jap studio, the anime d/ls are restricted to only Singapore ISP users?
Another con would be, ppl who downloaded it can pass it around to others to watch, so they don’t end up earning from selling it online, but … I think this is a pricing issue, if you make d/ls exp, I am sure ppl would do that, but if you made it really cheap and affordable, most ppl will support the site and d/l it “legally” from the owners.
I am sure it’s much better than catching and making those downloaders liable for criminal offences, fines, jails, etc…. which I see it as a oppressive way of handling things rather than a democratic way of handling the IPs/Copyrights. We are a democratic country afterall I hope.
Lol,the authorities are just doing this to get more Moolah,and probably to piss everyone off. And they dont even bother to help us get in more original stuff from Japan so that we can support the anime. Sooner or later,this will be even worse.
This is bad for anime…
*Looks up and sees 220kbp/s download speed for Bleach*
But is it real?
If it is true
; ;
^
Sayonara anime i suppose.
i just realised those bunch of lowlives named manabi straight as MINAMI straight. Oh for christ sake, i’m feeling so insulted by a bunch of full grown suited ugly old businessmen hoarding the anime circle for more cash to buy mroe viagra for themselves.
At least try to watch some if you are licensing them, assholes.
this might well be the beginning of the Dark-Ages for the anime community in Singapore……
it this is really the beginning of the end…then i’ll miss lots of cool animes…and my life will be back to a damn,***king boring one….
in the mean time i think i’ll be hiding under some where in SG
seeya
Lolicontrol
http://miyamoto-sensei.com/lolicontrol/ had an similar article sometime ago .
So how many people received the lawyer letter ? 10 or 100 or 500 ?
do they want us to apologize , or want us to pay $$$ ? how much $$$ ?
pls feedback here,thanks.
Such are the typical weakness of Singaporeans. Dare to do something in the dark but flee at the first sign of trouble, like the mice they are.
Anyway, I’ll take my chance at fate.
“If history is to change, let it change. If the world is to be destroyed, so be it. If my fate is to die, I must simply laugh.”
Thanks for all the submissions so far.
The earliest I’ll get a chance to talk to Dr. Toh is Sunday, and I might not be able to catch him, so don’t hold your breath. It might take a week or more – I said I knew him personally, I didn’t say we were drinking buddies ;). I’ll try and summarize what people have said rather than repeating everything verbatim, of course.
To the former Odex guy, I understand that Odex may not want to enforce, but at the same time the enforcement is a fact. Even if they have no power to stop it, they have the power to soften the blow by providing decent product and a meaningful assurance of timely releases.
And like I said, don’t hold your breath. Dr. Toh may well be as much of a figurehead as Odex, although from my conversations with him (admittedly only a couple of times) he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to be pushed around that much.
Oh, and if you guys could do me a favour: We all know Odex’s distribution channels are not particularly great, but how many of the shows on that list are actually available for purchase? It would certainly help our case if we could point to examples of shows which have been licensed for years and never released. (Has anyone seen Stellvia anywhere, for instance?)
So I think we might want to do a little project. Survey as many video shops and comics shops as we can (just to get a representative sample), and tick off all the shows which have been released from the license list. We’ve got a couple of days to hit them and get the data.
Whenever you pass by a Comics Connection or some other shop that carries Odex product (I’m not sure if Blue Max is an AVPAS member – certainly at least some of their releases don’t appear on the list), pls. note down the available shows, as well as whether they’re VCDs or DVDs. (You could also print out the license list and tick off the shows.)
Send your findings to hai@gmail.com . Pls. include the location where you spotted the product, as well as VCD/DVD.
Thanks.
Whoops, the e-mail addy should be:
hai(insert slang name for Ngee Ann City here)@gmail.com
weakness or not, we hide because no matter how much one loves anime, it is NOT worth getting into this shit.
No wait, that sentence put us in a bad light, more like, the authority place too much shit on it for us to risk.
Be mindful that MOST anime viewers are 16 to 20+ and still have long road ahead of ourselves. Getting thrown into jail the first thing at this point of life is never a good thing, i think you might realise. and so is forking out 10000 bucks per episode.
Because in singapore, getting screwed once means getting screwed for life. I’ll admire you to run through the gunfires between money hungry uncles who use the name of law to suppress culture and those who want to preserve it.
But for the sake of the safety and the retardedly stupid law of this place, i do not want to be jailed 5 years nor be labelled as a traitor of the country over one episode of anime.
and because of my inability to do anything in this place without getting my ass handed by the police, i feel angry for myself. While i cant do anything while feeling angry, i have to suppress myself to not do something retarded on the streets. And after months and months of suppressing…
congrats, singapore, you got yourself a very very suppressed angry youth who wont do anything to harm the society, but at the same time, will not give a shit on what future the country has. Cuz he’s leaving the first chance he gets.
the location wise and stuff seems really hardcore, looking forward to your news, and i don’t know whats the slang for ngeeann, so… yeah.
and for christ sake, i posted 3 comments and none got thru, doesn tsubaki has some censors or something?
Not really, I’m sure most of us pass by at least one mall with a Comics Connection or some VCD shop on our way home from work/school. I’ll try to hit Jurong Point and Causeway Point if I can – shouldn’t take much longer than 1/2 an hour at each spot. 15 minutes if I only go to the Comics Connection and forget about the video shop.
p.s. err… “Taka”? :D
Oh well maybe that long list of licensed Animes are the Animes that ODEX is gonna start subbing, I mean their site is finally getting a make over. Maybe when they finally launch their site, they will start doing proper subs, release them in DVD format (Then I will try and screw my computer so I can get a better one XD), have better product quality standards,and have the titles released faster. If not I don’t get why the government is doing this. Either way, I’m keeping my fingers crossed about what I think ODEX might do when their changes to their site are over and about what 5parrowhawk will attempt to do. Either way I’ll be doing the survey if it helps. Anyway nights nights…
So how many people received the lawyer letter ? 10 or 100 or 500 ?
do they want us to apologize , or want us to pay $$$ ? how much $$$ ?
pls feedback here,thanks.
Do you guys check your mail if your isp is singtel? both physical and virtual, im still not srue where they might send the warning letter to.
Hope Odex is not putting the ” getting a new look” sign permanently and not doing anything later.
best, if possible, is that singapore is able to get the licensed to sell the anime DVDs at the same time as japan selling the dvds…lol
So far people have gone to AMK, Bishan, Jurong Pt and Causeway Pt.
Here are some interesting observations:
0. A lot of shops are still selling pirated stuff openly.
1. Blue Max licenses are not listed.
2. Blue Max seems to have nothing to do with AVPAS.
3. Blue Max is legal AFAIK – if they were selling Naruto VCDs illegally, you can bet AVPAS would be on them like… well, I’ll skip the analogies here ;)
4. Blue Max seems to have decent translations – their Sakura Wars: The Movie VCDs apparently used the US translation. This appears to be an authorized usage, since (AFAICR) they released it before it was released in the US.
5. About 50-60% of the titles on the list have been released. Some may be work-in-progress, such as the newer shows. Others may simply be out of stock and out of print.
6. I spotted the Petit Cosette R1 DVD (from Geneon) in one shop. Either Odex is sitting on the license, or that list includes imported R1s from Geneon and possibly other companies! Sort of cheating, since those discs carry a “not to be sold outside the USA” label…
7. There are quite a few Odex-released shows which aren’t on the list. Off-hand, Initial D, Maburaho and Tactics are missing, among others. I’d be amused if it turned out that Odex released those illegally, but that’s hardly likely… more likely the fellow making the list was sleeping on the job.
Footnote 1: If any of you have time, pls. e-mail me the list of all the Odex VCDs you own. This is to catch the “out of stock” items so we don’t end up embarassing ourselves by fingering them for a series that’s actually been released long long ago.
Footnote 2: I don’t work for Blue Max. I’m also leery of buying from them because I really don’t like VCDs anymore… But it looks like you can stop downloading and buy from them with a “clear conscience”. Pity their selection is so small!
Footnote 3: OK lah, I’ll retract my former verbal abuse of Odex… FOR NOW. If it turns out they’re behind this, the retraction gets retracted :D
Footnote 4 (yah, sorry, I’m making a bad habit of all these multiple posts):
It’s probably unrealistic to expect them to let us “torrent legally” with a license payment, for the obvious reason that as soon as you start torrenting, you’re already uploading it for some probably-illegal ppl to download. The best we can hope for is that they set up an online store which uses some kind of torrent-with-authentication technology, so that the authorized users can P2P with each other and a single “seed” server (but not with the rest of the world).
Actually, if you’re paying to download, its doesn’t have to be p2p. It can be direct downloads (ie. iTunes). If one is paying to download legitimately, surely the company can afford to provide bandwidth then?
lets all migrate la.
i feel u hitoshura. manabi’s one of my current top faves. morons.
i know of 1 place where they sell original japan imported DVDs. Rivervale mall. accessible by train. take till seng kang mrt and change to lrt until u reach rumbia or somewhere near there. i bought haruhi and GITS:SSS there. can say its quite “up to date”…
oh, good, will patronise there if I have a chance.
so darkmirage did you stop ur downloads?
btw anyone know any links to the original news, is this a prank?
from which isp did anyone get caught, lets all avoid that isp forever when the contract ends.
@tiny Red man : I think the shop that you are talking about isn’t exactly selling original japan imported dvds. When u mean original japan dvds,it means region 2 dvds. I read your blog about the posts of the dvds you bought from there,and those dvds seem to be hk/taiwan imports rather than from japan instead. And also,its impossible for the dvds to be so cheap as Dvds in Japan are very pricey. 1 anime dvd cost about 4000-5000 odd yen,which is about 50+ to 60+ sgd.
@double/tiny: Are you sure they’re legit? If they’re HK/TW dvds, chances are they aren’t. Does the packaging have any identifying marks/etc that indicate the manufacturer? What region are they?
Fansubs are a separate matter, but I’m definitely not planning to spend any money on illegal DVDs either. If they turn out to be legit, though, you’ll see me there before too long ;)
@sparrowhawk
Maburaho is in there. it’s easy to mistake it for mahoraba though. Like i included in my note, there a 2 anime with a half released season due to either copyright laws, or just sg’s plain hypocritic “porn is bad” law.
Other bloggers silence on this is pissing me off in a weird way, the only other blogger who wrote this was dmrchsr, but the post was short with no details. The others are still acting like this never happen, dandy about new releases of anime and figures. :/
also us paying them to dl is not really accurate. What i meant was, to buy its license for the show we want. Those who didn’t really buy it will face thier own shit lol, but once wwe have the rights of the license i think it’s safe to say that we can dl it thru any means. Just like when i have a copy of original last exile for example, i can dl it on the net, because i own the original. isnt that right?
hmmm how bout this sparrow, we collate the data and then write into the forums about opening up Singapore industries to more competition and how these “monopolies” are not benefiting the economy.of course we cite the animation distribution industry as an example.
damn….what if they are right…they are r2 dvds though…the haruhi dvd has “Kadokawa Anime” on it…shall do a better update to the photographs for better clarification..btw, i bought them at the price of $43 (due to discount) for haruhi and $25(also due to discount) for GITS:SSS.
They’ve already started gathering evidence since the day they said they were going to clamp down anime downloaders. Stopping now won’t help, except maybe a lighter sentence/fine?
I agree with Ave. I went to do a google search and found that they had already announced this news on Feb 01 2007! Other internet forums also had already discussed it during Feb 2007.
So I wonder why Tsubaki only mentions this now?
Tsubaki already mentioned this awhile ago in his blog. That one where he bashed Odex.
So this post is about them finally enforcing the rule. OKay I get it.
Come to malaysia. Download your anime from here. :))
Zebra, if you’re talking about ST’s Forum page… I doubt it ;) Even if your letter gets read – which is not guaranteed, given that any old Ah Kow and Ah Ngeow can write in – the probability of response is not high.
Just to make something clear, it doesn’t look as though the Gahmen is involved in this whole episode, except possibly somewhere way back behind the scenes. Furthermore, they are not protecting Odex. There are other anime companies in Singapore, but they have not expanded their operations to anywhere near Odex’s scale. One possibility is that the Japanese companies are protecting Odex by giving them priority for licenses, so as to have a convenient “lever” with which to control the local market. It certainly seems as though their hand is at work in AVPAS. Let’s not be too hasty to blame the Gahmen for what is quite possibly just good old-fashioned Corporate Strong-Arming.
Which is not to say that we are up the creek without a paddle. Remember the Half-Life ban debacle? People took it upon themselves to organize dialogue with the relevant authorities, without blowing it up in the public sphere, and eventually a consensus was reached in favour of the community. Let’s hope that we can do the same here.
My central thesis will be that if they want to stop piracy from bleeding their profits dry, they should first start by incentivizing legitimate customers. Punishing the guilty and the innocent alike will get them nowhere. On the community’s side, there has to be a commitment to adhering to at least some sort of ethical code. On the company’s side, there has to be a willingness to recognize that code and work with the people rather than against them. All this begins with opening a dialogue rather than arresting people (on one side) and cursing the companies (on the other).
Well, I’m off to draft up my notes (so I have some ammo for talking to Dr Toh). I may have to fix a dinner appointment or something with him in order to get anywhere, but we’ll see.
*Salutes SparrowHead!!
Our Hero, Sparrowhead!! XDXD If you win this battle, can i call you Kami-sama? GanBATE~!!!!!! The Singapore anime ring depends on you…currently, it’s damn silent..=.= >.> but no stress k? bye and gd luck!!
I find this post VERY disturbing.
I’m about to start studying in Singapore in a few months time
and wonder how am i supposed to live for 4 years without anime
btw do they check laptop hard disks/DVD contents at immigration checkpoint?
nahhh at most they’ll check your bags.
but seriously la wtf is the govt’s prob sia -.~
Just a thought, are http downloads traceable by AVPAS? Torrents should definitely be, since anyone can check the IP of downloaders while connected to a torrent. But they will need to get the ISPs to trace all traffic (or obtain their logs) to be able to trace http downloads.
wtf? this thing is still going on? sheez.. why are u all ranting about anyway.
5parrowhawk: u ought to watch out what you’re saying. u could get into some serious trouble even retracting your statements wont help
Sparrow, good luck and may the moe be with you. the fate of our world lies on your mouth. so go convince that dude-in-charge.
It’s not a battle. Let’s not assume that we’re enemies with them, until they declare it themselves. We need to at least make an effort at settling things peacefully. Yes, this may very likely involve refraining from illegal downloading (at least as far as licensed anime goes), because we can’t expect them to make all the concessions and accept nothing in return. We have to be prepared to meet them halfway.
Thanks for the advice, Bjorn. If you’re referring to the statement about corporate strong-arming, I’m only mentioning it as a possibility. Not saying that that’s necessarily the case. Yeah, this is old news to a certain degree, but I think the (multiple) roots of the problem are still around.
And I managed to set up an appointment to talk with him sometime this week. We’ll see how that goes.
5parrowhawk, gd luck…do yr best….lol
the fate of the world depends on you now. no stress though! xD
I’ve been following this post (or rather comments) for some time and I must say – Singapore is pretty f***ed up >_> OK, sorry, I mean, that’s supposed to be a democratic country?
Anyway, that’s not the reason I post :D
Has anyone tried “Protocol Encryption” when using a BT client? A full explanation can be found here: http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Message_Stream_Encryption. Here’s an excerpt:
“The following encapsulation protocol is designed to provide a completely random-looking header and (optionally) payload to avoid passive protocol identification and traffic shaping. When it is used with the stronger encryption mode (RC4) it also provides reasonable security for the encapsulated content against passive eavesdroppers.”
Of course, this does not solve anything, just allows you to download your precious Lucky Star anonymously ;) It should be safe, it’s supported by uTorrent/Azureus/BitComet/KTorrent (AFAIK), by default uTorrent accepts such connections, so there shouldn’t be fewer peers (not like it’s a problem for the new torrents :).
Hope this helps, but I would prefer if such a method would not be needed in the first place :/
Oh that is bad .. Really bad ..
But i mean from the beggining the whole thing is illegal .. So i can’t 100% hate people who are trying to stop pirated stuff / illegal downloading but hey if you ever made an anime you wouldnt really want people to download it for free ! =.#
Anyway there’s some ways you still can download with like guys said here , But disscussing the animes would be pain in teh A## . I Can’t stop thinking that animebloggers are the ones responsible about this lol .
Nope,the animebloggers are not the ones responsible for this.In fact, they are actually like fansubs, promoting people to support original anime. Saying that they were the ones who caused this would be biting the hand that feeds you.
i think i might restart downloading again. there are some titles that are not “authorized” by them. get the unauthorized animes. thanks the good people who advise us not to download. no sorry to u though. cos i will be the sorry guy if i got caught. lol
yeah. especially when the bloggers don’t say stuff like: “go download it now!” or something.
And most of them are serious big spenders. the famous ones in sg at least. darkmirage imported the whole set of limited edition of haruhi. and to add to that. all the figures, and the things he bought when he was in japan can put other original supporters into shame.
Don’t forget riuva who also throw big bucks into figurines and all. now imagine if the anime market is bigger in sg. I can safely say, these people will grab them up in one shot if not for odex crappy packaging, mda’s mindless and content spoiling censoring and half-released series due to censorship issues.
If i can vouch for anything, i would say these animebloggers got me into figurines collection, and now i’m getting flamed by my parents for spending my pocket money on figures rather than on my lunch.
I spoke to Dr. Toh, president of AVPAS, earlier today over lunch.
Before anything else, I might as well add an apology to Odex for most of the nasty things I said earlier. (No, Dr. Toh hasn’t seen those things AFAIK, and he didn’t ask me to apologize! ;) )
In any case, let me put it this way: the news is mostly GOOD for us (and the people who got the letters!), as long as you agree that the people producing and importing the anime deserve to get paid for their efforts.
I can’t go into detail yet, because some things he said are OFF THE RECORD and he doesn’t want them to be published, but I’ll upload my notes from the conversation later, on my own webspace. Hopefully they’ll be up by Friday (I’m a busy guy!). I’ll post a link when they are up.
Cheers.
Is there a headline “student fined for downloading anime” in japan? I doubt it. Student don’t have much money, so they resort to download. This is a message to tell parents to give money for the kids to buy animes.
They just want to use the extra info besides mp3s evidences they procured from sniffing agencies. Money is one of the driving factor, they need extra funding for sniffing, since they find alot of torrents are anime related, makes business sense.
I’m sure some of their own kids also download anime. If you like anime currently showing in Japan but you don’t live there, there is no other option but to download, since licensing takes ages and you bet not all gets licensed so will be missing alot.
Like I tell myself, by the time the anime(exclude very popular titles & reissues) gets published after years, will there still be products available to order from japan a year later or so? yes, get it in ebay for 10x the price when it came out.
Thanks sparrowhawk..looking forward to the post… but in return, i shall support makers by buying good animes, from which source i dunno. lol
I’ll do the same as what tiny Red Man said I’m gonna buy a few DVDs soon. Maybe when I hit 16 (next year :’() I’ll get all the Animes I want in original DVD format. Oh and for now I’ll slowly buy a few DVDs and VCDs that are rated PG and maybe download an episode of Tubasa (Or what was it again?) or watch it over YouTube and if I like it I’ll get the box sets.
Oh and thanks for your efforts 5parrowhawk! XD…
whats your webspace add. sparrowhawk?
and. nice job.
ODEX=AVPAS ? , they have the same office address ?
Anyway , if they are reading this , they can ask the ISP to outlaw torrent technology = no more downloads.
but pls do not sue your fellow Singaporeans , it might destroy their future and even lives .
Make Peace , not war :)
Like I said, I’ll post the info in a day or two. When you read it you’ll probably understand why there’s a delay.
As for Anonymous – Assuming that my information is correct, the situation is not as bad as you seem to think it is. The address observation is interesting, but it is very likely that AVPAS has no office space of its own because it’s an association of companies. Therefore one of these companies has to act as the main contact, and the most logical company would be Odex.
I. R. Dorama monger.
Watch anime on Crunchyroll.com
They have a LARGE archive of anime… its where I watch most of mine because TV here in the UK is so anti-anime >.>
Not that I’m advertising… you can watch anime anywhere you like :O Well, I love this website, only just found out about it. ^^
crunchyroll has too many virus…or pop-ups i tink….
try http://www.anitube.blogspot.com
seifuuku is out~~~ i say, wooooooooo, i say, wooooooooo~
sparrow thanks for the hard work, but odex still needs to do something to their products, being the largest company in this industry.
I’m so proud of representative dialogue. 1 guy presenting the views of millions of otakus in Singapore to the honorary chairman of the society.
What a 1 to 1. I’m really grateful to AVPAS for making such a concerted effort to improve communications between the community and the suppliers, mainly ODEX, first by setting up a website, then attempting to promote healthy communication through 1 to 1 dialogues.
I’m very grateful too, for all the advance warning of the coming raiding storm, though I seem to have heard that since the start of the year. In addition, I’m grateful for all the rumour mongers going around to stir up such a great sense of anxiety amongst the millions in the otaku community in Singapore. ODEX will really be proud of you for being so supportive of the intellectual property campaign.
Thumbs up!
Well, that is certainly nice, to see someone understanding the effort of the singaporean otakus. How great it is that this observer also recognizes the actions taken by the companies, thus proving his neutrality in this matter. I rest reassured as I know people still use their minds to calmly analyze the situation, and, in a friendly manner, voice their creative thoughts. You have earned my respect, Mitsuki Hayase. Millions don’t lose hope beacause there still are people like you in this world.
Let me see if I got it correct…
The President of a group is willing to waste his time explaining his action to a single person. And from what I saw, he said some things off the records too. Wow! Isn’t he afraid of being misquoted? Also apparently, The President, Mr Toh wanna have a conference with his acquaintance to explain his actions so that this acquaintance can help to publish it in his blog on the web, so that the whole of Singapore can read it, and hence Singaporeans can understand his actions. Hmm, I thought there was something known as a press conference but Mr Toh is probably too busy tracking down ip instead.
I tried checking thru the records, and it’s seems that prior to this, Mr Sparrowhawk doesn’t frequent this blog… And the way he phrases his opinion ever since the beginning seems to be a perfect representative of the term “Good Cop, Bad Cop”. I leave the interpretation of the previous two paragraphs to your own judgement.
And I must say I been fairly disappointed… From the legal notice that was sent out, I was expecting to see not on the frontpage maybe, but maybe a small tiny paragraph in the Home Section or something, saying so and so has been incriminated, taken to court, caned, served the death sentence, yada yada yada… but…
However, if Odex is monitoring this… Let me congratulate you! Your fear tactic work… I am no longer watching anime, but no way am I going to buy your products… I supported you by buying the whole of the Gundam Seed Series, but I swear I still shiver thinking about the quality of your subs and dubs. You wanna my money, give me products that deserve it… You might wanna do something about your website too. It’s not nice for a commercialized company to have a large 404 all the time – Your shareholders must be real understanding…
@ I am not fooled: i’m with you for this!! it’s sounds like a conspiracy though, to create hikikomoris.
OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG
UGUGUGUGUGUAUAUAUAA.
Monster DICK.
至八七不会话语。我的ｆｆｔ比你好。
欧的是不会抓我们的，因为我们是拉齐斯塔。
うそだああああああああ！！！！ばんかい！
螺旋がん！ 大玉螺旋がん！影分身の術！ 裏蓮華! しゃりんがん! 雷切り！火遁！大かきゅうの術！
ゴムゴムのピストル！
ラムザはディリータよりおとこらしいぜ！！
冗談だ。
The first aeroplane to fly was the Wright Brother’s, and it took off at Kitty Hawk. Not Sparrow Hawk.
Mitsuki Hayase: Please do not use proper English around these. You are scaring the commenters away.
SHIT THIS IS NOT TJ HAN IT’S LIANYL STEALING HIS ACCOUNT.
Well, these comments have finally become interesting. I mean, it is indeed strange, and I had wondered before just who the hell 5parrowhawk was. It certainly smelled fishy for him to be able to talk with Mr Toh. However, he looked like he was actually putting some effort into this, seeing him summarize gathered information and all. Then my question is, what would all of that be for? Just to make fun of those who read it and believed every word? Is anyone in the world that bored?
Also, my English may be far from perfection. Then again, I’m trying my best.
Pls note that I am not advocating downloading. Far from it, if you read my previous rant, I have stated that I have stopped doing so for fear of repercussion. I dun wanna my future to be ruined for anime, but it seems that Odex is happy to assist me in that.
The only thing I am trying to express here is that Mr Toh has never heard of a press conference. Heck, we dun even have to use that. Ever heard of internet forum? Chatrooms? IIRC, previously our PM used that as a channel to interact with JC students.
And perhaps another thing I find fishy :
”
Quote from Sparrowhawk – copyright Sparrowhawk
So far people have gone to AMK, Bishan, Jurong Pt and Causeway Pt.
0. A lot of shops are still selling pirated stuff openly.
1. Blue Max licenses are not listed.
.
.
.
7. There are quite a few Odex-released shows which aren’t on the list. Off-hand, Initial D, Maburaho and Tactics are missing, among others. I’d be amused if it turned out that Odex released those illegally, but that’s hardly likely… more likely the fellow making the list was sleeping on the job.”
Wow, he managed to gather all that info from ppl supposed going down to the shops. Now I am a skeptic of human nature… so tell me dear lurkers here, how many of you actually pass him information.
And this is a test of my comprehension skills but point 2 cannot be inferred by visiting the shops, same goes for point 3 & 4 – research is needed. Point 5 is his own opinion. And I agree totally with Point 7 – i mean check the list, you won’t believe the number of mistakes there are. Example : Odex was kind enough to license both Junni Kokki and The Twelve Kingdoms, same for Licensed by Royalty and L/R, and I will skip the numerous spekking mistakes they made.
Hey,does buying R2 dvd give u the right to download. Eg. I buy a R2 dvd of Death Note,can I download the fansubs of death note and not get arrested? After all I bought the original Jap version.
Anime sucks let’s watch SBC chinese shows.
最后一个大侠。
guys,(sob), sry to say this man, but my sis jus told me that her fren’s fren (in singapore) just got fined $6000 for dlling anime. WTF! i rarely use vulgar language in my life, and tis is the 1st time i am using the F word on the planet called the internet. Damn it all, after my dad overheard it jus now by accident, he got so worked up that he is planning to uninstall all the dlling programs on the comp!!!!!!!
NONONONONONONONONONONO!!!!! OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!!!
Oh shit guys hear this, my father’s friend’s friend’s son heard that there is no such thing as gravity on this earth. The reason why we all fall down is actually many little angels grabbing our feet and flapping their little wings really hard upwards. My father over heard this by accident and now we are planning to move to New Zealand where there are more mountains and so there are less angels.
MOFO is the new FOMO.
2 more comment to 200 comments!! ADD history? oh ya..SBC change to mediacorp now le…
OMFG Xiang Yun is hawt la.
OMFG tsubaki I miss you.
What I’m interested in is that how do they actually track you down? Once you know how they track the torrenters in Singapore.. Well, you know.
If they track you via the torrents, wouldn’t that mean that they’re downloading the anime was well?
Also, popular shows should have hundreds and thousands of users from all over the world, downloading the same file at the same time. Are they really that free to check every single IP in the connection network to pinpoint all Singapore-oriented IPs and then trace back to the ISP (Who then has to break client confidentially to release said information), and then to the user? It seems too much work done (You sue, they can’t pay; the most you get is about a few thousand. Not worth the effort, IMO). There is no way you can get a 100% connection to EVERY SINGLE torrenting person, so they’re not getting everyone too.
If they don’t track you via torrents but instead direct downloads, how do they monitor your actions? They’ll need to seek permission from the ISPs (breaking of client confidentially there), and monitor you via, what, network traffic? How do they know what you’re downloading is legit and what is not?
Furthermore, shouldn’t the problem of internet piracy be the incredible number of mp3 downloaders? Compare the number of anime Otakus to the number of MTV-ish people (Sorry, couldn’t come up with a better name). I’m pretty sure there are ALOT more people downloading the latest {Insert famous musician} album or whatnot. What about the issue of pirated software? Bootlegged consoles? Why target anime where there are bigger fish out in the sea?
OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!
OMG! My frenz of my frenz of my frenz, to the power of 10, of my brother’s fren just got sentenced to 1 stroke of cane for every anime episode in his compy. He got a total of FIFTY EPISODES AND HENCE, FIFTY STROKES…OMG, I dun usually call the almightly for help, but this time, I am making an exceptional. OMG!!
Damn it! My Grandpa overheard it despite not having his hearing aid, and, he got so worked up that he nearly got a heart attack. After we managed to save him at the hospital’s A&E, he threatened to destroy my whole compy..!!!!
OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!OMG!
great..anybody pay the fine already…i just settle mine..damn…
why not do this? get over with this and get on with life.
@koji – Did you heard before what is call Filter?
Its easy to filter out Singaporean’s Ip easily. And since Singapore ’s Ip normally starts with the same identical numbers (58, 59, 202, 212 etc etc)
Its easy to filter out 1 whole list of it, just by tapping onto a tracker and be a seeder.
Be it Your choice or not. What SparrowHawk is doing is subjected to Suspect unless he did openly declare who he is, what is his relationship to Dr. Toh then maybe we can start judging if its true or not. The rest? Up to your choice.
speaking of which, ever since we started doubting him, sparrow hasn’t been posting. Sparrow please respond with evidence so we can stop doubting you.
Erm, please refer to Tsubaki’s latest post. I am very amused to see that somehow you lot can miss his latest comments in the newer posts.
Look at Darkmirage and Riuva postings today…..
Ok… I’m actually doing what tiny red man said. I mean I’m stuck with a couple of holiday assignments, a book (The Shadow of the Wind) which I need to read for school, and some CCA commitments. Oh and I’m keeping occupied with my old Animes as well.
I love living in my country where piracy is run by the government
Wah lao… I spent almost 2000 bucks on just 3 dvd anime series from japan. How can they say I don’t support anime? My 2000 bucks can buy 100s of Odex cds lor. Somemore I buy original from Japan lei.
AVPAS put that list and if I want to buy them NOW but ODEX cannot provide how? I go import from Japan lor.Then if I were to import all the animes I want to watch from Japan, I will go bankrupt in less than a minute lor.
Japanese can watch anime free on their tv, why can’t we pay them premium or get access to their cabletv to watch also? Problem is not many can understand Japanese like me mah, so bo pian. Due to increasing exposure through internet, we all confirm will gian want to watch everything we want, but our own country cannot provide for us quickly and legally! So what to do? Suck thumb lor. Go complain Singapore is lousy lor. Go immigrate to other country lor.
If Odex cannot provide quality limited editions like the Japanese, then us hardcore collectors will not even look in their way man. Then we collectors can go spend tons of money and suck thumb liao.
Dling anime is a no no, true but if someguy kena fined or jailed, he lose money, he lose his future and everyone else not caught stays free. Singapore laws will be the undoing of us one day man. Either that or we become the next North Korea man (j/king).
Thank goodness I saw the news in Lianhe Zaobao two days back… that cleared any lingering desires to look at some anime. =\ Hoax or not, some people ARE getting caught, and even if you haven’t, it’s just a matter of time, and it’s illegal anyway, so … just stop dling. Youtube should be still be okay… right?
Just in case ppl missed that… I posted in the comments of Tsubaki’s next post, as Mitsuki kindly pointed out.
So,downloading from fansubs is illegal too?Is downloading scanlated and translated manga illegal?Are they catching only those who download from bittorrent and IRC or do websites count?
Argh,I’ve so many questions my head hurts…They should pay the fansubbers to fansub the episodes(give them jobs or something) and make it such that you can download online if you pay and the money goes to the company or something.Then the episodes would be ‘legal’,and both parties would be content.
First,bubblegum is illegal in singapore,then anime,what next?Downloading pictures off the internet?
I don’t agree that piracy is good,but who wouldn’t want ‘free’ stuff if the quality is better?It’s unfair to those who get caught and those who don’t…Or do they catch those who download the most?What about those who have downloaded only one episode and got caught?What if the person is such an otaku that he/she is cut off from the world’s news that anime downloading is illegal?What about the people who pay to download fansubs from websites?
What next?I know some people who have uninstalled LimeWire at home out of fear of getting caught and others who carry on doing the downloading of music…
Why is it illegal if fansubbers are the ones doing the job editing and fansubbing the episodes and the anime belongs to the japanese company which ctreated it?Shouldn’t the fansubbing have nothing to do with them?It’s not like we’re ripping off their vcds and passing them online for downloads.
I’m getting confused…
All in all,let’s view our options…:
1)Download-you’d rather pay the fine since the amount of money you pay for anime if you buy the vcds will outdo the fine paid…or not.
2)Stop downloading and satisfy your anime hunger pangs with youtube and crunchyroll…The next best thing to ownng it is watching it!
3)If you’re a Harvard grauate or your dad’s a really smartass computer hacker,find ways to hack into the network and download???
4)Move to another country,if you’re that mad about anime and rich that is…But wouldn’t you rather buy if you had the money?
5)Join a fansubbing committee…be part of the ‘outlaws’ with free animes to have?
6)Start a revolution against the government???Who would?
7)Leeching off your friends who download,if they get caught it’s none of your business.
8)…Fill in this one yourself!Whoa,I’m posting this on my livejournal…I still can’t get over the shock of the news though!Guess I never will.What other countries have this same law on anime?I heard that music downloading is legal in Spain.
Could always stream anime.
Crunchyroll has excellent services, though most licensed animes are taken down sooner or later, theres even an option to make ur anime larger.
If you want high quality streams it’s a cheap US$5 (SG$10-) Though those without paypal are at a disadvantage.
Fansub.tv has always had HTTP downloads.
Tor is a simple ip mask program.
Google is your friend.
Man, I hate Singapore. In truth, I always buy the anime only after I have seen the fansubbed one (if it’s nice). I agree, without fansubbed anime, I probably wouldn’t be owning any DVDs now. Whatever. In any case, this otaku ain’t buying anything from them from now on.
simple. just boycott odex and their vcds, which are inferior to the so-called “pirated” fansubs.
Singaporean here, too. Bah, this kind of things will never dampen the spirits of the Anime Otaku. While I’m mad about Code Geass as well, there’s an announced 2nd season for it. Grrr this makes me so mad when I think of I may miss it.
LOL…
Anime is already fucking slow rate in singapore…
depending on that shitty company to provide us anime is like waiting for 5yrs for a anime to be fully subbed
GOVT!! If the company can do a better job like providing latest anime at a quick rate, I don’t mind buying it!
BUT TOO BAD, i don;t think they have the ability to provide all the anime I wanted
no more animes
no more buying
hope u die soon -.-
haha yeah, stick to either ge or mangas for the moment. who knows, maybe this thing’ll blow over er… hopefully within the next decade or so ^^
[...] who have a very good memory might remember Tsubaki taking down his post about AVPAS licensed titles and 5parrowhawk’s interview with the head honcho of AVPAS, Dr. [...]
Guys y not you all list down the information u all noe about wat is illegal wat is not ^^ like question below:
is it all animations download are illegal?
is it only illegal when download licensed anime?
is downloading unlicensed anime legal?
is watching online illegal? (like youtube etc)
or ways of importing animation etc
cauz it is confuse to read so many post to understand all ^^ there no harm in doing so to help others to understand well about wat had already happen and ways to prevent it and ways to get wat all of us wanted
blogging are to find the answer and the correct way of getting wat u wan n not complaining wasn’t it? so y not we think of another way beside giving money to the “u hate most”.
and the “u hate most” is refering to “u noe who” lol or it can be anything