Friday, May 12, 2006

Dogged Attempts to Combat Piracy

I'm not making this up. It's too bizarre to be made up. This motion picture industry initiative involves using specially trained black Labrador canines to sniff out potentially infringing DVDs:

United Kingdom, Los Angeles - - The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), express delivery company FedEx and HM Revenue & Customs, has joined forces to launch an exciting new initiative to help combat DVD piracy.

As part of a project promoted by the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA), FACT instigated the training of two black Labradors named Lucky and Flo (pictures attached) by one of the world’s leading experts in the field whose other clients include police, fire and rescue service. The dogs were trained over an eight month period to identify DVDs that may be located in boxes, envelopes or other packaging, as well as discs concealed amongst other goods which could be sold illegally in the UK. These DVDs are often smuggled by criminal networks involved in large scale piracy operations from around the world..
Here's whole press release on the MPAA website.

Jack Valenti must be proud. When he ran the MPAA, he was certainly known for being dogmatic.

HK

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