Friday, August 31, 2007
21:25 by FoxTwo The Odex incident is still ongoing, and I'm surprised it's still alive and kicking. Well, maybe not very surprised, since it involves downloading and bittorrent and kids.
I read this article here in Xedodefense.org, and found it interesting. You should to, and decide whether Odex is aboveboard, or sneaky.
Personally, I sympathise with those who got "Odex-ed", ie the dreaded letters. While I am not saying they weren't wrong to download anime, I sympathise with how they must feel, and dare I say, traumatised by a corporate entity. Can you imagine your own 9 or 10 yr old kid, suddenly served with this letter saying "You are a naughty person. We caught you and you're going to jail! We won't haul you off to jail if you pay us S$3,000!"
Even an adult receiving this kinda letter will be shaken up, let alone the kids.
In a sense, I'm both proud and ashamed to be a Singaporean. Proud, that Singaporeans can actually band together and fight a perceived common threat (Xedodefense.org as an example). Ashamed, because of the behaviour of a Singapore company who thinks that with the law on its side, they can step all over the "little people".
The Copyright law, in spirit, protects the rights owner from large-scale piracy of their Intellectual Property. It serves to protect and offer an avenue of recourse for a rights-owner to seek redress for infringments.
Here, the company is using it to frighten kids into giving them money. When this story ended up on Digg.com, many people there commented that this looks like "extortion". I'm inclined to agree.
Me? I'm sitting on the sidelines and rooting for the underdogs - the anime crowd in Singapore. I hope they put Odex in its place. Show the big bad corporate entity that Singaporeans aren't so easily cowed by threats of legal action.
21:25 by FoxTwo The Odex incident is still ongoing, and I'm surprised it's still alive and kicking. Well, maybe not very surprised, since it involves downloading and bittorrent and kids.
I read this article here in Xedodefense.org, and found it interesting. You should to, and decide whether Odex is aboveboard, or sneaky.
Personally, I sympathise with those who got "Odex-ed", ie the dreaded letters. While I am not saying they weren't wrong to download anime, I sympathise with how they must feel, and dare I say, traumatised by a corporate entity. Can you imagine your own 9 or 10 yr old kid, suddenly served with this letter saying "You are a naughty person. We caught you and you're going to jail! We won't haul you off to jail if you pay us S$3,000!"
Even an adult receiving this kinda letter will be shaken up, let alone the kids.
In a sense, I'm both proud and ashamed to be a Singaporean. Proud, that Singaporeans can actually band together and fight a perceived common threat (Xedodefense.org as an example). Ashamed, because of the behaviour of a Singapore company who thinks that with the law on its side, they can step all over the "little people".
The Copyright law, in spirit, protects the rights owner from large-scale piracy of their Intellectual Property. It serves to protect and offer an avenue of recourse for a rights-owner to seek redress for infringments.
Here, the company is using it to frighten kids into giving them money. When this story ended up on Digg.com, many people there commented that this looks like "extortion". I'm inclined to agree.
Me? I'm sitting on the sidelines and rooting for the underdogs - the anime crowd in Singapore. I hope they put Odex in its place. Show the big bad corporate entity that Singaporeans aren't so easily cowed by threats of legal action.
Technorati:
Labels: anime, bittorrent, Odex
