Odex

Odex

Odex Pte. Ltd. is a Singapore-based company that licenses and releases anime for local and regional Southeast Asian consumption. Odex was established in 1987 and set up its Anime Distribution department in 2000, selling anime in Singapore. It works with Japanese licensors such as Sunrise Inc., TV Tokyo, Yomiuri TV, D-Rights, TMS, Showgate Inc and Aniplex Inc. Odex also sells programs to television stations in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, such as TV3, NTV7, Astro, MediaCorp TV and StarHub TV. Other than licensing, Odex also does English dubbing, translation and subtitling for other companies. Odex also deals in anime merchandise sales.

Odex is most well known for taking legal action in 2007-2008 against home users who were allegedly downloading copyrighted anime videos from the Internet. The actions received extensive press and blog coverage, especially as they roughly coincided with similar attempts in the United States by the music industry RIAA to enforce against file sharing by home users. Issues of intellectual property, copyright protections, privacy and freedom of speech underlie these events.