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Anti-piracy canines Lucky and Flo have left in their wake a trail of closed shutters, busted DVD pirates and syndicate bosses who last priced their deaths at RM100,000 (US$29,000 or S$43,000).

This is up from RM10,000 (US$3,000) per head when these specially-trained dogs from Ireland first made their debut.

They have sniffed out a total of 1.5 million pirated discs worth an estimated US$3.7 million in the six raids during their one-month stint in Malaysia.

What you can do

Youth.SG worries for their safety. Agencies like PETA fight for the rights of animals, protesting against animal-testing and fur-wearers. While it is not our aim to join their ranks, we want our canine sleuths to be safe and sound. We don’t hear druglords wanting to snuff out dogs trained to sniff out contraband, but these disc pirates are ready to make Lucky and Flo walk the plank before you can even say “polycarbonate”.

If you think you are getting your pirated DVDs at a reasonable half-price off the original, think again. And before you b*tch about how the film and music industry are trying to rip you off, think about the real bitches (I’m referring to female dogs Lucky and Flo) out there being hounded by DVD pirates who won’t stop at anything to make a profit.

Then again, before anything happens, more dogs ought to be trained to understudy our heroines. Better yet, choose only black Labrador retrievers - imagine each “WANTED” poster looking the same as the other, and confused pirates falling over each other trying to tell them apart from normal black Labs. (Hopefully this will not incite the piracy industry to declare jihad on all black Labradors.)

If you support Lucky and Flo too, copy and paste our specially-designed “Blood DVDs” banner and blog button to your own website and link it to this page. Tell the world just how much their pirated DVDs really cost.

Why pirates hate Lucky and Flo

Lucky and Flo are the only two sniffer dogs in the world trained to detect optical discs. These black Labrador retrievers are even more effective than human enforcement officers at detecting the presence of DVDs - their x-ray noses can pick up the scent of those discs even from behind closed doors of shops and cars.

These bitches (I’m not trying to be rude, they are girl dogs) are trained to recognise the smell of polycarbonate, a type of plastic used to manufacture optical discs. Upon a single whiff of said plastic, they will signal to their handler Dave Mayberry by - according to what the casual observer sees - sitting down.

Lucky and Flo are the property of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). They were loaned to the Malaysian police as part of desperate efforts to stamp out the biggest perceived threat to the U.S motion picture industry - piracy. In 2005, losses were estimated at $6.1 billion, with 80 percent attributed to piracy overseas and $1.2 billion in Asia-Pacific. As a result, the music and film industries are teaming up with international police to fight intellectual property theft.

Pirates have used chemical sprays, plastic sheets, soap and even charcoal to rid their DVDs of the scent of polycarbonate, but to no avail. From Penang to Johor Bahru, authorities have confiscated thousands of DVDs from pirate distributors - DVDs ranging Hollywood blockbusters, popular television series to hardcore pornography. In one of the canine detectives’ last raids at Holiday Plaza on 13 April 2007, the police discovered about 5,000 child porn DVDs at one of the shoplots.

According to Johor enforcement director Fahmi Kassim, most of these child porn DVDs are sold to Singaporeans. (Gasp.)

When the dogs uncovered a pirates’ den at an office tower where the DVDs were produced, the authorities seized not only discs, but also equipment like labelling machines. With that raid, the head pirates raised the dogs’ bounty to RM50,000 (US$14,500) per head, up from RM10,000 (US$3,000) when they first debuted in Malaysia.

While in Malaysia, the dogs were placed in the Witness Protection Programme for their safety.

Since mid-April, the dogs have taken flight to the Philippines, where they sniffed out at least 300,000 pirated discs within their first hour of work in Manilla. 11 people have been arrested and now face charges of copyright infringement and violation of anti-pornography laws*.

For more information, check out ABC News, Zero Paid and MSNBC’s AllDay.

         
*Just before you shout hooray (or if you are a pirate or pirate-lover - “Oh, s**t!”), relieved DVD pirates in Malaysia have now stepped up on pornography production to recoup losses. A sizeable amount of this includes porn featuring underaged girls - read: CHILD PORN. In fact, the porn industry is an even more profitable business than pirated DVDs, and one doesn’t need to worry about copyright infringement issues as the content is original.

Technorati Tags: pirated DVDs, piracy, Lucky and Flo, Lucky, Flo, Holiday Plaza, porn, child porn, animal rights, dog lover

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