THE RIGHT to privacy is no shield for those who commit online piracy, the High Court ruled on Tuesday.

In an oral judgement, Justice Woo Bih Li ordered PacNet to reveal the identities of alleged anime downloaders to six studios producing the animated Japanese cartoons.

These are those who had downloaded anime like Gundam, Cowboy Bebop and Naruto, which were made by Sunrise Inc, Kadokawa Pictures Inc, TV Tokyo Medianet Inc, GDH K.K, Yomiuri Telecasting, and Showgate Inc.

Justice Woo also dismissed the original plaintiff's - anime distributor Odex - request for the same names, and ordered it to pay PacNet's legal fees of $20,000.

Since Odex could not sue downloaders under Singapore's Copyright Act, Justice Woo said there was no reason why it needed the names of the alleged downloaders - unlike the Japanese studios which own the copyright for the anime and could sue infringers.

On this ground, District Judge Ernest Lau turned down Odex's request for the names at the Subordinate Court last September.

Odex, which launched a controversial crackdown on alleged anime downloaders last May, appealed his decision.

It subsequently asked Justice Woo to allow it to add the six Japanese anime studios as co-plaintiffs, which he allowed.

In the earlier decision, Justice Lau had also said that he was not wholly satisfied with Odex's explanation of how it identified downloaders.

On appeal, Odex introduced five new affidavits to address this point.

Many online users celebrated the judgement while others cautioned that this did not mean the end of the crackdown.

Read the full story in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times.