Japanese anime firms close ranks with Odex

Loh Chee Kong
cheekong@mediacorp.com.sg

SOME were flown in from Japan. Others appeared on video to show their support of their local representative, anime distributor Odex, which has come under flak from fans for its court actions against illegal downloaders.

At a press conference held by Odex yesterday, the message from nine anime copyright holders — including some of Japan's biggest animation studios — was clear: They are prepared to take legal action against the wrongdoers directly, should the Singapore courts reject Odex's bid to do so.

After getting court orders to force Internet service providers (ISPs) SingNet and StarHub to hand over subscribers' data, Odex's crackdown on illegal downloading hit a roadblock last Thursday, when the court rejected a similar application against Pacific Internet (PacNet) on the basis that Odex — as a sub-licensee — was not in a position to file the application. Odex is appealing against the decision.

Remarking that protecting copyright in Singapore "is more difficult than we thought", said international sales and marketing manager Fumiki Yamazaki from Showgate, one of the four Japanese companies in town. He said his firm will not hesitate to "go straight to court" if necessary. Its stance was affirmed by all the other copyright holders present.

The latter were understandably aggrieved, said Odex's director Stephen Sing, as illegal downloading here was rampant.

According to data collated by Silicon Valley-based Internet sleuth firm BayTSP, in the past 10 months, there were 483,310 counts of illegal anime downloading, mainly through peer-to-peer file sharing protocol BitTorrent. This makes Singapore the country with the highest number of illegal downloading counts per capita, at 10.89 per cent — far ahead of second-placed Sweden at 3.70 per cent.

Odex's managing director Peter Go added: "Even in the past month, when there was so much coverage on the case, the count went down by only 17 per cent (compared to July)."

Countering online allegations that anime fans had no choice but to turn to illegal downloads due to the poor quality of their DVDs, Mr Go pointed out that fans in focus groups "could not tell the difference" between Odex's products and those sold in Japan when screened on "a 42-inch plasma TV".

As for complaints about the accuracy of the DVD subtitles, Mr Go said the firm had to abide by censorship requirements. "For example, in Fruits Basket, some of the dialogue had to do with love between two boys, so we changed it to them being best friends. As a result, we got bombarded for having poor subtitles," he said.

According to Mr Go, Odex represents 32 copyright holders and distributes 90 per cent of the anime titles sold here.

In the past two years, its DVD sales have fallen by more than 60 per cent. "We hope to achieve at least an 80-to-90-per-cent reduction in illegal downloading. Whether it's realistic or not, we'll have to see," he said.

In other countries, noted TV Tokyo Corporation's manager Yukio Kawasaki, most culprits stop downloading illegally once they have received a complaint letter from the licensee. He said Japanese animation studios usually leave it to their local representatives to take action against copyright infringers.

Based on exchanges with anime fans here, Mr Sing said Odex "understands they will not stop downloading just because we sent them a warning letter".

Toei Animation Enterprises' manager Ryuji Kochi said he "regretted" the negative publicity Odex's legal action had generated. He reiterated that it "takes many people's work" to create animation.

Source: http://www.todayonline.com/articles/208525.asp

Subtitles must be done accurately: Censors

Letter form Tan Lee Cheng, Senior Asst Director (Film Standards), Board of Film Censors

We refer to the article "Japanese anime firms close ranks with Odex" (Aug 31).

Mr Peter Go, managing director of Odex, is said to have commented that the subtitles of some of his anime series had to be tweaked to conform to the Board of Film Censors' (BFC) requirements.

This statement is not correct and the BFC would like to take this opportunity to clarify its position.

Subtitles are usually provided by distributors to reach out to a wider audience or to translate content that may be in a foreign language (example, Japanese anime). There are occasions when the quality of translation may be the cause of poor subtitling. This has nothing to do with the classification process but it is still worthwhile for distributors to address as consumers would expect to have accurate translation of purchased works.

It is also the distributor's responsibility to ensure that subtitles reflect the true content of an anime (that is, animation) especially its dialogue and commentary. If subtitles are not accurate, they can mislead the viewer and also make it difficult for the BFC to classify an anime accurately.

The BFC has never asked for subtitles to be tweaked. We require that subtitles accurately reflect the content of a film or video so that we can classify the content accurately. Inaccurate subtitles also do no service to the community or to the young who may be misled into thinking that an anime is suitable for them when it could be meant for a higher age group.

As the ratings for videos (including anime) range from G to M18, there is sufficient leeway to allow for the subtitling of mature content without subtitles having to be tweaked.

We urge all distributors to translate and subtitle their content accurately so that they can provide an informative service to viewers.

Source: http://www.todayonline.com/articles/209169.asp