Anti-Piracy Dog Uncovers Huge Cache of Discs

sgt scrub writes "I've never thought about sniffing my CDs before buying them but that is all about to change. According to this Yahoo! news article, dogs can be trained to tell the difference between a legit copy of a DVD and one from those pesky pirates. From the article, '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. Paddy was given to Malaysia by the MPA to help close down piracy syndicates, which churn out vast quantities of illegal DVDs. The dog is specially trained to detect chemicals in the discs.'" We ran a story about anti-piracy dogs being trained in Ireland a few years ago.

Comments

So the dog go off on any dvd-r

[Joe The Dragon]

So the dog go off on any dvd-r so it will go off even on blank disks?

How about just data only disks with no movies on them?

Re:So the dog go off on any dvd-r

[dgatwood]

I doubt there's any difference in the type of polycarbonate used for pirated DVDs versus legitimate ones.... Chances are, they are trained to smell a significant concentration of any optical media in a single place. If they smell a trace of polycarbonate, e.g. a dozen DVDs, that's not suspicious. If they smell 35,000 of the things and the warehouse isn't a disc manufacturing company, a computer company, or a computer/movie/music store, such a high concentration of media in one place screams "professional pirates"....

Re:So the dog go off on any dvd-r

[nabsltd]

If they smell 35,000 of the things and the warehouse isn't a disc manufacturing company, a computer company, or a computer/movie/music store, such a high concentration of media in one place screams "professional pirates"

The last place I worked, we had an 8-tray DVD duplicator/printer, and bought blank disks in palette loads, and we weren't any of the types of companies that you listed, although we did use computers a lot (as do most places these days).

We used them entirely for distributing content that either we had personally created or that clients gave us the rights to duplicate for them. Some of the content was commecials that you've probably seen on TV, and some was computer programs written in-house.

Maybe today we'd go with a commercial duplicator, but back then you could get a 100 copy run at all (or at least not for less than extortionate prices).

Re:So the dog go off on any dvd-r

[Moryath]

As opposed to me buying a shipment of, say, 500 Taiyo Yuden DVD+r's so that I'm set for my monthly backup regimen?

Please.

"We got a dog that smells something that we usually associate with the smell of something that might be in some way be used to commit a crime."

Bullshit. You got the same quality dog as the fucking "drug sniffing" dog that tore apart my luggage in O'Hare because I'd packed (nicely sealed up and everything) a box of frozen bratwurst with a 24-hour gelpack block to bring home as a gift to my roommate. I suppose I COULD be meaning to bludgeon him to death with frozen bratwurst, but I really doubt it.

This sort of "search" crap is beyond stupid. Either search something, or don't, but don't pretend that your "search dog", who in his/her downtime has hobbies that include sniffing and licking his/her own genitalia, is justification for doing so.

Misconception

[93 Escort Wagon]

The story doesn't say the dogs can tell the difference between a legit DVD and an illegal copy. I'd guess the dogs are trained to find DVDs, period. If said DVDs are in crates stacked in some warehouse where they shouldn't be, then the dog has found some pirated DVDs.

But really, what legitimate reason do you guys have for disliking this - other than a general hatred of the MPA? Unlike many/most of the tactics used by that organization and its spawn, this seems reasonable. But so far in this discussion I've seen a lot of silliness and/or venom being contributed, but very little intelligent thought.

Yes, they smell different! Try it!

[jriskin]

I just opened a spool of CD-R's, DVD-Rs, and compared them to Pressed DVD/CD's. The burned disks are QUITE STRONG in oder and its EASY to tell the difference even between CD-R and DVD-R at least with the disks I'm smelling. While they may have trained the dogs to smell for all of it, the dogs nose is WAY more sensitive than mine and I can easily distinguish after smelling a few.

Dogs would have ZERO problem telling them apart. It should be fairly trivial to give dogs a sampling of various burned media and then have them sniff them out.

I'm surprised people even think this is even far fetched. Sound pretty straight forward to me. But, then again i'm practical and the first thing I tried was smelling a bunch of media...

Re:And the blind?

[hairyfeet]

Actually I had a buddy that was a county mountie and worked with the K9 unit. He said dealers would spread a little strong coke/crank mix around crappy loads they didn't give much of a care about. They would give those loads to some dumb junkie that didn't know jack and when the K9 unit smelled around the load the coke/crank mix would burn out the dogs nose. Then the next load that came through had a better chance of making it as the dog's nose was basically anesthetized from the coke/crank mix.

That is why he said most of the local K9 dogs ended up only working for a year or two before they ended up a cop's pet. They would get done that way several times and their noses would just keep getting less accurate until they weren't any better at smelling the dope than you or I. When they'd suspect the dog was suffering "burn out" they would give him a few tests to see how well he hit and if he failed some cop got a new pet. But considering the price to train these dogs I bet that isn't very good on the police budget, which is of course why the MPA is breaking out the checkbook. Because I can't see these Asian police forces giving enough of a crap over bootlegs of "The Dark Knight" to spend the cash needed to train and replace the dogs.