Lucky and Flo

Last updated

Lucky and Flo were a pair of black Labrador Retrievers trained by Dr. Neil Powell, notable for being the first animals trained to detect optical discs by scent. In 2006 they were sponsored by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) as part of an initiative to combat copyright infringement of film DVDs. [1]

The dogs' abilities were first demonstrated in May 2006 at the FedEx shipping hub at London Stansted Airport, though inspectors found all the discs the dogs detected that day to be legitimate. [2] Another demonstration was held at the MPAA's Washington, D.C. office on September 26, 2006. [3] In March 2007 the two dogs were sent to Malaysia to help sniff out DVDs. After a raid on a bootleg DVD ring in Johor Bahru on March 20, reports said that the dogs had been targeted by the DVD pirates and that a bounty had been put on their heads. [4] [ failed verification ] Although the dogs worked to detect counterfeit DVDs, they had no ability to distinguish such counterfeits from other polycarbonate optical discs.

In March 2008 the MPAA, along with children's magazine the Weekly Reader , released a curriculum for grades 5 to 7 featuring Lucky and Flo to be distributed to nearly 60,000 classrooms in 20,000 schools across 10 U.S. states and designed to "educate children about the importance of respecting copyrights while presenting it in a fun and exciting way," according to then-MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman. [5] Glickman lavished praise on the canines, saying that the dogs were "some of the greatest employees we have here at the MPAA". [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Labrador Retriever</span> British breed of retriever gun dog

The Labrador Retriever or simply Labrador is a British breed of retriever gun dog. It was developed in the United Kingdom from St. John's water dogs imported from the colony of Newfoundland, and was named after the Labrador region of that colony. It is among the most commonly kept dogs in several countries, particularly in the European world.

Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media.

A screener (SCR) is an advance or promotional copy of a film or television series sent to critics, awards voters, video stores, and other film industry professionals, including producers and distributors. It is similar to giving out a free advance copy of books before it is printed for mass distribution. Director John Boorman is credited with creating the first Oscar screeners to promote his film The Emerald Forest in 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan Glickman</span> American businessman and politician

Daniel Robert Glickman is an American politician, lawyer, lobbyist, and nonprofit leader. He served as the United States secretary of agriculture from 1995 until 2001 in the Clinton administration. He previously represented Kansas's 4th congressional district as a Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives for 18 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Detection dog</span> Dog trained to detect certain substances

A detection dog or sniffer dog is a dog that is trained to use its senses to detect substances such as explosives, illegal drugs, wildlife scat, currency, blood, and contraband electronics such as illicit mobile phones. The sense most used by detection dogs is smell. Hunting dogs that search for game, and search and rescue dogs that work to find missing humans are generally not considered detection dogs but instead under their own categories. There is some overlap, as in the case of cadaver dogs, trained to search for human remains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TorrentSpy</span>

TorrentSpy was a popular BitTorrent indexing website. It provided .torrent files, which enabled users to exchange data between one another.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slyck.com</span> Technology news website (defunct)

Slyck.com was a website that produced unique original file sharing news stories, shared aggregated technology news stories from the World Wide Web, and had a user forum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Search and rescue dog</span> Dog trained to locate or retrieve a missing or trapped person

A search-and-rescue dog is one trained to find missing people after a natural or man-made disaster. The dogs detect human scent and have been known to find people under water, under snow, and under collapsed buildings.

Canine cancer detection is an approach to cancer screening that relies upon the claimed olfactory ability of dogs to detect, in urine or in breath, very low concentrations of the alkanes and aromatic compounds generated by malignant tumors. While some research has been promising, no verified studies by secondary research groups have substantiated the validity of positive, conclusive results.

isoHunt Torrent index site closed 2013

isoHunt was an online torrent files index and repository, where visitors could browse, search, download or upload torrents of various digital content of mostly entertainment nature. The website was taken down in October 2013 as a result of a legal action from the MPAA; by the end of October 2013 however, two sites with content presumably mirrored from isohunt.com were reported in media. One of them – isohunt.to – became a de facto replacement of the original site. It is not associated in any way with the old staff or owners of the site, and is to be understood as a separate continuation.

Operation Red Card is the name given to a two-month Asia-wide anti-piracy operation that was conducted by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) which resulted in the seizure of 6.7 million pirated discs in 12 countries across the Asia-Pacific region. The operation took place between May and mid-July 2006, resulting in 915 arrests and the seizure of 1,483 optical disc burners.

Sadie, (1996-2019), a black Labrador Retriever, was a recipient of the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross. She was awarded for detecting an explosive device outside the United Nations headquarters in Kabul in November 2005, and was awarded by Princess Alexandra on 6 February 2007. Her handler at the time of the action which resulted in the award was Lance Corporal Karen Yardley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DVD</span> Optical disc format

The DVD is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind of digital data and has been widely used to store video programs, software and other computer files. DVDs offer significantly higher storage capacity than compact discs (CD) while having the same dimensions. A standard single-layer DVD can store up to 4.7 GB of data, a dual-layer DVD up to 8.5 GB. Variants can store up to a maximum of 17.08 GB.

aXXo Alias of an unidentified internet pirate

aXXo is the Internet alias of an individual who released and standardized commercial film DVDs as free downloads on the Internet between 2005 and 2009. The files, which were usually new films, were popular among the file sharing community using peer-to-peer file sharing protocols such as BitTorrent. A download-tracking firm BigChampagne found — in a sampling period in late 2008 — that almost 33.5% of all movie downloads were aXXo torrents. aXXo encoded files to approximately 700 MB – the same size for a compact disc. Due to the re-encoded quality of an aXXo file, the suffix "aXXo" was often used by imitators.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Motion Picture Association</span> Trade organization representing major American film studios

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) and known as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) from 1945 until September 2019, its original goal was to ensure the viability of the American film industry. In addition, the MPA established guidelines for film content which resulted in the creation of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1930. This code, also known as the Hays Code, was replaced by a voluntary film rating system in 1968, which is managed by the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Pirate Bay raid</span>

The Pirate Bay raid took place on 31 May 2006 in Stockholm, when The Pirate Bay, a Swedish website that indexes torrent files, was raided by Swedish police, causing it to go offline for three days. Upon reopening, the site's number of visitors more than doubled, the increased popularity attributed to greater exposure through the media coverage, which is an example of the Streisand effect.

Counterfeit consumer goods—or counterfeit, fraudulent, and suspect items (CFSI)—are goods, often of inferior quality, made or sold under another's brand name without the brand owner's authorization. The colloquial terms knockoff or dupe (duplicate) are often used interchangeably with counterfeit, although their legal meanings are not identical.

A notorious market is a website or physical market where, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), large-scale intellectual property infringement takes place. Officially termed Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy, the USTR has generated a yearly list of such notorious markets since 2006 with input from various industry groups.

123Movies, GoMovies, GoStream, MeMovies or 123movieshub was a network of file streaming websites operating from Vietnam which allowed users to watch films for free. It was called the world's "most popular illegal site" by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in March 2018, before being shut down a few weeks later on foot of a criminal investigation by the Vietnamese authorities. As of July 2023, websites imitating the brand remain active.

References

  1. Kirk, Jeremy (May 11, 2006). "MPAA Trains Dogs to Sniff Out Pirate DVDs". PC World. Archived from the original on December 2, 2011.
  2. "Police Dogs Sniff for Pirated DVDs". ABC News . 2006-05-10.
  3. Puzzanghera, Jim (2006-09-27). "Hollywood's Latest Weapon - DVD Sniffing Dogs". Los Angeles Times .
  4. "Malaysian pirates put sniffer dogs on hit list". DailySentinel. 2007-03-22. Archived from the original on 2007-08-22. Retrieved 2007-04-02.
  5. "MPAA, Weekly Reader Campaign goes to the dogs". BusinessOfCinema. 2008-03-08. Archived from the original on 2011-07-08.
  6. "Dogs Bust Illegal DVD Ring". ABC News. March 23, 2007. Archived from the original on November 3, 2013.