Photo: Music and movie pirates have put out a contract on Lucky and Flo, the two Labradors who helped sniff out nearly 1 million illegal discs within days of joining Malaysia's anti-piracy effort. (AP /Andy Wong)
Bounty Offered to Kill 2 Sniffer Dogs in Malaysia
China remains at the top of the MPAA's movie piracy list.
March 23, 2007
Canadian Press
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - Lucky and Flo, the two Labradors who helped sniff out nearly one million illegal discs last week within days of joining Malaysia's anti-piracy effort, have been moved to a safe house, a news report said Thursday.
Photo: Music and movie pirates have put out a contract on Lucky and Flo, the two Labradors who helped sniff out nearly 1 million illegal discs within days of joining Malaysia's anti-piracy effort. (AP /Andy Wong)
The New Straits Times reported that a source had tipped off officials about a bounty offered for killing the sniffer dogs, who are on loan for a month from the Motion Picture Association of America. The amount was not disclosed.
"The dogs are a genuine threat to the pirated disc syndicates, thus the instruction to eliminate them," Firdaus Zakaria, the enforcement director of the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, was quoted as saying.
He did not elaborate on the information received by the ministry.
Lucky and Flo, who were pressed into service on March 13, gained fame after they sniffed out a massive shipment of pirated movie DVDs in an office complex in southern Johor state on March 19.
The canines detected the discs hidden behind locked doors, which officials broke open with crowbars to reveal a cache of nearly one million discs worth US$2.8 million. Five Malaysians and a Vietnamese man also were arrested in the operation.
It is the first time dogs have been used by authorities anywhere in the world to detect contraband discs, according to Mike Ellis, regional director for the MPAA.
The MPAA says its members - including top Hollywood studios Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and Universal - lost $1.2 billion to Asia-Pacific movie pirates in 2006.
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