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NEWS: Singapore's Odex Directors Speak as Protests Continue


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mskala



Joined: 16 Feb 2006
Posts: 45
Location: Waterloo, Ontario
PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 7:23 pm Reply with quote
CCSYueh wrote:
So if I want to drive a 2008 truck instead of my 2000, I should just go to a lot to test drive one & not bring it back because I really want one, but I can't afford a new car?


Many people try to draw analogies between theft and copyright infringement, but it really doesn't work. Copying something is not "taking" it. Copyright infringement would be more like test-driving the 2008 truck, returning it, but then going home and building a truck just like it for yourself. The owner of the 2008 truck would probably prefer that you buy it instead of building one of your own, and they might even have a legitimate claim that it's in some way unfair for you to "take" the test drive when you don't plan to buy the truck and you're going to use what you learn during the test drive in order to educate yourself on how to build a copy... but there's no meaningful way that that scenario can be called "taking" the 2008 truck itself. The owner still has it. They can still drive it or sell it. You didn't take it away from them. Even if there's some misconduct of some sort in that scenario (did you lie about why you wanted the test drive?), it's not simple theft.

Similarly, all a copyright holder loses from copyright infringement is the hypothetical future profits that they claim to be entitled to because of copyright law. Those hypothetical profits don't have the same kind of natural reality that physical property has. They didn't exist until someone created them through copyright law. (Note: I'm talking about "economic" copyright. In some places there is also something called "moral" copyright, which is a different animal and not relevant here.)

CCSYueh wrote:
Pretty much everyone has access to home video/dvds which all state plainly in several languages the item in the viewer's player is intended for personal use only-mass showings require the permission of the copyright holder.


Yes, and if you read this message, then you have to pay me $20. Just because they said it doesn't mean they have any legitimate right to enforce it.

CCSYueh wrote:
It's not yours, don't take it doesn't work?


That doesn't work because it has nothing to do with copyright infringement.

Look, if you think downloading is "taking," wouldn't it make sense for repentant downloaders to give back their ill-gotten files? Shouldn't they get together all those fansub files and email them to the copyright holders? Wouldn't that be a good idea?

The reason it wouldn't be a good idea is a good clue to why copyright infringement is completely different from theft of physical property.

CCSYueh wrote:
If I go out to dinner maybe everythings perfect except one item isn't to my taste, I would never refuse to pay for the meal over one item.


There you go again with equating copyrighted works to physical property. Once you eat the food they can't sell it to somebody else; something physical has actually been taken away. A better analogy to copyright infringement would be "I think the hamburgers at McDonalds are too expensive, so I'll stay home and cook hamburgers of my own instead. Oh, they turned out to be very similar to McDonalds hamburgers." By doing that it could be said that I'm "taking" the profits that McDonalds "should" have gotten for the burgers I would otherwise have bought... but they aren't, and shouldn't be, able to prosecute me for it.

Now, all that said, I do think there's some legitimate basis for having a copyright law. It provides a useful incentive for people to create artistic work, if they think they'll have a state-sponsored monopoly that'll help them make money. Rewarding creators is good. Commercial exploitation of work by people who aren't paying the creator, is bad. I don't participate in or encourage commercial piracy operations. But copyright is not a natural right, it isn't above question, and equating copyright infringement with theft of physical property is intellectual dishonesty.
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Paploo



Joined: 21 Nov 2006
Posts: 1875
PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 8:29 pm Reply with quote
Your theory would only make sense if you stayed at home, and made your own cartoons and comics. Like you know, drawing them and stuff. Making something of your own.

But you aren't. You're just taking someonelses intellectual property without their permission or compensating them in anyway.

Comic artists in North America and worldwide have worked for years to promote and respect creator rights- artists often get the shitty end of the stick. I think anime fandom's serious lack of respect for intellectual property is a slap in the face to everything that's been done. These sort of things are training readers and viewers to expect to get everything for free, and to be able to walk all over the creators respective rights.

Downloaders *can* give back. By stopping downloading, buying the official versions of what they've downloaded, and supporting future releases rather then stepping over the rights of anime creators, producers and distributors.

It should be the artists choice what they can offer for free to readers, and what they can offer through retail outlets..... there's plenty of artists who make webcomics, and lots of venues for impoverished manga fans to get free reading material. If an artist offers their work with a fee attached, it's their choice, it's their work. Fans should respect that, even if the artist is japanese.

The companies that license anime for release in the US pay the japanese creators for their work, and put their and their employees livelohoods on the line to bring us great anime every year. I'm not saying it's always a perfect situation, but the fact is is that they do it in a fair, reasonable, respectable way.

If even 1/3 of the people who download and don't buy stopped doing so, and started buying anime, sales would probably go up a good deal, and companies would be able to bring over more series and offer better deals to anime fans.
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Dargonxtc



Joined: 13 Apr 2006
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Location: Nc5xd7+ スターダストの海洋
PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 8:51 pm Reply with quote
I just have a silly, simple question that someone here might know. What relationship, if any, does the Odex that is being discussed in this article have with Odex Private Ltd.? Or are they the same thing?

They are listed separately, and I just wanted to know how close the ADR work that is being done is to this company.
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Paploo



Joined: 21 Nov 2006
Posts: 1875
PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 8:59 pm Reply with quote
Dargonxtc wrote:
I just have a silly, simple question that someone here might know. What relationship, if any, does the Odex that is being discussed in this article have with Odex Private Ltd.? Or are they the same thing?

They are listed separately, and I just wanted to know how close the ADR work that is being done is to this company.


Both are the same company.

http://www.odex.com.sg/?p=aboutUs

"Besides distributing Japanese Anime in VCD and DVD formats, ODEX is very much involved in the TV broadcast of Japanese Anime in its 3 licensed territories and is a major service provider for Mandarine and American-English dubbing."
"Studio Odex also holds the distinction of being the first and only studio in Asia to dub anime into English for the USA market. With several titles under our belt and more on the way, we plan to grow this market and build worldwide awareness of the talent and technical abilities Singapore has to offer in the field of entertainment."

They've done the dubs and dvd production for Bandai's releases of DanDoh and Fantastic Children. They apparently also do Malay dubs. The reviews of Fantastic Children have been really good too btw

http://www.animeondvd.com/reviews/seriespage.php?series=10353

http://www.animeondvd.com/studio/studio.php?studio=40 AnimeonDVD has also reviewed several of the titles Odex has produced themsevles for the Singapore market. I'd take their word moreso as a longstanding Anime review website then what some fansubbers say about Odex's quality.

Odex is responsible for a lot of good things, and I think fans are being way too harsh on them for simply looking after their intellectual property, and that of japanese producers. I'm not sure if the fines they're supposedly imposing are the best roots [and it looks as if they are changing their game plan a bit in regards to this], but I think anime fandom's reaction to it, and the questionable attacks they've taken on Odex are far more sketchy.

http://www.odex.com.sg/product.php?product=37 Any company that offers official editions of the Miss Marple anime is okay in my books.
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mskala



Joined: 16 Feb 2006
Posts: 45
Location: Waterloo, Ontario
PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 9:24 pm Reply with quote
Paploo wrote:
But you aren't. You're just taking someonelses intellectual property without their permission or compensating them in anyway.


But they still have it afterwards. It is not "taken."
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor


Joined: 05 Jan 2002
Posts: 7912
Location: Anime News Network Technodrome
PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 10:19 pm Reply with quote
mskala wrote:
Paploo wrote:
But you aren't. You're just taking someonelses intellectual property without their permission or compensating them in anyway.


But they still have it afterwards. It is not "taken."


All your argument does is attempt to justify the wholesale copying and distribution of intellectual property.

It's all this semantic nonsense that lets people say "It's okay for me to watch the entire animated output of Japan for free and without permission". It's the splitting of hairs, the pedantic definitions, all of that that lets people justify what they're doing.

If you can't let the details go and just see the big picture for what it is then you really have no business summing up the situation in the first place.
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Dargonxtc



Joined: 13 Apr 2006
Posts: 4463
Location: Nc5xd7+ スターダストの海洋
PostPosted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 11:57 pm Reply with quote
Paploo wrote:
"Studio Odex also holds the distinction of being the first and only studio in Asia to dub anime into English for the USA market. With several titles under our belt and more on the way, we plan to grow this market and build worldwide awareness of the talent and technical abilities Singapore has to offer in the field of entertainment."

They've done the dubs and dvd production for Bandai's releases of DanDoh and Fantastic Children. They apparently also do Malay dubs. The reviews of Fantastic Children have been really good too btw

http://www.animeondvd.com/reviews/seriespage.php?series=10353

http://www.animeondvd.com/studio/studio.php?studio=40 AnimeonDVD has also reviewed several of the titles Odex has produced themsevles for the Singapore market. I'd take their word moreso as a longstanding Anime review website then what some fansubbers say about Odex's quality.


Firstly, thanks for clearing that up for me. My main concern is the ADR work. While I am sympathetic to Singaporeans, I would rather there(Odex's) shoddy work ethic not traverse the ocean and enter the R1 market. AoD generally listens to the Japanese tracks as the primary source for reviews, and several of the reviews here have had different opinions on the ADR work.
ANN's Theron Martin on Fantastic Children wrote:
The biggest weakness of the series so far is its English dub, which is, in a word, crap. The lack of professionalism here is startling. Although a few of the roles are voiced capably, they are more than balanced out by awful performances in other roles, ones that are off-tone, poorly-timed, and/or wooden. In a couple of important roles the voices match so badly with the characters that they are entirely unconvincing; Gherta, the doctor in charge in the Ged Group, is a particular example, as she's supposed to be 52 but sounds 20, and a poorly-acted 20 at that. Some characters also have weird accents or speech qualities in English that probably weren't intended. Odex Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based company which normally specializes in the Far Eastern anime market, was responsible for this one...
Theron on Karin wrote:
Unfortunately the same can't be said of the English dub. Geneon has once again relied on Odex Private Ltd. out of Singapore to provide the dub, a company which will not escape its reputation of poor-quality dubs with this title. [...] the performances of Kenta and his mother are unrefined, even amateurish, in delivery, as is the school nurse, and the timing is sometimes off. The English VA for Karin does improve over the course of the volume, but early on she struggles to find the right tone, often coming off louder and more shrill than was probably intended. She also has an odd vocal resonance in the first couple of episodes that could be a recording/mixing error more than an acting flaw. [...]it isn't something that could be recommended even for dedicated dub fans, either.
Carl Kimlinger on Fantastic Children wrote:
The supreme importance of good acting is never quite so apparent as when it gets botched. And botch it the dub does. Actors sound as if they are going through the motions without really bothering to act or understand their characters. Some speak in dull monotones, even at the worst of times (check out Gherta's monologue at the end of episode 23), others have bizarre inflections (why does Hesma sound as if he's constantly fighting a bad case of constipation?), and almost all of them have halting, unprofessional delivery at least part of the time. The problem extends beyond just the acting. Some lines are recorded without the proper atmospheric effects (e.g. echoes) such that they sound like, well, actors speaking into mikes. Thorny, complex emotions, action and high drama alike get smothered under the bland, uninspired dub. [...] I guarantee that the only tears anyone will shed during the English version will be in mourning for all of the fine moments killed dead by awful acting.

Well you get the point. Considering how far dubs have come, and how long it has taken them to get there, I would hate to see a reversion to the days of crappy dubs. It's bad for the fans, it's bad for the industry, it's bad for the original creators. And personally I don't think a company that can't even please it's own customers on a relatively small island nation, should be able to work on projects that will potentially reach markets on an invaribly larger order of magnitude. Let them settle there own problems first, which as we can see they are at least trying to do. Whether anything good will come of this will remain to be seen.

Note:
While I didn't want to get into the whole debate that has been going on here(since for me at least it is ad nauseum), after this I feel I need to at least state it. I am not anti-Odex. Downloading off the internet is illegal, and doing so without supporting(buying stuff) the content you download is morally wrong as well(yes there is a difference). I just feel Odex should get there own act together before infecting problems into our market.
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mufurc



Joined: 09 Jun 2003
Posts: 612
PostPosted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 1:20 am Reply with quote
mskala: Dude, this is the ANN boards. The place where some people apparently believe that fansubbers are out to destroy the North American anime business (and then the Japanese one, while they're at it), and where some people apparently can't even begin to imagine that fans in other countries may be in a different situation than American fans. (Disclaimer: the above sentence contains one slight exaggeration. Maybe.) I think you do make some good points, but you certainly didn't pick the best place to express them... Smile
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ikillchicken



Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Posts: 7272
Location: Vancouver
PostPosted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 1:40 am Reply with quote
Zac wrote:
mskala wrote:
Paploo wrote:
But you aren't. You're just taking someonelses intellectual property without their permission or compensating them in anyway.


But they still have it afterwards. It is not "taken."


All your argument does is attempt to justify the wholesale copying and distribution of intellectual property.

It's all this semantic nonsense that lets people say "It's okay for me to watch the entire animated output of Japan for free and without permission". It's the splitting of hairs, the pedantic definitions, all of that that lets people justify what they're doing.

If you can't let the details go and just see the big picture for what it is then you really have no business summing up the situation in the first place.


You can blow it off as details, but in response to points like this I think its key:

CCSYueh wrote:
Most of the people I see downloading use the excuse they can't afford to buy all the anime they want to view (do without. What a novel concept! Many of our ancestors used it). Or they wouldn't buy the anime otherwise


If you apply this reasoning to stealing something, its obviously BS. Wether you'd buy it is irrelevant, youre still costing them by stealing it. In the case of copyright infringement though, if you wouldnt have bought it anyway, your downloading it really hasn't cost the company a thing. Now you can argue that people actually would buy stuff if they couldnt download it, but thats a whole other debate. You cant avoid that whole debate by cutting right to "its like stealing no matter what."
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor


Joined: 05 Jan 2002
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 2:02 am Reply with quote
ikillchicken wrote:


You can blow it off as details, but in response to points like this I think its key:

If you apply this reasoning to stealing something, its obviously BS. Wether you'd buy it is irrelevant, youre still costing them by stealing it. In the case of copyright infringement though, if you wouldnt have bought it anyway, your downloading it really hasn't cost the company a thing. Now you can argue that people actually would buy stuff if they couldnt download it, but thats a whole other debate. You can't avoid that whole debate by cutting right to "its like stealing no matter what."


I'm not "blowing it off as details".

Anime obviously has no value to people like you and others who think the same way you do.

Films, music, TV shows - these things clearly are not worth money to you because you can get them for free. You can, so you do. The end. There's no other argument there - it's not about whether or not it's theft, it's not about morality. You choose to not pay for it because it's easy and there are no consequences.

You can argue until you're blue in the face about how it's "not really theft" and "the companies aren't losing any money when hundreds of thousands of people download their product for free" but it all boils down to the fact that we have created a culture here where the chief product - japanese cartoons - are not worth money anymore to anyone who's a big enough "fan" to know how to get it for free.

Downloading Japanese animated product en masse is not only encouraged, we have a culture here where you're not a "real fan" unless you download everything you watch and outright refuse to ever pay for any of it because "America always screws it up".
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Navak



Joined: 30 Mar 2006
Posts: 88
PostPosted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 2:03 am Reply with quote
Zac wrote:
All your argument does is attempt to justify the wholesale copying and distribution of intellectual property.

It's all this semantic nonsense that lets people say "It's okay for me to watch the entire animated output of Japan for free and without permission". It's the splitting of hairs, the pedantic definitions, all of that that lets people justify what they're doing.


Unless your claim is that copyright law is straightforward, I think you have lost sight of the issue when you brush arguments off as being a matter of semantics. The whole issue revolves around those "pedantic" defintions which establish legal rights.
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Zac
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 2:06 am Reply with quote
Navak wrote:


Unless your claim is that copyright law is straightforward, I think you have lost sight of the issue when you brush arguments off as being a matter of semantics. The whole issue revolves around those "pedantic" defintions which establish legal rights.


Anime is a commercial product, designed to make money. That you CAN get it for free doesn't mean you SHOULD. Liking cartoons does not entitle you to get them all for free simply because you can.

I'm screaming at a brick wall here anyway so I don't know why I'm even bothering.
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hikaru004



Joined: 15 Mar 2004
Posts: 2306
PostPosted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 2:11 am Reply with quote
Actually, I hope that the money that they obtain from the downloaders is less than their legal fees for making the ISPs release the data and any PR to clean up their image since this looks to be a PR headache. If it's bad enough for riot police, then they've got a big PR problem on their hands.
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Navak



Joined: 30 Mar 2006
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 2:12 am Reply with quote
Zac wrote:
Navak wrote:


Unless your claim is that copyright law is straightforward, I think you have lost sight of the issue when you brush arguments off as being a matter of semantics. The whole issue revolves around those "pedantic" defintions which establish legal rights.


Anime is a commercial product, designed to make money. That you CAN get it for free doesn't mean you SHOULD. Liking cartoons does not entitle you to get them all for free simply because you can.

I'm screaming at a brick wall here anyway so I don't know why I'm even bothering.


I agree, however I don't believe you should simply dismiss the argument or any other arguments which "split hairs" when it discusses laws or other legal rights.

Using words like "should" indicate a moral question, not one of legal merit which is an enitrely different argument.
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor


Joined: 05 Jan 2002
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 2:26 am Reply with quote
Navak wrote:


I agree, however I don't believe you should simply dismiss the argument or any other arguments which "split hairs" when it discusses laws or other legal rights.

Using words like "should" indicate a moral question, not one of legal merit which is an enitrely different argument.


At what point does common sense kick in? Do you have any idea how many people download fansubs? It isn't like some secret underground thing. If one tenth of the people who download fansubs bought ONE American DVD, that DVD would be considered a massive gigantic mega-success and would probably buoy that company for some time and likely pay for production on a few Japanese series.

When do people stop and say "Oh wait if nobody's paying for this and we keep devaluing the product by making it free for everyone then hey the industry will collapse"? Will that ever happen, or is it just "f*ck you I can get it for free and I always will" forever?

I mean, for crap's sake, how much product can you download for free before saying "Uh maybe at some point I should pay for some of this so they make some more I can enjoy"?

Or does that thought just never enter the heads of these people? Someone else will pay for it, I can just leech off the system forever, I can rely on the Japanese fans to pay for my entertainment and feel guilt-free about getting it all for free, I have no problem being a parasite who contributes nothing to the system at all.
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