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LOS ANGELES – 06/04/07 – A pair of Southern California-based black Labrador Retrievers is being used in Malaysia as part of that country’s on-going campaign against music and film piracy.

The highly-trained, three-year-old dogs are trained to sniff out the chemicals used to manufacture the optical discs used to make compact discs and DVDs.

The dogs are on loan from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPA), and, reportedly, can find, but cannot distinguish between, replicated, legitimate, or pirated CDs and DVDs.

But, since last March, they’ve already helped officials to uncover more than 1.3 million counterfeit DVDs and CDs worth more than $4.4 million in a series of nationwide raids on warehouses and shops, according to Firdaus Zakaria, enforcement director at the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs in Kuala Lumpur.

"The dogs are a genuine threat to the pirated disc syndicates,” he said, adding the dogs have actually received death threats.

The dogs, which each cost $17,000 to train, take only ten minutes to check a fully loaded container – a task that security officers routinely need a day to accomplish.

According to press reports, the Retrievers are getting film-star treatment at a secret location including a whirlpool spa where they can cool down after a hard day on the scent of the DVD pirates.

Malaysia is considered one of the hubs of Asia’s huge trade in pirated films, music, and video games.

The Los Angeles-headquartered MPA says that big entertainment studios, many of which are located in Southern California, lost $1.2 billion to movie piracy in the region last year.

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CAPSTONE SECURES UK, IRELAND AGREEMENT

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