Bootleg DVDs? Send in the dogs
The newest recruits in the hunt for pirated movies: a pair of black Labrador retrievers.
NPR reported Friday that the Motion Picture Association of America and the Federation Against Copyright Theft, a British group, recently tried out the canines at a FedEx facility at an airport in the U.K. Flo and Lucky, the dogged duo, had a 100 percent success rate in sniffing out parcels containing DVDs. You and I don't have the nose for the job, but apparently they can pick up a "plume of scent" from the polycarbonates, lacquers and resins used in the discs.
What the dogs can't do, at least not yet, is distinguish between legitimate DVDs and those with pirated flicks. They just find the DVD-laden packages, and it's up to humans to sort it out from there.
Jonathan Skillings is managing editor of CNET News, based in the Boston bureau. He's been with CNET since 2000, after a decade in tech journalism at the IDG News Service, PC Week, and an AS/400 magazine. He's also been a soldier and a schoolteacher. E-mail Jon.
