rigorousintuition.ca

President George Bush, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Felipe Calderon met up in Montebello, Quebec this week to discuss the trivialities that come with running North America. Three masked protestors carrying rocks and sticks were talked down by activists, but footage of the incident reveals the potentially violent protesters bore the same markings as the riot police.

In 2007, the Singaporean company Odex (or "Xedo" if spelled backwards) went through extensive measures to prosecute those who downloaded "pirated versions" of licensed anime series. Such measures included the founding of the Anti Video Piracy Association of Singapore (AVPAS), the use court orders (and what look to be bribes) to make Singaporean ISPs hand over information, and legal threats against fandub downloaders -- a LOT of legal threats that will presumably lead to a LOT of legal action.

What's angered the otaku communities around the world is the sense of ideological violation. Downloading fandubbed videos was never seen so much as a violation of copyright as it was a sharing of translated Japanese cultural artifacts in areas of the world lacking in regular exposure. In the case of Odex, the company's poor video quality and lackluster dubbing made free fandubs (with better video quality and better dubbing) an even more attractive alternative. The fact that this company would resort to legal measures to try and force anime consumers to buy their shoddy products is thus highly insulting.

On a more general context, Singaporeans seem shocked just by the fact that there even is a crackdown on piracy.