From the sublime to the ridiculous:
A DVD-sniffing anti-piracy dog named Paddy has uncovered a huge cache of 35,000 discs in Malaysian warehouses, many destined for export to Singapore, industry officials said on Wednesday.
The black Labrador helped enforcement officials who carried out raids last week in southern Johor state which neighbours Singapore, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) said in a statement.
Paddy was given to Malaysia by the MPA to help close down piracy syndicates who churn out vast quantities of illegal DVDs. The dog is specially trained to detect chemicals in the discs.
[ . . . ]
The raids carried out by officials from the MPA and Malaysia’s trade and consumer affairs ministry shut down six warehouses storing pirated products, it said.
The MPA said just-released titles such as “Terminator Salvation”, “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian”, “Angels and Demons” and “Star Trek” were among the movies seized.
The MPA is the “international counterpart” to the Motion Picture Association of America and is composed of the seven major Hollywood studios. The fact that these companies were so eager to aid and abet this form of police activity should give even pro-copyright libertarians some pause.
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the mutt will henceforth be known as “silas”.
Dang, I was really hoping to watch a pirated copy of someone recording on a camcorder Night at the Museum 2…
Dogs can sniff the actual data on a disc and tell that it’s pirated?
Or is there some new malaysian law against having DVDs in a factory?
Pirate DVDs are most often made on burners available to consumers while “legitimate” copies are made with presses instead. The heat from the laser burning causes chemical changes in the plastic that a press would not. I suppose this is what the dog was trained to smell.
This is why I’m convinced government bureaucrats are insane. Instead of doing something like taxing DVD copying in their country, thereby providing higher salaries and benefits for said bureaucrats, they’ll go ahead and hurt their own economy. You’d think that any minimally sane government would at least try to be an efficient parasite, not one that tries to destroy its host right away.
When I think of copyright enforcement–assuming that it is justified–I try to imaging what it would look like if the copyright holders did not have the state doing their work for them. I think all kinds of “enforcement” would disappear if it were left to “victims” to do their own policing.
Why can’t I stop laughing about this?
Ron, I think I know why you can’t stop laughing, take a look at some of these sales figures.
Night at the Museum 2: Released 13 days ago, world wide sales ~$214,257,234 (budget was ~$150 mil)
Terminator Salvation: Released 14 days ago, world wide sales ~$117,000,000 (budget was ~$185 mil)
Angels and Demons: Released 20 days ago, world wide sales ~$359,053,982 (budget was ~$150 mil)
Star Trek: Released 27 days ago, world wide sales ~$323,408,809 (budget was ~$150 mil)
I seriously doubt that these so called pirates have harmed the studios financially.
“Dogs can sniff the actual data on a disc and tell that it’s pirated?”
Sure they can. These “dogs” can even negotiate with the pirateers to “contribute” a few thousand DVDs for the “uncovering” event, at pre-designated warehouses and at agreed times, of course.
Don’t be fooled, this was all staged to pacify the MPA fellas, once a while. After this heroic event, it will be back to business as usual, both for the pirateers, and the “dogs”.
And, do you guys seriously think that the “dogs” would somehow be partnered to the MPA members? Come on.
I still remember this ‘world news’..but also the news that followed not long after this item. That dog and if I remember correct also another ‘trained dog’ were poisened but luckily lived. There was even a rumor that local syndicates had put a bounty on the ‘heads’ of these dogs. I can imagine why, as even today the pirated movie scene is still very much alive in Malaysia.
Weird enough it also seems to be part of local culture; heading to a Friday night market to buy some nice new movies for a few bucks.
Ilya
Webmaster of Wonderful Malaysia, travel website about Malaysia.
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