SEPANG, Malaysia - Lucky and Flo, Malaysia's latest weapons in tackling rampant music and movie piracy, started work at the country's biggest international airport Tuesday, sniffing out shipments for fake optical discs.
The two black Labradors are on loan for a month from the Motion Picture Association of America, which says its members — including top Hollywood studios Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox and Universal — lost $1.2 billion to Asia-Pacific movie pirates in 2006.
It is the first time dogs have been used by authorities anywhere around the world to detect contraband discs, said Mike Ellis, regional director for the MPAA.
It took around nine months and $17,000 to train the dogs to detect polycarbonates, chemicals used in the disc manufacturing process, he added.
Although the dogs cannot tell the difference between real and pirated discs, they can detect if DVDs are hidden among shipments signed off as a consignment of something else.
"It was 2 1/2 years ago, it was at a senior-level meeting in (Los Angeles), we were talking about the problems of finding it (pirated movies) and someone said, `Why not dogs?'" Ellis told reporters at the main air cargo complex of the Kuala Lumpur international airport in Sepang.
"Like their fellow canine counterparts trained to sniff drugs and narcotics, these two Labradors have been trained to detect optical discs," Malaysia's Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Shafie Apdal said.
On Tuesday, the dogs found discs hidden among more than 50 boxes scattered around the cargo complex, eventually uncovering a pirated box set of the long-running TV sitcom "Friends," among others, in less than 10 minutes.
After Lucky and Flo's stint, Malaysia will evaluate whether to employ its own dogs. Shafie said the demonstration showed the dogs were cost-effective and faster at detecting the contraband than enforcement officers.
The Southeast Asian nation is among the world's top illegal movie producers and exporters, Washington and the MPAA have said. Malaysia is also one of 36 countries on a U.S. watch list of serious copyright violators.
Around 5 million discs were seized in Malaysia in over 2,000 raids last year, Shafie said, while 780 people were arrested. He did not say how many have been charged.
Movies exported from Malaysia have surfaced as far away as South Africa and Kenya.
China remains at the top of the MPAA's movie piracy list, Ellis said.
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