Odex Survey II
UPDATE 2: I have reached the desired sample size. Thank you everyone for your help! I will publish the results here soon. Maybe tomorrow.
UPDATE: The survey has been reopened! Please go do it now if you haven’t already! I also added some new questions, but if you have already done the survey then it’s okay.
After helping out some Sec 3 students with their school project, I have decided to conduct my own little survey to satisfy my personal curiosity. So, if you are a Singaporean anime fan, then please take this survey! And please help to spread it around to all your anime buddies!
Do the survey or Yuki gets it…again!
And in case you haven’t heard… Odex has roped in four Japanese companies, held a press conference that resulted in the first CNA article on the subject, and launched their new VOD service with a grand total of two titles up for download.
Anyway, please do the survey, okay? I need a titanic sample size.
August 31st, 2007 at 2:46 am
Hi, I visited your blog after seeing you on sgcafe. Thought I’d see an update. =/
Well anyway, I just tried odex’s VoD (registered users gets 2pts free upon signup) and watched seto no hanayome 10, downloaded the whole thing in about 15mins at 300kb/s. Filesize was a huge 307mb for only a 640×480 resolution with a 64kbps audio. Nothing obviously wrong in my careful watching of the first half of the show.
I did your survey and thought that a seven days viewing license was kinda mismatched with the question of quality, since I feel most of us would only care about quality if we intend to keep it.
August 31st, 2007 at 3:04 am
Just thought I’d share with you this”
http://forums.hardwarezone.com/showthread.php?t=1711539
The link above will direct you to an active discussion regarding Odex’s VOD.
Also I’ve participated in your survey.
August 31st, 2007 at 6:06 am
Question 2 is really vague.
August 31st, 2007 at 7:19 am
Your survey doesn’t take into account people living overseas. For example, living in Oz, I have the option of buying / renting Madman DVDs ^_^
August 31st, 2007 at 8:25 am
you should add another question of if people i truly willing and able to cancle subscription with singnet
August 31st, 2007 at 8:28 am
I just think this is gg. >_> I think I’ll prolly go back to my playstation games. =(
Did the survey too.
August 31st, 2007 at 9:01 am
Woot~ Finished the survey. Felt rather short thought…maybe i was anticipating something like 5-10 pages. Ha ha.
August 31st, 2007 at 9:05 am
Well Odex Had done it they had plant a bomb shell in my head, i will just have to import or lend the R1 DVD from friends and share among ourself.
Odex can go fly kite for all i care ,quality and translation is all i care not the money issue YOu damn Idiot Odex open up your damn ears .
Btw i did your survey also hope it will appear good , if you ever going throw it at Odex how sucks they are.
August 31st, 2007 at 10:12 am
I’ve taken the survey.
Just to point out that the involvement of the Japanese studios who threaten to sue SG fans directly if the Odex appeal fails, means that the last question in your survey is beyond Odex.
I’m disillusioned by the fervent support the studios have given Odex. So if I give up anime after all these years, it won’t be because of Odex.
August 31st, 2007 at 10:52 am
Check out Todayonline.com
There’s an article there as well… And after all this time, they’re still insisting that focus groups can’t differentiate between the DVDs released in Japan and their own releases played on a 42″ Plasma TV…
Not sure if they know, but they’re suppose to compare their DVD releases with the fansub ones, since that’s their main complain. No point comparing between the speed between a Ferrari and a Porshe when we prefer ride on jet planes.
August 31st, 2007 at 11:00 am
Looking forward to the results…
August 31st, 2007 at 11:17 am
Looking very much forward to the results.
August 31st, 2007 at 11:39 am
Closed already?
August 31st, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Closed so soon? Overwhelming popularity eh?
Haiz, was hoping to do the survey too. Haha
August 31st, 2007 at 12:35 pm
The limit has been removed.
Please do the survey!
I’m hoping for about 900 more samples.
August 31st, 2007 at 1:24 pm
ha, looks like the Japs have abandoned the Singapore market….
August 31st, 2007 at 1:38 pm
They were in here just for the enforcement rather than the market itself in the first place, according to this : http://haitaka.googlepages.com/home2
@Darkmirage : How many samples do you have already?
August 31st, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Hi DM, done the survey. Any possibility you can get the local anime POV to the Japanese side?
August 31st, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Besides Singet, Starhub and Pacnet Isps, there’re also M1, Qmax and also Qala.
August 31st, 2007 at 2:55 pm
@DarkMirage: i wanna know what will you do with the result you get from this survey?
August 31st, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Did the survey.
If the Japanese are going to get involved directly, I’d rather they do sales proper here as well. Don’t start taking (legal) action only when s*** happens. Reeks of entrapment.
August 31st, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Numerous English grammatical and orthographical errors on the Odex site indicate the generally low English ability of Odex.
August 31st, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Anyway, there are ways around DRM protection, if people really wanted to, they could just remove it.
August 31st, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Unfortunately, when you think about it, there’s 2 things a lot of people hate when it comes to media related entertainment.
1: Bad Quality
2: Censors
No matter how much Odex might try, if the censorship board continues to censor stuff, it’ll be useless. I mean, read the Todayonline… They “changed” Fruits Basket because of the affection between 2 guys. Viewers hate it when censors pull these kind of stunts.
It happened in CardCaptor Sakura loads of times. The affection between the 2 female leads, the affection between a few of the male characters and the relationship between the female lead’s parents. Mostly it will go un-noticed, but when it becomes noticed, there’ll be lots of unhappy customers around. I don’t think we’re that retarded to turn gay once we watch Fruits Basket*.
* No offence to all gays out there. Just stating that we’re smart enough to not get influenced by what we watch. It’s been many years since a kid tried to fly with an umbrella after watching Mary Poppins…
August 31st, 2007 at 4:13 pm
lol.you signed premium account!
makes our survey looks lousy, then again, it is lousy.lol
August 31st, 2007 at 4:32 pm
I wanted to do your survey but I keep getting the surveymonkey.com’s index page instead. XD
August 31st, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Did the survey.
Hope the result will show the Jap that we are seriously lacking QUALITY distributors here and they should remove ODEX license!
August 31st, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Hi DarkMirage I am interested in the survey results if you would not mind please contact me by mail or leave a comment on my site to tell me about the final results
August 31st, 2007 at 8:08 pm
Are those VOD raws? If not, whose doing the subbing?
August 31st, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Just want to say for *13, Ultimately, my impression of Odex has : Changed from not knowning its existance at all(cause I never buy any anime VCD/DVD at all in my whole life)to who is this clown and what kind of joke is he pulling at the anime community?
And I agreed with x that if I , too give up anime after all these years, it wont be because of Odex.
August 31st, 2007 at 8:28 pm
No, they are not raws. They will be subbed, by Odex of course.
August 31st, 2007 at 8:58 pm
i oso want the sollated results DM, thank you!
and we’re collating the last survey, it will prolly be up by next week.
August 31st, 2007 at 9:33 pm
300 responses so far!
I’m aimming for a thousand! Please, please help to spread the survey around.
I will post the results when it hits 1000 or by Monday night, whichever comes first.
And yes, I did pay a good 20 bucks for the premium account in order to remove the limit of 100 responses. On hindsight, I could’ve written my own survey script with PHP, but oh well. I hope it was a worthy investment. So get all your friends to do the survey!!!
August 31st, 2007 at 9:48 pm
I just did the survey (with honest answers). :)
August 31st, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Did any of u people saw the translated tittle of Seto No Hanayome?
LOL. Makes u wonder why the japanese companies r helping odex.
August 31st, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Did the survey too, though I have to pause at some of the question to see how I really feel and think
August 31st, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Did it.
Eager to see the results of the whole survey.
Thanks for putting this up.
September 1st, 2007 at 12:44 am
nothing but odex related questions… lol
Trackback from
ODEX Site: Updated « Tiny Red ManSeptember 1st, 2007 at 12:48 am
[...] EDIT: DarkMirage is doing a ODEX SURVEY. He needs a 1000 asap. Help him do it! Spread news of the survey l… [...]
September 1st, 2007 at 1:55 am
Done the survey…
Answer all with honest:)
I’m a foreign student studying in Singapore, the internet in Singapore is so good, the Free wireless also. I think many ppl download thing from free wireless like me…so how can they track us???
September 1st, 2007 at 5:45 am
Odex bringing in the big guns (Jap and BayTSP reps), but hardly will the the exclusive licensee can be confounded since out of the 13 letter, 10 were authorised to AVPAS to act on their behalf, so will Odex openly admit that AVPAS and Odex is but 1 entities, so much for cloaking. Can the rep prove they’ve given exclusive license to odex on all their titles? definitely not. SS/xedo can go rot in hell.
September 1st, 2007 at 7:50 am
I thought a good additional question would have been: Would you stop downloading if a warning letter has been sent instead. I believe the answer from most of us would be a yes.
But ODEX seems grossly misinformed that downloading would not stop even if a warning letter was sent. (even the Japanese studios did admit that generally in other countries a warning letter is sent first)
’とても悲しいですね！’
September 1st, 2007 at 11:24 am
Odex only sent a few letters, and expected it to travel throughout the entire community after they told some bloggers to hush about it..
And therefore it equals to “everybody still downloaded after we sent letters!”
Sounds alot like Singtel to me.
September 1st, 2007 at 11:51 am
And for the last time, ANYONE here who posts in Hardware forums or something please tell everyone there this.
ODEX’S CASE HASN’T BEEN STRENGHTHENED! THEY STILL HAVE TO DEAL WITH THEIR SUB LICENSEE STATUS! All the letters from the bloody Nips and even if they bring their whole company down won’t make a iota of difference in court. Maybe they’re trying to pressure the courts and the SG govt to change the law in High Court but guess what, this is going to be hard to achieve.
First, the letters from the Japs don’t overwrite the Copyright Act as it is written. Compensation and legal action is the EXCLUSIVE RIGHT OF COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND EXCLUSIVE LICENSEE ONLY!!. So long as ODEX remains a plantiff thus making them entitled to compensation THE CASE WON”T STAND! The Japanese can allow Odex to act on their behalf, they however cannot allow Odex to benefit in any way from it. Since Odex is naming themselves as the plantiff, they basically screwed any chance of the appeal being ruled in their favour. Someone tell those Japanese their local licensee is making them look bad in court and in the public.
So long as Odex remains front and centre of the case, PacNet will not loose and the SG govt has no reason to side Odex in this case. The law really isn’t on their side and it was written to side them in the first place. If Odex wants to sue, they will have to either get all exclusive licence or relinquish all their titles so they’re no longer a sub licensee.
Guess we won’t be seeing that anytime soon~
September 1st, 2007 at 12:49 pm
@jayf: Well, yes and no. My sentiments towards this are mixed.
First, this is blatantly, obviously, more a PR stunt than a true threat. If you were Odex, and you had an arsenal of such powerful weapons, wouldn’t you want to use it at the last resort, during the case itself, rather than bring it out prematurely so that the enemy (i.e. PacNet) had time to sit back and think of retaliative measures? The objective is clearly psychological: to bring fear and to add more weight to its words in the media. While the judge is supposed to be impartial, he is human after all, one can’t say for sure he’d remain utterly unaffected by this media hoohah.
Second, don’t assume that PacNet’s lawyers have been idle. In terms of technical expertise, PacNet’s technical people have more sources than a single Mark Ishikawa. Also, legally, you’re right: the presence of the Japanese rights holders doesn’t change the fact that Odex is not the sole licensee.
So far, I’m agreeing with jayf. But then, their (the Japanese reps’) presence does bode something far more sinister, one which I’m sure has occurred to everyone.
Third, from tjhan’s interview with Peter Go (in Riuva), it appears that Odex directors aren’t the money grubbers we thought they were. In other words, they’re not out to seek compensation for money lost, but are on a “cleansing” crusade. [ Of course, the crusade is probably the means to another end. ]
I think people should take note of this final point.
September 1st, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Oh, and to everyone:
STAY CALM.
Do what you can - legally of course. E.g. dig info on BayTSP’s tracking solution, on the Japanese reps, on Odex’s licensing and agreements, any law snippets that may help, etc.
Anything more would be a waste of energy and time. Flaming, cursing etc are pointless. Channel your energy into your studies / work instead and encourage others to do the same.
Feel free to spread this message around. :D
September 1st, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Did it again. I’m not entirely sure how the questions are going to help verify the presence of ardent anime fans here in Singapore, especially when you have people like me who don’t really spend a lot of money on merchandise and tend to have increasingly lesser time for anime nowadays.\
P.S. I never got the chance to speak to Oka Masai-san yesterday. (;_;)
September 1st, 2007 at 9:33 pm
TV tokyo and BAytsp come in already… so how sia
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:15 am
LOL so are singnet user still feel like being betrayed?
http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/STIStory_152613.html
More over… this was what happen in 1999 =.= (serve him right?)
http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/BgSty_152613_1.html
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:27 am
O and my friend created this out of fun XD
I am the bone of my torrent
Seed is my body and peer is my blood
I have downloaded over a thousand episodes
Unknown to Odex
Nor kown to ISPs
Have withstood pain to download many animes
Yet those hands will never pay anything
So as i pray, Unlimted Anime Downloads
:P
September 2nd, 2007 at 4:25 pm
The presence of the Japanese reps MAY suggest something more sinister. However, take note that it could very well just be a PR move and to show that they are backing their local distributors. If they had something more concrete like say signing exclusive rights to Odex it would have been done and broadcast by now.
And here’s another thing to note, Today’s Sunday Times reveal the Odex’s main source of income is from dubbing and post production work. Anime video sales is secondary accounting for about 15%. And here’s the cincher=Odex made about 1 mil in 2005 according to Go and this means they made around 150k from direct sales. Since the Japanese get a cut only from sales and not production work, Odex is bringing them a rather small amount of money, especially when you consider this 150k is divided among several companies.
The Japanese don’t get a cut of the deals with Mediacorp and SCV and they don’t get a cut when they sell it to Malaysian broadcasters. So Odex is only making a small amount for them and they really have no reason to come all the way here to start legal action.
Odex can crash and burn in court and it wouldn’t really affect them that much. After all, they only had to sign and give a letter to Odex and nothing else. Odex flew the Japanese over at their expense so they had no reason to reject, but actually coming over here to start legal action involves cross juristition, hiring a local law firm AND deciding which company gets what as well as registering themselves here. Plus if BayTSP’s evidence is discredited in court then basically the Japanese have nothing to sue from.
Sure Toei’s rep may have said we’re going straight to court if Odex looses but guess what, they can say anything they like now. Until they do all the releted procedures and the papers are filed with the Court it all counts for nothing. They can always blame a mistranslation later on for the quote( and it really isn’t that hard to be ambigous in Japanese) or say the High Court has opened their eyes to the nature of copyright.
There has been talk about because how small the regional market is the Japanese don’t care enough to talk about how we feel. Well the flip side of the coin is they won’t care enough if Odex goes under. They only have to collect the license fees from Odex and a cut of the video profits. Everything else really doesn’t affect them that much. Their main priority is still the Japanese market and maybe the growing US market. They have no business reason to incur the logistic and manpower costs to come over to SG to start legal action.
They can, but whether they will after Odex looses is another matter.
Let’s put it this way, If Odex is still named as a plantiff in the appeal, Odex’s lawyers will be trying to argue the case that the legal representative can get money and damages that only the victim is entitled to. If this were a defamation case, it’d be like the lawyer getting the money instead of the person being defamed. Damages can only be granted to someone who has been deprived or his rights or legal interests and being a sub licensee and distributor Odex doesn’t have any legal interests or rights in a copyright infringment case. They can only legally sue for distribution offenses, not infringement. They can REPRESENT the Japanese BUT THEY SURE AS HELL CANNOT NAME THEMSELVES AS THE PLANTIFF WHICH ODEX APPEARS TO BE DOING AGAIN IN THE APPEAL.
I’m also quite sure Rajah and Tan understands this basic legal principle and have advised them about it. So why they’re still filing an appeal is probably because they want some money back. Also because they have staked everything here on this case. So unless the Japanese decided to sign over the rights to the titles they’re suing for, they have nothing to hit you with.
Don’t worry and know that Odex is the one with the harder case to fight.
September 2nd, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Results are out!
http://survey.darkmirage.com/
September 2nd, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Thx darkmirage. This survey represents the Singapore Anime Community well and could possibly shape people’s opinions and views in future.
September 2nd, 2007 at 6:16 pm
@useract75
“Third, from tjhan’s interview with Peter Go (in Riuva), it appears that Odex directors aren’t the money grubbers we thought they were. In other words, they’re not out to seek compensation for money lost, but are on a “cleansing” crusade. [ Of course, the crusade is probably the means to another end. ]”
I dont know if u have been following from the start but ODEX has been counteracting with papers against news articles and group meeting discussions with bloggers. All they have stated are mostly blanket claims against proven facts.
September 2nd, 2007 at 6:54 pm
@E: This further proves my point. If they were really out for money, they must have been total retards to piss off their customer base so thoroughly and then do a total revamp and upgrade of their business. Who’d buy their products - as DM’s survey results indicate and as anyone with an ounce of common sense would instinctively know?
No. They’re out on a self-proclaimed crusade to make SG a totally download-free anime hub. Purge the human body of all bacteria and it’ll be healthy as a fiddle (read “Andromeda Strain”, anyone?), yeah, right. Someone compared Peter Go with Light Yagami, and I’ve to give the guy a thumbs-up for the comparison.
But this is not faint praise for them - it just goes how far off the deep end they’ve fallen. Look at it this way: consider airplane hijackers. Some are just out to get money or freedom: these are the easy ones to handle, while the tough ones are the religious fundamentalists: they don’t listen to reason, rational thought or compromise. They’ve a mission and they’re sure as hell to stick to it.
September 2nd, 2007 at 7:11 pm
@JayF
My hats off: you argued your case well. Assuming what you said about cross jurisdiction and such, the Japanese reps do face an extremely steep uphill task launching a civil suit here.
However, I wasn’t aware Toei made such an official comment. If they did, this is even more grounds for concern. One wonders what Odex has been feeding those Japanese to actually get them in such a frenzy over a tiny island nation (not that Japan isn’t an island nation, but nvm).
* All figures were pulled by them.
* Peter’s claim in the papers and sgcafe that anime killed the anime industry in Korea - I simply cannot find any independent source for such a claim. Sounds totally fishy.
* Peter claimed that animetech went bust due to piracy. But last night when I checked, it was still doing very well - albeit based in Malaysia and not Singapore.
Anyway, could some kind soul point me to a link for Toei’s commitment? Thanks.