Wanted dead or alive: 2 MPAA anti-piracy dogs

It seems a contract’s been put out on the MPAA’s Malaysian anti-piracy disc sniffing dogs, with “syndicate bosses” offering an undisclosed bounty for their heads.

After a recent seizure of almost $3 million USD worth of pirated DVDs and VCDs, “syndicate bosses” have put a contract out on the 2 optical disc sniffer dogs the MPAA recently loaned to Malaysia as part of an aggressive new anti-piracy plan that were responsible for the high profile bust.

“Following the successful raid at a shopping complex in Johor Baru on Tuesday, sources informed the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs that syndicate members are looking for the dogs,” the ministry’s enforcement assistant director, Firdaus Zakaria, said yesterday.

“The dogs are a genuine threat to the pirated disc syndicates, thus the instruction to eliminate them.”

The dogs have been placed in a sort of “witness protection program,” and are being shuttled to a variety of different safe houses to keep them out of the reach of people looking to kill them and collect the bounty that is being offered.

Lucky and Flo, the names of the two anti-piracy dogs, were trained and sent there at the expense of the Motion Picture Association of Malaysia, and were the first such dogs trained specifically to sniff out polycarbonates, one of the main ingredients that make up optical discs.

The bust was the first major assignment for the duo, and the bounty on their heads is a sign of just how successful the bust apparently was.

I just wonder if they now have to wear bulletproof vests and disguises. Maybe, maybe not but, I love the fact that they’ve now got “syndicate bosses” after them. You just can’t make this kind of stuff up.

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SOULXTC: “walkin’ the streets of P2P”

Jared Moya
I've been interested in P2P since the early, high-flying days of Napster and KaZaA. I believe that analog copyright laws are ill-suited to the digital age, and that art and culture shouldn't be subject to the whims of international entertainment industry conglomerates. Twitter | Google Plus

I am totally against the evertything the RIAA and MPAA does but I do not think harming a innocent animal is the right thing to do. They were just doing what they were told to do. Also if they are killed they are just going to replace them with 2 newly trained ones. It will turn into a never ending circle of senseless cruelty to inncoent creatures of the simplest kind.

@Mountain rage Im sure it was the commercial value and not the hardware value they cited.

mountain_rage

Sorry read another article it was a million discs but that still doesn't amount to 3 million in loses for the pirates. At my estimate of 10cents a disc its only 100 000$

Signa you forget thats probably taking into account 35$ a disc rather then the 10cents or so it cost bootleggers to make the discs. Now I could be wrong here they may be going by the street value rather then the commercial value of the product. But from trends in how media is tallied usually they use the commercial value. So in reality its much less then you would expect. Its probably only about 10 000$ of goods lost rather then the 3 million. Otherwise at street value of 2$ a disc the guy would have 1 500 000 discs which is highly unlikely. My estimate puts it at about 100 000 discs which is much more likely.

kokanezub

selling of bootleg cd in toledo ohio and detroit michigan is more than drug sales. Plus no one does anything about it because they have other worries. So i belive the dogs are just as bad as the mpaa. If you have an enemy and he will stop your flow of money you wont stop at nothing even killing your enemy

iLLuZioN

Anybody know how much the contracts are? I've never been a dog person...

Signa

i dont know Rage if you lost 3 mill in Malaysia would two dogs lives be that big of a deal? on the otherhand you may be right but i think its just as likely that the story is true as is.

Anyone else think this might just a story to demonised this kind of piracy. Personally I think if the person is profiting from the sale of copyrighted works then they should be prosecuted but something about this story sounds fishy. I mean we are talking about entertainment industry who are about as good at manipulating the media as politicians are.

Or the handlers I know its sad that just because "mans best friend' was just doing what man taught him to do to be his best friend he gets targeted to be killed.