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Aug 29, 2007 6:16 am US/Eastern
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MPAA Unveils First Ever 'DVD-Sniffing Dogs'
Canines Have Been So Effective In Cracking Piracy Rings, Malaysian Pirate Put $30,000 Bounty On Their Heads
by Cindy Hsu
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
New York City loses more than $600 million in retail sales every year due to global film piracy. There may be a light at the end of the piracy tunnel, however, in the form of two highly-trained dogs who are so good at finding smuggled discs that there's actually a bounty on their heads.
"Lucky" and "Flo" are the world's first DVD-sniffing dogs. They're the newest task force members for the Motion Picture Association of America, and have just finished "Operation: Double Trouble" in the Philippines and Malaysia.
In just months they sniffed out more than two million pirated disks, with a street value of $3.5 million.
"They were so good at their jobs that a Malaysian pirate syndicate put a bounty on their heads of 100,000 Malaysian ringets, which is about $30,000," said MPAA spokesman Dan Glickman.
The dogs demonstrated their abilities for CBS 2 HD on Tuesday, sniffing out boxes dirty discs among a grouping of other boxes. Within seconds, Lucky found the hidden DVDs.
Officials say that's what makes the dogs so valuable. They're able to help investigators find illegal discs being smuggled across the world, intercepting them before they hit the streets. What's more, they can smell a hidden stash whether there's just one disc or 100 discs.
Recently, they sniffed out a box on an airport conveyor belt and found one single disc hidden at the bottom.
"Customs opened it up and there was maybe 100 tins of dog food in it. But at the bottom there was an envelope and there was a DVD in the envelope," said Neil Powell, who trains the dogs.
Lucky and Flo are just 3-and-a-half-years-old and were previously trained as "rescue dogs" who have the traits that Powell was looking for.
"You select a dog because it loves to play and it loves to hunt," he said.
That's when Powell trained the dogs to search for the smell of plastic found in CDs and DVDs, the same way he's conditioned dogs to find explosives and drugs. So far, Flo and Lucky can't tell the difference between pirated discs and legal ones, but they've still been a incredible force in stomping out piracy rings.
The MPAA says every year those piracy rings end up costing New York more than $50 million sales taxes.
So what's a DVD-sniffing dog's favorite reward for saving a city millions of dollars? Simple: a chewable tennis ball.
(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)