MPAA Arms Malaysian Theaters with DVD Sniffing Dogs, Night-Vision Goggles
May 25, 2007 Media
No, that’s not a joke. It really happened, just in time for Spiderman 3 and POTC3.
After showing people to their seats, trained ushers are strapping on the goggles and scanning darkened cinemas around the country to spot anyone trying to make illegal copies of movies with hand-held video recorders or mobile phones.
The Motion Picture Association, which is training Malaysian ushers to catch the pirates, said cinemas had caught 17 people in the past two months, during which Hollywood studios released blockbusters like “Spider-Man 3″ and “Pirates of the Caribbean”.
“All of the cases were spotted with night-vision goggles,” the association’s Malaysia manager, Nor Hayati Yahaya, said on Friday. “Its very successful.”
Just, wow. It gets better:
The association, which represents the big Hollywood studios, recently brought to Malaysia two dogs trained to sniff out DVDs — with stunning results. The two Labradors, Lucky and Flo, have sniffed out more than a million DVDs and broken a fake DVD ring.
They have been so successful that authorities believe Malaysian pirates have put a bounty on the dogs’ heads.
Hmm. Not exactly hunting down drug dealers or finding people trapped in wreckage.
Warner Bros. to Canada: You Suck!
May 10, 2007 Media
Canada will no longer get advanced screenings of Warner Bros. movies, stating that 70 percent of their movies from the past 18 months were pirated in the Frozen North. It is currently not a criminal offense there to take your camcorder in to record a movie for ‘personal use’. President Bush wanted to send in the Marines upon hearing those numbers, but was dissuaded after he found out there were no actual peglegs or cutlasses involved.
