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Dead Over a DVD
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has attempted to stop movie piracy by suing illegal downloading sites and their users, convincing bit torrent insiders to sell out their fellow pirates, and hacking those same sites and installing malicious code, with little effect.
Under the new direction of former federal prosecutor John Malcolm, the MPAA is now using dogs to combat piracy. The cute and cuddly pooches are trained to sniff out the polycarbonates used to make illegal DVDs, and have assisted in 35 raids, the confiscation of 1.9 million illegal DVDs, and the discovery of almost 100 burning stations.
But the recent death of one of the dogs establishes a tragicomic parallel with the drug wars:
A yellow Labrador retriever named Manny, an MPAA-trained disc-sniffer, died last month in Malaysia at the age of 1. The MPAA is awaiting an autopsy report, but suspects the dog might have been murdered.
"Word on the streets," Malcolm said, was that disc-counterfeiting groups had put out a hit on the disc-sniffing pooches.
"We heard from enough people, we took it as a threat," Malcolm said. "We are very interested in getting the autopsy report. We are very concerned. I'm not looking to cast aspersions. But Manny all of a sudden died."
The two remaining dogs, worth $17,000 each, have likely recouped their costs a hundred times over, and there's no reason for the MPAA to discontinue the program unless, A) pirates kill all the dogs; B) Pirates figure out how to make DVDs out of something other than polycarbonates; or, C) The MPAA catches all the pirates.
Seeing as the latter two futures are unlikely, I wonder how many dogs the MPAA would have to lose before it considered a thoughtful response to piracy?
reason's copyright archive here.
Jennifer|7.12.08 @ 12:19PM|#
The cute and cuddly pooches are trained to sniff out the
polycarbonates used to make illegal DVDs,
Do illegal DVDs smell different than legal ones?
Naga Sadow|7.12.08 @ 12:22PM|#
Word on the street is that their is a hit on a dog? WTF? I had to check every link just to make sure it wasn't a joke.
Naga Sadow|7.12.08 @ 12:31PM|#
A horse's head worked for Woltz, a dead hooker for the senator, this oughtta silence the MPAA!
Elemenope|7.12.08 @ 1:18PM|#
Word on the street is that their is a hit on a dog? WTF? I
had to check every link just to make sure it wasn't a
joke.
This actually happens a great deal with drug dogs. And it is no
joke.
Franklin Harris|7.12.08 @ 1:30PM|#
and there's no reason for the MPAA to discontinue the program unless, A) pirates kill all the dogs; B) Pirates figure out how to make DVDs out of something other than polycarbonates; or, C) The MPAA catches all the pirates.
Well, of those three, I can guarantee "C" ain't happenin'.
Word on the street is that their is a hit on a dog? WTF? I had to check every link just to make sure it wasn't a joke.
This actually happens a great deal with drug dogs. And it is no joke.
That's what dogs get for being codependent lackeys for The Man.
You'd never catch a cat doing that.
Franklin Harris|7.12.08 @ 2:16PM|#
This actually happens a great deal with drug dogs. And it is no joke.
You've got the "no joke" part right. In many (most?) jurisdictions,
killing
a police dog is just like or just short of killing a human
police officer. And we already know that the government says police
officers' lives are worth more than the lives of everyone
else.
Of course, the police will kill
your dog without a second thought and without
apology.
K. Bolino|7.12.08 @ 2:33PM|#
"The two remaining dogs, worth $17,000 each, have likely recouped their costs a hundred times over, ...."
And how exactly have the dogs recouped their cost even once? Only
in MPAA lawyers' briefs does stopping movie piracy make money.
|7.12.08 @ 3:33PM|#
I would say the MPAA's behaviour is more defensable
than than the war on drugs.
Use of drugs by informed consenting adults is clearly a victimless
crime.* However, it is at least debatable whether selling
bootlegged DVDs is (the whole "intellectual property"
argument).
And I've never heard of a "Copyright Enforcement exception to the
Bill of Rights" or any drug-war level horror stories about
overzealous enforcement.
* To the extent that there are legitimate concerns about anything
related to drug use; addressing them no more requires bannings
drugs than fighting drunk driving requires banning alcohol.
Elemenope|7.12.08 @ 3:48PM|#
That's what dogs get for being codependent lackeys for The
Man. You'd never catch a cat doing that.
While I can't get behind dog killin', I have much more respect for
cats because of this. They serve no one but themselves and
occasionally a family member.
Episiarch|7.12.08 @ 3:56PM|#
The MPAA has announced that because of this, they will begin training beholders to find the illegal DVDs. The beholder, upon finding someone who has said DVDs, will then randomly choose one of its eyes for punishment of the person.
|7.12.08 @ 4:24PM|#
After noticeing the thread above; I wonder if there will be cases of people suing because law enforcement accidently destoyed their legal DVDs, or destroyed discs made out of polycarbons that were being used for something other than bootlegged DVDs.
Christ on a Cracker|7.12.08 @ 4:30PM|#
I'm calling Bullshit!. Forgetting about the difference between
legal and illegal plastics, it takes a year to train a scent dog to
any level of compentence. The real training doesn't begin until the
dog is at least a year old. A 12 month old puppy is the mental
equivalent of a 12 year old child.
This is classic urban legend stuff...
Coc
|7.12.08 @ 4:38PM|#
In veterinary medicine the procedure is a "necropsy" not an
"autopsy".
Just to be a nerd about it.
Antiglobalist|7.12.08 @ 5:16PM|#
Who would want to consume the crap that these companies put out anyway? They're already making millions of money on selling mass-produced garbage for the public. We don't want your shit--you can have it!
Elemenope|7.12.08 @ 5:30PM|#
The MPAA has announced that because of this, they will begin
training beholders to find the illegal DVDs. The beholder, upon
finding someone who has said DVDs, will then randomly choose one of
its eyes for punishment of the person.
Christ, talk about a geek-out. :)
|7.12.08 @ 6:22PM|#
Only in MPAA lawyers' briefs does stopping movie piracy make money.
The MPAA is second only to the RIAA in my list of "Top 300
People Who Are Right But Should Be Chopped Up and Fed To Raccoons
Anyway".
Yes, movie piracy has a cost. Because the pirates suck some amount
of profit out of the movie business, fewer movies are made. Fewer
that is, than the economically optimal amount. Instead that
investment goes to whatever the next most marginally profitable
enterprise. You can't tell who suffers -- it might be overpaid
movie executives, it might be underpaid stage hand, or it might be
someone else all together -- but someone must.
|7.12.08 @ 7:24PM|#
I don't know which pisses me off more: the black marketeers who kill the dogs, or the MPAA drones who put them in the line of fire...
Marcvs|7.13.08 @ 9:09AM|#
Do illegal DVDs smell different than legal ones?
I don't know the answer to that question, but the various
recordable DVD formats use a different method for recording (laser
burning) from professional duplication methods (stamping). This
would require different materials and, I'm guessing, would have a
different odor.
Andrew Norton|7.14.08 @ 11:05AM|#
Prior to being head of the US Pirate Party, I was an engineer;
one that worked a LOT with polycarb. The plastic stinks, there's no
doubt about that. however, there is only 16g of lexan in a DVD/CD.
and no, recordables don't smell any different from pressed discs,
since the difference there is on the tiny metal (and dye for
re-recordable) layer, not the 1.2mm of lexan.
When they first tested the dogs 2 years ago, at London Stansted,
they 'found' lots of DVDs, all legitimate. They would also have
found my glasses (each lens has more than 16g of lexan), some
rulers I keep with me when traveling (and even a pencil I made with
some scrap lexan). My clothes would stink of lexan too (the
shavings get in with the fibers, and sometimes washing will just
spread the stink). Thats not to mention my watch face, or any
ipods, or ibooks people would have with them.
Lexan is a common plastic. Trying to 'crack down' on piracy using
lexan-sniffing dogs, is like cracking down on drivers with no
licenses by sniffing for gasolene.
Andrew Norton
Chairman
Pirate Party of the US
http://pirate-party.us
|7.14.08 @ 2:57PM|#
Marcvs | July 13, 2008, 9:09am | #
Do illegal DVDs smell different than legal ones?
I don't know the answer to that question, but the various recordable DVD formats use a different method for recording (laser burning) from professional duplication methods (stamping). This would require different materials and, I'm guessing, would have a different odor.
The plastic used for both production formats is still
Polycarbonate. The real trick is, you know where commercial
"stamping" operations occur so you can automatically rule those
out. I don't think that these dogs are trained to pick up on a
small stack of well aired discs or polycarbonate eyeglass lenses
where the smell has had time to dissipate. I think they are
specifically "sniffing out" larger quantities of DVD media that are
indicative of illicit burning operations.
Still, it has interesting parallels to the War on Drugs,
particularly WRT dogs sniffing around neighborhoods for "grow ops".
I expect the level of "false positives" to be somewhat higher
though as Polycarb is a very ubiquitous plastic.
Andrew Norton|7.14.08 @ 5:56PM|#
kwix - try
http://www.fact-uk.org.uk/site/latest_news/news_archivemay06.htm
It's at the bottom of the page.
Also, the thing about polycarb is, the smell doesn't dissipate. I
had a minivan I used to shift polycarb in, and not particularly new
polycarb at that. The van would probably still smell positive for
lexan, despite me selling it 2 years ago.
I worked on the US TV show Battlebots years ago, assembling the
stage (20 tons of lexan) which meant cutting, tapping, drilling
lexan. Then there were the competitor bots, often made of lexan as
well. The dust gets everywhere, and some chemicals/detergents can
brings the smell out and set it in your clothes. Most of my
battlebots t-shirts will smell like a big stack of DVDs to those
dogs.
It's like the rubber you got on the old baby bottle nipples, the
brown ones. You can always smell them, just as you can with lexan.
Medical latex (as in gloves) is another smell you can easily
identify (and makes me vomit).
These dogs are a publicity stunt. Talking with a Wired writer
earlier though, I did come up with a better analogy. These dogs and
their plastic sniffing, is like trying to cut down on knives with a
steel-sniffing dog.
Oh, and lets hope they don't run those dogs around the UK - British
telecom phone boxes have lexan windows...
Andrew Norton
Pirate Party of the US
http://pirate-party.us
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