Sigh. Nothing worse than life imitating a throwaway joke. Last week, writing about YouTube’s copyrighted material discovery software, I called it “the digitial equivalent of drug-sniffing dogs.”
Little did I know that the MPAA had already taken my silly joke and turned it into an even sillier reality. In a move that sounds more like a YouTube parody than anything else, the MPAA has trained a pair of dogs to sniff DVDs. I swear to gods that I am not, in any way, shape or form, making this up.
These poor poor dogs, who are no doubt adorable, are Labrador Retreivers called Lucky and Flo. Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy? You! You’re a good boy! Yes you are! Yes you are! Now go maul me some DVD pirates!
The job for Lucky and Flo will be to sniff out optical discs in luggage or other containers, and stop the discs from getting to manufacturing plants where they can be reproduced.
Look, I get that DVD piracy is a huge deal, but I’m not sure how a pair of dogs are even going to make a dent. How many airports can they be in at the same time? Two! And what about the false positives? Is every single person transporting optical discs a pirate?
Actually, I have the answer to that last one: every single person who has ever made a copy of anything for their own personal use is a pirate, duh. And since that is pretty much everybody in the entire world, the odds are that anybody transporting any optical disc whatsoever is a pirate, so sic ’em, boy!!
Also, how about the fact that the drug-sniffing dogs are probably looking down their noses at Lucky and Flo? Imagine the snickers that these two are going to end up getting at the Contraband-Sniffing Dog convention . . .
Spike: “Last week, I single handedly stopped 5 kilos of bad heroin from getting into Vancouver!! I may have saved several lives, cos that shit was nearly poison, yo. What did you say you sniffed again?”
Flo: “Er, um, bootleg DVDs. Last week, I stopped 50 copies of Monster-in-Law from making it out into the streets of Fresno.”
Spike: “Rrrrright. Well, yeah, see ya around. ”
Flo: [weeps uncontrollably]
Up next: the MPAA will be training dolphins and hawks to attack ships and planes that they suspect contain bootlegs of Jackass 2.