Two sniffer Labrador dogs loaned by the MPAA to the Malaysian authorities have turned very successful, blocking the shipment of nearly 1 million discs, worth ~$2.8 million on March 19th, compared with 5 million discs seized throughout 2006. However, just when it looked to be the right time for the MPAA to hail about the success of its dogs, things have gone bad after the officials received a tip about the pirates now spraying chemicals on its discs to obscure the polycarbonate's own smell the dogs are trained to sniff out, according to DenverPost.
Worse still for the authorities, they had to take away the dogs to a safe house after they were informed that the bootleggers were offering a bounty to anyone who could kill the dogs. As a result, the dogs have not been used to sniff out any further packages since last week. The dogs are currently on loan from the MPAA for at least a month. Finally, despite the substantial number of discs seized already by the dogs, it seemed to have little if any effect on retail outlets selling pirated discs over the weekend.
Despite these issues, the Malaysian officials have mentioned that they will consider training its own dogs to carry out similar tasks, although it is unclear if it will be for blocking the shipping of pirated discs or other items. According to the MPAA, the raids carried out by its dogs Lucky and Flo was the first time dogs were ever used to sniff out pirated discs.
Thanks to RTV71 for letting us know about the Pirates' bounty offer to kill the dogs.
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The Columbian cartels had standing bounties on drug sniffing dogs employed by U.S. Customs at the Port of Miami all through the 80s. It'll be interesting to see whether Asian IP piracy begins to generate the same negative externalities as Latin American drug smuggling.
Modern prohibitionist drug laws originated in the United States. Those efforts were grew out of attempts to legislate rasict policies. This is a simple historical fact which conveniently explains why harmless and even beneficial herbs such as marijuana were targeted early on while intoxicating substances popular among the european decended ruling clas such as alcohol and tobacco were not.
Drug laws are nothing more than the politics of exclusion. By identifying and making illegal the physical substances held dear to those outside of the political ruling class it is possible to then ostracize those minorities and enslave them into an oppressive prison culture such as we see in America and many other countries today.
The same game is being played again in the "intellectual property" game but this time instead of merely whipping a few minority communities the game is to turn all of those below a certain income level into criminals so that the police can be used to terrorize their them into submission to the will of the political elite.
So, yeah there are a lot of parallels between the criminalization of substances and the criminalization of thoughts.
Preach on brother. In fact, I'm so enamored with your world view that I would like to sponsor you to speak at the next NAACP convention. We need to get you up on stage and let them hear the gospel- that exclusively minorities hold mary jane and crack so dear to their hearts. Good luck making it out alive Karl.
Educate yourself my friend. It is a historical fact that drug laws are born of efforts to legislate racism. The Spanish-sounding word "marijuana" was actually created by law enforcement to scare whites into believing that the herb was an evil menace from the dark skinned peoples.
The first drug law in the US was a ban on opium, but only in China Town. Heroin use among whites was not considered criminal. At the same time laws against pony tails and even carrying water on poles were passed. That is how racism is legislated.
And if you think the sociopathic, racists drug war has not had a more terrorizing effect on communities of color by a profound degree then you are clearly ignorant of the facts.
But I appreciate your vote for my appearance before the NAACP.
