DVD dog dies

A DOG WHICH WAS TRAINED to sniff out pirated DVDs has died in mysterious circumstances, according to the New Straits Times.

Manny, a one-year-old golden Labrador which arrived in Malaysia in February, died about a week ago. Vets are conducting a post-mortem and the implication is that the dog was killed by pirates.

However for the last few years we have been running stories which question if these DVD dogs are more of a PR stunt as their ability to bring down pirates has been more spin than reality.

The spin started when labradors named Lucky and Flo, made headlines last year apparently single-handedly sniffed out huge stashes of pirated CDs and DVDs. Officially they were credited with sniffing out 1.6 million disks and had a price put on their heads by counterfeiters.

However as we pointed out the only time the dogs were used was during a raid on a known counterfeiting organisation. The dogs apparently were able to sniff out CDs and DVDs in a counterfeiting factory which is a bit like organising a piss up in a brewery.

The fact that the evil pirates might have killed a dog being trained up to do Lucky and Flo's job full time makes a great headline for the movie industry and shows how evil the counterfeiters are. However, even the enforcement director of the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry Roslan Mahayuddin thinks that the idea of Manny being bumped off is a long shot.

Manny was donated by the US-based Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and was getting used to the climate.

The pirates would need to know that he was the dog to be used to sniff out their business and they would have to know where he was. Since that was a secret and he had never appeared on the mean streets yet that was incredibly unlikely. µ

L'Inq
AP