Dogs Used To Locate Counterfeit DVDs

Any Dogsters notice your furfriends rummaging around in your DVD collection? If so, they may be training for one of the newest dog jobs — smelling for counterfeit DVDs. That’s right, this just in from The Age. Two black Labrador Retrievers have been put to work sniffing for counterfeit DVDs at at the FedEx UK hub in Stansted.

The dogs – named Luck and Flo – have already passed their first big test. They were put to work at courier company FedEx’s UK hub at Stansted in the UK where they successfully discovered DVDs in parcels and packages.

Although none of the discs they discovered was a pirated copy, the organizations behind the trial expressed satisfaction with the results.

“This is the first time dogs have been used anywhere in the world to search for counterfeit DVDs and the results were amazing,” said Mr Ian Leinster, director general of the UK-based Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT).

FACT teamed up with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to train the dogs, a process that took eight months.

Sniffer dogs are commonly used to search for drugs, explosives, other contraband and, in the case of Australia, certain prohibited food imports.

It is not immediately clear if the dogs will continue to work only with posted/couriered material or whether they will be deployed at airports to pore over passengers’ suitcases and packages.

However, before that happens the dogs are expected to go back to school to learn how to differentiate pirated discs from the kosher ones.

DVD piracy is a growing problem in the UK and last year FACT seized over two million counterfeit DVDs.

And I thought Sol and Annie just didn’t share my taste in movies when they sniffed my DVDs suspiciously. Maybe they know something I don’t.