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KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia may soon have its own canine
unit to fight disc piracy after the resounding success of two dogs
who helped sniff out millions of dollars’ worth of fake DVDs and
CDs, reports said Sunday.
Anti-piracy canines Lucky and Flo
had so far discovered caches of 1.3 million discs, 97 DVD burners
and 30,000 recordable discs worth 11.7 million ringgit ($3.4
million), leading to the arrests of 14 people, the Star daily said
Sunday.
Malaysian piracy syndicates are
now trying to kill the black Labradors and have raised the bounty on
the canines up to five times to 50,000 ringgit each.
Mohamad Roslan Mahayuddin, the
Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry’s enforcement
director, said the dogs were so effective the ministry was mulling
setting up its own canine unit to fight piracy, the Star reported.
The Labradors, which hail from
Northern Ireland, are said to be the only ones in the world trained
to detect polycarbonate and chemicals used in optical discs.
Neil Gane, an official with the
US-based Motion Picture Association (MPA), told AFP the MPA,
providedthe dogs to Malaysia for a one-month trial.
In their latest raid on Friday,
Lucky and Flo had helped enforcement officers seize pirated copies
of movies worth more than one million ringgit hidden in 11 shops at
a shopping mall in southern Johor state.
Enforcement officers also
discovered about 5,000 child pornographic DVDs.  --AFP
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