Endoh’s Dungeon

For years, the Singapore online and media community has rallied much against internet censorship here. Not only was Human Rights involved, the freedom of speech propoganda has also been involved in this entire debate. Just from Odex’s saga alone, it is enough to tell us why internet should be censored.

I too, support the cause for freedom of speech. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be considering my option of migrating out of Singapore. However, to what extend of freedom should we allow? I was particularly disturbed when I read that someone spent SGD$5 just to pull out personal information from Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) and post it online in a forum. Does freedom of speech consistently serve to cause possible disruptions and inconvenience to someone’s personal life and family?

I am not an anime fan, and never have been one. However, being sorta an independent music producer myself, I understand how hard it is to fight piracy. We can view piracy in two ways…

1. The more people who try to download it, the more popular this music/video is.
2. The more people who try to download it, the more cost the producer will lose out in recuperating.

That one thing which consumers simply do not understand, musicians/producers/artistes need to earn a living too. They need to eat, they need to pay their bills, they need to pay for the studio sessions, they need to feed their family etc. The profits from their sales contribute to that. It seemed to me that illegal downloaders can’t seemed to realise this fact. Perhaps I should be more direct with little hidden connotations, illegal downloaders refuse to acknowledge that fact.

Odex may have gone overboard with the legal suits I feel, but how appropriately should one react to such an incident? It would definitely be better to send out a warning letter in advance before they haul someone into Court. The bare minimum is, be kind and offer just a small fine like $50 or $100 for a first-timer offender. This gesture out of good-will is sufficient to segment the downloaders into two categories; A. The naive downloaders due to ignorance… B. The hardcore persistent downloaders who refuse to pay a single cent for anything. Take actions against the latter category, I would say that’s more appropriate. (Even though anti-piracy is heavily publicised, there’s no excuses not to know.)

The reaction of illegal downloaders are somewhat unjustified to begin with. Why do I say that? It is only logical if they are downloading illegally elsewhere, they are not Odex customers anymore. Hence to say, Odex is taking actions against people who “harmed” their business and not taking actions against customers… end-users who bought their products that is. You can be a potential customers or simply, targeted customers - but never a customer once you start downloading illegally. So how far do you go to compliment yourself as a customer of Odex? Is this a class action against Odex’s customers or illegal downloaders? I leave that to you to determine.

Apart from that, I could figure out several options I would have taken if I were an anime fan. Notice that I refused to label anyone an Odex customer but illegal downloaders and anime fans? Coming back to the point, are anime fans living in the world of fictional graphics or are they able to bring themselves back into reality? In just 5 short minutes, I gathered these better approaches…

1. If Odex is not selling the anime series that you want, buy it from overseas - online or not.
2. If Odex is not selling the anime series that you want, consolidate a huge list of supporters and submit it to them. Show to them the vast amount of wanting by the community and Odex has nothing to lose since anime fans are looking to buy.
3. If Odex is not providing quality as they pledged, walk into CASE with the items or if you’re rich enough, get a private studio to crack the entire DVD/VCD. The software is able to detect if the recordings are up to the standards of commercial codes.
4. If Odex is not able to provide any of the above, get your own source from other anime outlets, many of which are located overseas. You have to pay for the shipment and handling fees that is.
5. If Odex refuses to bow towards public demands, boycott them and simply don’t buy anything from them. The reduction in sales is sufficient to set them back thinking what anime series should they bring in to entice the buying power of anime fans again.

Are the above suggestions so difficult to think of and do?

Over these years, we have seen many incidents where the online community posted untruthful information. From Tomorrow.sg’s legal suit by one of the time-share companies (I didn’t keep track of the eventual but the infringing post was removed so I leave it to you on what’s their stand), to Chee Soon Chuan’s political legal battle, and now to Odex’s legal battle with illegal downloaders now… these are very good examples of how internet has been used inappropriately. Shouldn’t someone back themselves up with credible evidences before they make/post/allow a statement to stand? Or should they only post, and in the event of a legal suit then they start worrying about whether they have the correct details to back them up?

I was rather intrigued by the most sensible post about this Odex saga, but again my intuitions proven me right. Everything was written in anti-Odex sentiments or rather, more accurately more than 75% of the article were mere assumptions. Baseless assumptions or absolute truth, let’s learn from our dear Chee Soon Chuan. Is “sensibility” defined by only anti-Odex wordings? So to speak, the anime fans have not done anything wrongly?

For that, we have to examine the posting of personal information acquired from ACRA. For the mature crowd, we need little explanation what ACRA and the information are meant for. To put it in layman’s terms, they are meant for business dealings and checks. In my understanding and experiences, I have only used the service three times to check the data on three other companies I was supposed to do a collaboration on. If there are no doubts about the information they’ve given me, I wouldn’t even spend that SGD$5 although it’s a small sum which means little. Since when has ACRA’s services been abused into a “tit-for-tat” avenue for the general consumers?

True, the information is provided publicly. In fact, alot of information are. I feel that we need to ask ourselves in what context should these information be used. In this case, the personal address had been posted and that could result in several inconvenience out of personal displeasure against Odex.

1. Unsolicited mails sent to his personal residence, himself or his family.
2. Harrassment or vandalism at his personal residence, himself or his family.
3. Or a worse case scenario would be, hate crimes committed against his personal residence, himself or his family.

Is that what internet is meant for? I’m pretty ok with posting of corporate address and such, but personal residence? Have the person breached the line? Sadly, I don’t think many worship him as a hero. To me, that’s absolutely childish and that coincides with my belief that the Singapore online community still need alot of education and gradually mature instead of behaving like spoilt brats.

Odex had been harsh, I can’t deny that. Especially for many young offenders, how are they going to pay the SGD$3,000 to SGD$5,000 court fine when they are not earning their own keeps yet? Taking Starhub into account, names we find are actually the registrant of the house. The owner of the property may not necessary be the illegal downloader. It could be a friend or his/her children. If your parents are being implicated in this issue, blame yourself for landing your parents into hot soup by your illegal downloading. Like me, I am using Starhub and the house owner name belongs to my mum. Anything that I do online is going to bring her into the picture too. (Not that I have a choice, Starhub has that policy that they go by household’s name and not service registrant’s name.)

Is Odex the only one at fault? What about the Judge who approved Odex’s demand for ISPs to release the information? I dare the same person to seek out the Judge’s personal address and post it online. How about seeking out all the ISPs CEOs’ personal address because you are unhappy that they released your information due to the Court orders?

To begin with, why are you conducting acts of piracy? We have promoted anti-piracy programmes all these years, don’t you learn? Or are you plain stubborn and refuse to learn? If you haven’t done anything illegal, would your name appear on that list? Search your own heart and ask yourself. I am not even moving in the direction on why someone who acted according to his bosses should risk his ricebowl just to satisfy your entertainment needs. Are you going to feed his family for him? Are you going to foot his household bills?

Ever since I knew about the existence of Global Voices, I begin thinking of all these incidents and put them out on the table. How far should we promote internet freedom? Is illegal downloading the freedom we are looking at? Is putting up untruthful information and getting away with it, the kind of allowance we hope to achieve on our internet platform? Not that I am opposing Global Voices but what I feel is that to achieve lesser censorship on the internet, the online commmunity here will have to conduct themselves appropriately and be responsible over their own actions online. I sent an email to Global Voices suggesting that instead of going all out to battle internet censorship, they should also create a space to educate internet users on responsibility and such. Nothing surprising to me, I received no reply.

I think with so many real life examples of how we try to test the boundaries and combat internet censorship, we arrive at this junction with the circumstances which I question each and everyone now…

What good reasons do we have NOT to censor the internet? For James Seng’s reference…From TodayOnline:

From Tomorrow.sg:

Which in fact, your readers were already questioning on the stand of Tomorrow.sg when that was done:

Disclaimer: Outright Denial should never be used to quash legitimate and valid information on the internet.