MPA spins another sniffer dogs yarn

LUCKY AND FLO, two female black Labradors who made a first appearance sniffing out fake DVDs for the British Copyright Cops at Fact (Federation Against Copyright Theft) are now receiving death threats, if you believe the spinners at Motion Picture Association.

As we reported last year, the dogs were were deployed in Blighty's Stansted Airport where they had been unable to sniff out a fake DVD from the real McCoy.

However the idea of two cute doggies snuffling out fake DVDs proved to be such a PR godsend that the MPA 'borrowed them' for a publicity tour of its own.

The pair of hounds have now turned up in Malaysia where apparently Malaysian movie pirates have put a bounty on their heads.

According to The New Straits Times Lucky and Flo were involved in their “first major successful operation in Johor” and helped seize a cache of around a million pirated game and movie discs in the southern city of Johor Baru, near Singapore. At least six people were arrested.

According to the MPA, syndicate bosses had offered an unspecified reward for the killing of the two dogs. The Malaysian authorities are taking this threat seriously and the security around the dogs' current location has been beefed up.

While the thought of two sniffer coppers needing police protection is likely to boost sympathy for the hounds, and the MPA's cause, no one seems to have questioned the reliability of the story.

The dogs are trained to sit down when they smell plastic, yet according to police records the building was swimming with CDs and DVDs. The poor hounds would have spent the whole raid sitting down and would not have been a hell of a lot of use.

It is not clear why Malaysian crime lords would focus on poor Lucky and Flo. They would have realised that their number was up the moment Inspector Knacker of the Singapore yard knocked on the door with a search warrant. But who needs facts when you have a good spin? µ

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L'INQ
Reuters story