Dog Days for DVD Pirates

As if the MPAA didn't have enough people fighting piracy, now they enlist
man's best friend...

SEPANG, Malaysia - Lucky and Flo, Malaysia's latest weapons in tackling rampant music and movie piracy, started work at the country's biggest international airport Tuesday, sniffing out shipments for fake optical discs.

The two black Labradors are on loan for a month from the Motion Picture Association of America, which says its members — including top Hollywood studios Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox and Universal — lost $1.2 billion to Asia-Pacific movie pirates in 2006.

It is the first time dogs have been used by authorities anywhere around the world to detect contraband discs, said Mike Ellis, regional director for the MPAA.

It took around nine months and $17,000 to train the dogs to detect polycarbonates, chemicals used in the disc manufacturing process, he added.

Although the dogs cannot tell the difference between real and pirated discs, they can detect if DVDs are hidden among shipments signed off as a consignment of something else.

As if McRuff didn't have enough to do already...

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