According to Forbes, anime distributer Odex has won a suit against Singapore ISP StarHub, allowing it to gain the names of 1,000 subscribers accused of illegally downloading anime. The penalty Odex can get from each is up to 5,000 SGD (USD $3,285) and the users will have to destroy the stolen content and refrain from any future illegal downloading. StarHub tried to fight the request initially and cited “an obligation to protect our customers’ information”. Odex also won a similar suit earlier this year against another ISP, SingNet, with about the same number of customers involved and is seeking a third one against Pacific Internet for another thousand customers.

Odex director Stephen Sing said that “the downloading situation is very bad” and “ratio-wise, we’re actually right up there in the illegal downloads in the world, in terms of Japanese animation”. Apparently it has hit the company hard since the article cites a 60 to 70 percent drop in sales in the past two years. They say it’s largely because of downloads, which may in fact be a contributing factor. But I also think there is a negative PR effect of going after people too zealously. Then again, I don’t live in Singapore so I am not particularly familiar with the quality of Odex’s releases. But if you target your fans, they will be less likely to do business with you.

For example, the RIAA gained a bad reputation when they started filing blanket lawsuits and hoping people would settle. One person, Paul Wilkes, last October got them to drop the suit against him after he argued the only evidence against him was an IP address and that they lacked physical evidence that he downloaded anything illegal. The RIAA replied by requesting permission to search Wilkes’ hard drive, something they should have done before proceedings as part of discovery. In another case that happened more recently, a Boston University student filed a motion to have an ex parte discovery order vacated and disallow the RIAA from learning the identities behind the IP adresses of the 21 John Does.

Although I guess there’s a notable difference in that the RIAA is an industry group, Odex could face a similar challenge if someone has the balls to stand up to them and they don’t have definitive evidence. Say, for example, one of the defendants used an Internet cafe or had an open Wi-Fi access point. However I think that would be unlikely in most of these cases since I read the defendants were sent letters, implying they were doing it at home. Another reason Odex seems to have stronger grounds is that they have managed to win two cases so far against ISPs. I am not familiar with the Singaporean legal system but maybe their judges are less libertarian than American judges are.

Anyway, for those of you who want more details about Odex’s legal pursuits, read tjhan’s latest post on Riuva that goes into more depth than I could ever hope to provide on the subject, mainly because he lives there and I don’t.

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