SINGAPORE has become a hotbed of illegal anime downloads, said Odex, arguing that it simply had to take action.

Responding to allegations on the Internet that the company had acted high-handedly, distributor Odex yesterday held a press conference attended by local and Japanese media.

Odex recently made headlines after initiating what it calls 'enforcement action' - finding out the names of illegal downloaders and starting legal action. This triggered an online backlash, with some Internet users campaigning to boycott its products and wear anti-Odex T-shirts.

Yesterday, the company revealed it had found that over 483,000 illegal downloads had been made here in the last 10 months, making Singapore 10th on the list of countries worldwide with the most illegal anime downloads.

Singapore also has the highest percentage of illegal anime downloads per capita, far ahead of countries like the US, Australia and Hong Kong.

To bolster its case, Odex brought representatives of the four Japanese studios which own the copyrights to blockbuster anime series like Naruto, Dragonball and Tsubasa Chronicles.

They told reporters through an interpreter that they supported Odex's legal action, having issued authorisation letters for it to act on their behalf before the company went to the courts.

'If there is a necessity from the courts of Singapore requiring us to come down (physically), then we will come,' said Mr Yukio Kawasaki from TV Tokyo Corporation, in response to The Straits Times' queries on their reactions to a judge's statement that it was copyright owners who had to initiate legal action.

Odex is appealing a court ruling in which the company failed to force Pacific Internet to supply the names of illegal downloaders using its service. Its request was refused last Thursday.

To date, Odex has sent out letters to suspected illegal downloaders, with user identities gleaned from the 1,000 Internet Protocol (IP) addresses provided by SingNet.

Because a user can have multiple IP addresses, only 300 users were identified.

IP addresses are strings of numbers that identify computers.

StarHub has also been served with a court order to disclose the names of subscribers allegedly downloading anime.

Only 105 of the 300 cases have been settled. The remaining 195 cases are still in negotiations or are no-shows, said Odex director Stephen Sing.

The company, which has come under fire from Internet forum members and bloggers, clarified that it was neither charging interest on instalment payments nor profiteering, as Netizens have said.

There were also allegations that every person had to pay $3,000 to $5,000, which would result in Odex making $15 million.

Odex managing director Peter Go said that 'no one has been asked to pay beyond their means', and that the money would pay for lawyers' fees, the costs of tracking the downloads, administrative charges and ISP charges.

Any excess will go to charity and an auditor will be called in, he said.

In response to protests that anime is not quickly available here, the company is also starting a new video-on-demand service on its website today. Mr Sing said it will now only cost $2 for a user to download each anime episode.

These shows will appear just a week after they are broadcast on Japanese TV.

The week's delay will allow the episode to pass Singapore censorship laws and to provide English subtitling.

serl@sph.com.sg