World's first anti-piracy K-9 unit

Malaysia will launch the world's first anti-piracy canine unit to fight compact disc piracy, an industry watchdog said today.

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) said it had donated the two Labrador, Paddy and Manny, to the Ministry of Domestic and Consumer Affairs and they would make their first public appearance on Monday when they would be used to sniff out CDs and DVDs.

"Malaysia is the first country to take up the challenge to test the capability of working dogs and we have discovered that using dogs to battle piracy can greatly assist enforcement efforts," a senior industry official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Trained to sniff optical discs

Last year, two black Labradors, Lucky and Flo, were brought in by the US-based MPA which investigates piracy for major movie companies.

The pair, who were not part of a specific unit, were so successful that piracy syndicates placed a bounty on their heads. They helped Malaysia sniff out fake music and movie discs worth millions of ringgit.

"Paddy and Manny will now have to live up to their seniors' reputation," the official said.

The new dogs are trained to detect polycarbonate and other chemicals used in optical discs. They either freeze or sit when they sniff the chemicals.

Losses to the MPA studios due to worldwide Internet piracy amounted to US$6.1 billion in 2005.

Of that, about US$2.4 billion was lost to bootlegging, US$1.4 billion to illegal copying and US$2.3 billion to Internet piracy.

As a regional breakdown, approximately US$1.2 billion were losses from piracy across the Asia-Pacific, while the US accounted for US$1.3 billion.