Smells Like Polycarbonate

Two dogs, Lucky and Flo, employed by the Motion Pictures Association of America, the MPAA, are in Malaysia looking for pirated DVD’s. And they are meeting with some success. This is important because software and movie piracy is a security risk and a legal liability. And the worst offenders are typically far eastern countries.

From Reuters here:

A whiff of plastic led sniffer dogs in Malaysia to a cache of about one million pirated game and movie discs with a street value of roughly $3 million, film industry officials said on Tuesday.

The find was the first major success for Lucky and Flo, two female black Labradors deployed last week as part of Malaysia’s battle on illegal recordings of music and movies, said Neil Gane, an official of the Motion Picture Association.

The dogs are being given a month’s trial by Malaysian officials in a joint effort with the Motion Picture Association, which groups six major Hollywood film companies.

Fighting pirates in Malaysia is nothing new-  in fact, its old hat for the United States.  Even President Andrew Jackson dispatched pirate hunters to Kuala Batu in the early 1830’s to kill a bunch of pirates who were disrupting American trade there.

Old Hickory sent a warship, the Potomac, armed with forty 32-lb guns to destroy pirate forts.  Marines serving on the Potomac went ashore and killed over 300 pirates.

And regardless what you think of the MPAA, entertainment is a commodity, and one which brings in billions in trade to the economy.  It deserves protection from piracy just like our other goods.  Now we use dogs before we start bombardment from offshore.