| Bootleggers Put Hit On DVD Sniffing Dogs |
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| Home Theater News DVD Hardware-Software News | |
| Written by AVRev.com | |
| Thursday, 05 April 2007 | |
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With
the advent of DVD recordable media and an abundance of software
programs designed to rip, edit, and convert DVD movies, movie piracy
has become the number one priority for the Motion Picture Association
of America (MPAA). Fearful that piracy will lead to a decline in movie
sales, as the music industry claims Napster did to their sales, the
MPAA has taken drastic measures to ensure their copyrighted material
remains intact.
Their latest trick has been the deployment of HDCP compliancy among all devices utilizing high-definition content. This includes everything in electronics from A/V Receivers, set-top boxes, Blu-ray and HD DVD players to video projectors and HDTVs. And guess what? If your set-top cable box isn’t HDCP complaint, like my Motorola DCT 6412 Firmware version 12.31 for example, there is a good chance it won’t output 1080i or 720p HDMI video signal to your HDCP complaint A/V Receiver. You can read ad-nausea about HDCP and HDMI handshake issues all over the Internet. While the MPAA is diligently working to protect their content with the advent of these new high-definition formats, they surely haven’t forgotten about the good old DVD format. Foreign nations like Malaysia and the Philippines are leading providers of pirated DVDs to the United States. So Malaysian trade officials, in conjunction with the six major Hollywood movie studios, have devised a new method to combat piracy distribution – Lucky & Flo. Lucky & Flo are two black Labradors that have been trained by trade officials to sniff out pirated DVD movies. I’m no expert on DVD forensics but if I had to guess I would say the dye and plastic used in DVD recordable media smells quite different than mass-produced, legal movie studio DVD media to the canine of olfactory system. The latest success of Lucky and Flo came this past weekend when a tip led to a local Malaysian police raid. Police were unable able to locate the pirated movies during their raid, so they called in the canines. In no time at all, the canine duo found 150,000 pirated discs, with an estimated street value of $430,000 located in a secret compartment in the shop. This wasn’t the first success for Lucky and Flo. Several months ago they sniffed out $3,000,000 worth of movie and video game discs in Johor, Malaysia. However, Lucky and Flo’s fame doesn’t come without a price. The underground movie pirates have put a bounty out for the capture and/or destruction of these law-enforcing creatures. Officials are taking the threats seriously and have increased security around the Labradors. We here at AVRev.com are all in favor of the Lucky and Flo team. We say go get ‘em. As for you movie pirates out there, BEWARE! You may as well make things easy on yourself now and just come forward and confess that what you are doing is wrong and accept the consequences before Lucky and Flo come ‘a barkin’. Source: Reuters Like this article? Bookmark and share with any of the sites below.        |
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