The Odex Incident

Those familiar with the anime scene in Singapore would probably have heard of the "Odex saga" (I think the Wikipedia entry is a pretty good summary of the incident, hence the link to that entry).

There are various interesting issues involved in here. Some of them have been raised in the wikipedia entry itself such as the issue of possibly citing fair use as a defence for downloaders who are not heavy downloaders. The part where it is mentioned that one of the conditions for citing that defence would be to prove that the download subsequently boosted the commercial viability of the anime industry. This reminded me of something that I read recently about Toby Miller's suggestion that perhaps the pirated DVDs/VCDs (of Hollywood films) industry in China is actually helping to boost the commercial viability of Hollywood by creating an sense of anticipation in the market and indirectly creating demand for film-related merchandise. This is especially the case in China because there's a quota on the number of foreign films allowed in China which means that not every single Hollywood blockbuster gets to be screened in China. So ironically the pirated DVDs market allows the audience in China to view those films that aren't screened in China (cheaply) and can help create buzz for it.

Interestingly, this might be the case in Singapore considering that anime series usually get aired in Singapore quite a while after they have been first aired in Japan (and the US), especially on free-to-air television.By then, most avid anime fans would have caught their favourite series from the fansubs that they've downloaded from the Internet. I've personally noticed that merchandise for an anime series hit stores before the series get aired in Singapore (or even if the series doesn't get aired in Singapore). To be fair, I do notice more buzz for a particular series and its related merchandise after it gets officially aired in Singapore but I would think that's simply because it has now reached a wider audience who wouldn't have bothered to make the effort to source for the anime online.

I was actually mildly surprised by the legal action taken by the anime studios, considering how tolerant they are of the doujin market in Japan (where fairs are held to openly hawk these items) and how some mangakas (manga artists) like Clamp started out producing doujinshi. I wonder if this means they will take further action in other non-Japanese markets where there's quite a bit of anime downloading activity going on and what this entails for media producers-consumers relations.

In Singapore's case, I suppose we can wait and see how the court case of anime studios vs anime downloaders will pan out when hearing begins...