MPAA training Dogs to Sniff Out DVDs

LandownEyes writes "The dogs, Lucky and Flo, faced their first test at the FedEx UK hub at Stansted Airport. "FedEx was glad to assist in Lucky and Flo's first live test in a working situation. They were amazingly successful at identifying packages containing DVDs, which were opened and checked by HM Customs' representatives. While all were legitimate shipments on the day, our message to anyone thinking about shipping counterfeit DVDs through the FedEx network is simple: you're going to get caught." Kinda makes me thing twice about shipping anything through FedEX. Seriously, this is like training drug dogs to find plastic bags."

This is a TheOnion article, right?

[by Anonymous Coward]

I hope so.

Re:This is a TheOnion article, right?

[One of the abnormals (817423)]

No, it's an official MPAA thing... see the PDF linked from the bottom: http://mpaa.org/press_releases/2006_05_09.pdf [mpaa.org]

Re:This is a TheOnion article, right?

[pyrote (151588)]

6.1 billion loss

I knew my giganews subscription was going to a good cause :)

honestly though... it's really because they are just whining about everyone else making money with Itunes and other digital delivery services. Working at a electronics store, I never have anyone come up to me and ask, "where do I find the cd-players?". to be honest, I can't remember a single sale where a cd-player was involved. BTW, I sell about 10 or more MP3 players each day.

I should send a box of loose blank DVD's with 'Screw you MPAA' written on them for their next photo-op on finding dvd's.

Damn!

[by Anonymous Coward]

There goes my plan to smuggle drugs by DVD.

Probable Cause?

[goombah99 (560566)]

So if I ship my DVDs in a netflix enevelope wil they opne them. If they play them to see what they contain are they violating thr DRM? Do they he probable cause to perform this search?

Re:dirty little secret about pig dogs

[ClamIAm (926466)]

I know this from...a trainer, we'll leave it at that. They have ways to make dogs indicate a "hit", using body language or subtle hand movements, etc., that part varies. They use that "technique" all the time when they want to search a car for instance even when the dog doesn't have a legit "hit". Just one of the many ways they circumvent the real laws. Here's another, carrying a "throw away". They will have access to a confiscated firearm, if involved in "an unfortunate shooting when the perp made a threatening movement" they can stick the gun in his dead hands.

Why not link to some credible sources, Mr. Anonymous? Sure, everybody has a friend who was fucked over because the cops bent or broke some law, but unless you can come up with some hard, documented evidence, your assertions here are baseless.

In other news

[ArTiCwInD (846978)]

"Dogs have been trained to sniff out potential downloaders from airport custom queues, more news at 11"

Privacy?

[Alcimedes (398213)]

So what happens when they find that homemade video a friend is sending you from their trip overseas?

Unless they decide to actually play every DVD, or open the packaging to see what inside a case, how are they going to know?

All a pirate would have to do is ship them in unmarked cases, or ones marked "Vacation video" and mail them to the US, where their partner opens them up and puts them in the final packing material.

Sounds like a giant waste of time to me. And for what? DVD's. We can't even be bothered to search all of the crates coming into our ports, but hell, the MPAA has enough time and money to look for fake fucking DVD's.

Morons.

Re:Privacy?

[ImaNihilist (889325)]

No, no, no. The dogs are only trained to smell burned DVDs that contain pirated movies. It's not that unreasonable. I can definitely smell the difference between my copy of LOTR and my original. The copy just doesn't smell as good.

Re:Privacy?

[phantomfive (622387)]

According to the article they are going after big piraters, so presumably they are looking for a suitcase with a thousand DVDs or something.

I have to agree with you though, of all the things you could train a dog to look for, pirated DVDs is really a waste of a dog. Hope my tax dollars don't go to that. Of course, my tax dollars are wasted enough that it probably doesn't matter.

Re:Privacy?

[the GeeT (956313)]

I've got a shipment of 10,000 vacation videos coming in on FedEx. :)

Nerds Gone Wild...on shelves soon.

and DRM 'em while yer at it...

[RareButSeriousSideEf (968810)]

Shipping them in unmarked cases is a start, but to really guarantee the items against confiscation, they'd just need to add a holographic "This is a DRM Anti-Piracy Copyright Protection Seal" label on the seam of each case. At that point, the mere discussion of how to circumvent said label & gain unauthorized access to the contents would be a class C felony.

Re:Privacy?

[melvin xavier (942849)]

Well, but if you think about it, it makes no sense whatsoever. Why pay 10 bucks to ship something FedEx when you can easily transmit content electronically? It's not so difficult or expensive to burn dvds. I somehow doubt that any DVD smuggling ring worth their salt is FedExing DVDs. But the real point of this story is that The Industry Is Noticing That You Americans Are Copying DVDs. And they don't like it and they're powerful so they can impose futile, invasive, and draconian attempts at controlling you hoi polloi. And that's just what you get for possibly engaging in activities The Industry just doesn't like.

Re:Privacy?

[farble1670 (803356)]

look. if they find an dvd, no worries. if they find 1000 DVDs, they'll probably look into it. pretty easy to tell. consider the size and weight of the package.

seriously folks, get back to me when you find law enforcement spending millions of dollars to find and play every single DVD shipped through fedex, and get back to me when fedex accepts massive shipping delays and massive losses because of this. it ain't gonna happen.

but yeah, i enjoy a good paranoid fantasy as much as the next guy.

Re:It gets held up in customs

[Firehed (942385)]

Or even moreso if it's a homemade video of a certain "business" that you'd rather not show to the entire terminal.

Insanity

[reldruH (956292)]

Is it any wonder that of all the illegal products that can be shipped through the mail, the ones with the largest number of political lobbyists are getting special measures to ensure they're legitimate? This is really a case of money being used to influence politics. This is a huge invasion of privacy, and a nonsensical one at that. There's no way for these dogs to differentiate between legitimate and copied DVD's, and illegal DVD copies and legal DVD copies. Another case of the RIAA treating customers as the enemy. Makes me have no pity for them when they complain about being stolen from. Maybe if they gave their customers (you know, the people paying them) a little respect they might be able to get some sympathy and work with people to solve this problem. As it is, I think they're just contributing to it.

Re:Insanity

[twistedsymphony (956982)]

more so then their bullying of their actual customers is their crippling of the user experience. My favorites include:

-Buying a CD and finding the Security tag glued to the paper insert such that if I were to remove it it would ruin the picture
-Buying a DVD, popping it in and watching the mandatory "you wouldn't steal a car" anti-piracy add. You know the one that gets stripped out when they make pirate releases so the only person who sees it are the paying customers.
-Paying $30-$50 for a special edition DVD or box set and being forced to sit through 15minutes of advertisements before I can watch the film
-Paying $25 for an SACD because of it's "higher quality" and hearing a constant hum in the background caused intentionally by their anti-piracy measures (because people who rip MP3s really care about the higher bit-rate version of the disc, and doesn't intentionally ruining the quality defeat the purpose of a higher quality format? They wonder why more people aren' adopting it)

I can't wait to pay $600-$800 for an HD-DVD player, and $30 per disc only to have my resolution crippled because the HDTV I bought last year doesn't feature the latest Anti-Piracy tech... I can't wait for my Windows OS to do the same thing because I don't want to upgrade my expensive and recently bought hardware either.

When will they realize that pirates will get the content no matter what measures are in place. there are well documented ways to easily thwart everything I've mentioned above. In the end all it does is cripple the end user experience.

The MPAA and RIAA have plenty of numbers that show how much they think they're loosing to piracy but do they have any numbers that show these ridiculous measures actually helping?

Re:Insanity

[Sycraft-fu (314770)]

Just a note, if you are hearing a sound low enough in frequency that you'd liken it to a hum, I would guess it's probably not actually the SACD watermarking, but rather a fault in your system. A ground loop would be my first guess, as 60Hz power and it's harmonic are probably the most common hum you hear in any system.

I've listened to SACD on my system, and I couldn't hear any audible artifacts. Admittedly, it's not a stellar system, high end consumer geat only, but I think i'd probably notice a constant hum.

It'd be worth your while to do a check of your setup, and if you've a friend with an SACD player, swap your source. The problem may be something electrical you can clear up.

Re:Insanity

[Marsmensch (870400)]

There's no way for these dogs to differentiate between legitimate and copied DVD's, and illegal DVD copies and legal DVD copies.

Yes there is. If a dog finds a DVD (s)he watches it and checks the label to see if it's an original, before writing a report on the findings, and, if necessary, testifying in court.

sniffs pirate DVDs only

[kbob88 (951258)]

Apparently it's easy for the dogs to sniff out *only* the pirate DVDs because those are the ones that haven't washed in months and smell like salt-tack and grog.

Unfortunately they haven't figured out how to train the dogs to avoid catching their noses on the hooks when they open the package...

By what authority?

[by Anonymous Coward]

By what authority does the MPAA have to even do this? They are a PRESSURE GROUP, not government. They are NOT THE COPS, they are NOT federal agents.

Or is this just another example of the corporations saying "JUMP!" and the government saying "how high?"

The False Positive?

[CodeBuster (516420)]

I would be interested to know how the dog distinguishes between a DVD and any other mailed product which contains plastic wrapping. Perhaps they are operating on the assumption that plastic wrapping materials of the type used to shrink wrap DVDs are not common in other types of mail. One also wonders how much of a dent this will actually make in the amount counterfeit DVDs and movie piracy in general. It was my understanding that bootleggers generally sell on the street, at swap meets, and other spontaneous social gatherings where the counterfeit goods are priced as impulse purchases at 1-2 dollars apiece. The rest are probably file sharing downloads of DVD rips to divx and such so how many bootleg DVDs, not orders from Amazon.com or NetFlix, are actually making their way through the mail system? It is probably insignificant.

So...

[grasshoppa (657393)]

Who else suddenly has an urge to go buy a spindle of DVDs and slip a blank ( convienently labeled, "MI-III" ) with everything they ship?

Seriously, if you do a cost analysis, you'll find that the 10-20 bucks wasted on the spindle buys you the option to ship a real backup copy in the future.

And speaking of backups, isn't it still fair use to make backups?

Re: Blank? Why not 9.4GB of /dev/urandom? :)

[by Anonymous Coward]

> slip a blank ( convienently labeled, "MI-III" ) with everything they ship

Instead of sending a blank, why not just burn 9.4GB of /dev/urandom onto the disk. They'll probably end up spending over $10,000 per package by calling in the MPAA, the RIAA, the NSA, the CIA, and the DHS. After a few dozen false alarms, maybe they'll learn to stop invading customer privacy.

Spooky... er... Spot

[BrynM (217883)]

I found another article [go.com] from ABC News that is (slightly) more specific. In it, they mention that "Customs officials in the U.K. hope one day the dogs will only signal when there are large collections of discs, which would more likely include illegally copied movies." This made me feel better - they were looking for bulk shipments. But then my hopes were dashed: "Trainers say the dogs have been notifying customs agents of packages with discs in them. The packages have been opened but so far no pirated movies have been found."

Now wait a second. This is a test and they are opening real people's packages. WTF? (FTW?) I didn't know that shipping plastic optical media was a crime anywhere. Sure it's "customs" that's actually opening the packages, but the fact that it's plastic optical media is not probable cause. How many false positives have they had? Is it worth pissing off that many FedEx customers for the occasional actually pirated media (of which they've found zero)?

Re:Spooky... er... Spot

[Babbster (107076)]

If it goes through Customs, they can open & inspect it.

And, in a seldom-utilized provision of international law, they can then urinate on it.

During the this exercise...

[by Anonymous Coward]

Drugs, high-explosives, weapons, decaptitated heads, those bowling ball type bombs with the wicks sticking out, a map of Afghanistan with Osama's hidden location clearly marked with an X, Sadamm's WMD and a 1.44 floppy with future plans on blowing up the Capital Building all went through undetected.

Sniffing region codes

[Charles Dodgeson (248492)]

Now when they train the dogs to sniff things out based on region code, that will be news.

Who does fedex work for, customers or the MPAA?

[NMerriam (15122)]

This owuld pretty much stop my company from using FedEx for any shipments if they do this in the USA. We ship burned CDs/DVDs all the time, and I don't want the shipments delayed or damaged because they're constantly being pulled out and opened up for inspection.

Even assuming they have 100% identification of illegal DVD copies vs false positives once they open them up, they're still providing nothing useful to customers, with serious potential for loss or damage of customers' materials, solely for the benefit of a third party. If the MPAA wants to pay for my Fedex shipping, then we can talk, but if I'm paying for it, you can bet your ass I'll be making life miserable for fedex employees when my shipment is delayed or damaged because of this crap.

Contact Information

[jamesoutlaw (87295)]

The Press Release instructs you to contact the following people for more information. I invite anyone concerned about this to do so as soon as possible.

For further information:

Eddy Leviten, FACT Head of Communications: 020 8568 6646/ 07768 057464
[e-mail]

LA: Kori Bernards or Elizabeth Kaltman: [phone]
DC: John Feehery or Gayle Osterberg: [phone]

New product oppurtunity ;)

[rts008 (812749)]

After the initial WTF?!?!, the first thought that popped into my head was of an incident that occured in W. Germany, 1979 while I was stationed there (US Army).
We (us hash smokers) had a contact in the MP detatchment that would alert us when they were going to bring the dogs in the barracks for *surprise* drug sniffing ops. Usually we would just consume all substances before they got there. One time my team mate got an idea....
We used Johnson's Paste Wax (tm) on our barracks floors (as required) to keep it nice and shiny, the barracks used steam radiators for heat, which we would set the can of wax on to soften it for easier application. ..."what if we melt the wax, crumble up oh, say about 10 grams of hash into the melted wax, then heavily wax the floors?"

Well, overkill being one of my team's trademarks, it ended up we mixed 30 grams of some really good "bubblegum black" hash into the wax, used the whole can on the entryway floor, and buffed.

The MP's and two dogs showed up about half an hour later- the dogs went NUTS!
They both went running around in little circles howling and whining for about 30 seconds, then bolted for the door trying to exit the barracks, the MP's could not gain control and had to let them out of the building.

Several of the remaining MP's made a search, but could not find anything. :)

Later on our contact told us that whatever we did totally burnt out the two dogs- they were worthless as "sniffing" dogs after that and were put on patrol duty. We never did tell him what we had done. (I use the term contact because he was one of our suppliers- we got most of our hash from such MP's!)

Now, off to my lab to synth some "Pirated DVD Smell" to spray on ALL of my mail/packages! Muuhahhaahhaaahhaa ;)
 

Re:New product oppurtunity ;)

[pintomp3 (882811)]

you got rid of the dogs, but what about all the bums licking your floor?

No way this is happening.

[nsmike (920396)]

FedEx was glad to help out on the test, I'm sure, but there's no way FedEx is going to let these dogs sniff every package.

I worked at a FedEx sort facility as a package handler for a few months, and I'll tell you right now, those packages sit still for a total of 5 seconds once those trailers are opened. They go from the trailer to the belt, to the package handler, to the drivers, in the truck and out the door. No drivers are going to stand there and let a dog sniff out every package for a potential DVDs, especially if they have an appointment delivery to keep.

I can remember mornings when trailers were late in getting to the terminal by five minutes and those drivers were whining so much it wasn't even funny. Now, I suppose they could be sniffed at some other point, but any delay will smear FedEx's "The World on Time" image. They're not going to be willing to do that, nor any other shipping company.

Besides, if they do cooperate, just ship it through the mail, or UPS, or DHL.

Not that I condone in any way the illegal distribution of copied movies.

Not that I condone the invasion of privacy either.

It's just a lose-lose situation all around.

Re:OMG! Poniez!!!!1

[bladesjester (774793)]

CDs and DVDs do indeed have a distinct scent. I know this is going to sound weird, but take the cover off of your spindle of cdrs and sniff.

Re:OMG! Poniez!!!!1

[Entropy (6967)]

Right. So I did as you suggested. And I don't know whats weirder. That my DVD spindle _does_ have a scent. Or that it struck me as smelling like celery ..

Re:OMG! Poniez!!!!1

[Maxo-Texas (864189)]

aye... everything has a scent except iocane poison.

I'd stake my life on it.

Re:OMG! Poniez!!!!1

[Inigo Montoya (31674)]

It's true.. I have experience with this iocane poison...

Re:OMG! Poniez!!!!1

[jrmiller84 (927224)]

Yeah, they smell like waffles. Someone please back me up on this...

Re:OMG! Poniez!!!!1

[homer_ca (144738)]

The chemical dyes in recordable DVDs do have a scent, but pressed DVDs are just plastic and aluminum. This may put a damper on small to medium size pirate operations that record cams onto DVD-Rs and friends trading with each other for free, but it won't stop the professional pirates with DVD pressing plants. This also means the dogs will hit on any package with recordable DVDs: legit data, blank media and pirated movies. You can easily DDoS the system by shipping a blank DVD in every FedEx package.

from the MPAA press release:

They were amazingly successful at identifying packages containing DVDs, which were opened and checked by HM Customs' representatives. While all were legitimate shipments on the day, our message to anyone thinking about shipping counterfeit DVDs through the FedEx network is simple: you're going to get caught.

Re:OMG! Poniez!!!!1

[shawb (16347)]

While all were legitimate shipments on the day

Translation: physical piracy really doesn't happen much.

Re:OMG! Poniez!!!!1

[Reverend528 (585549)]

Well, fortunately, the MPAA can't actually train the dogs to recognise the scent of pirated DVDs without first posessing pirated DVDs. And if they had any pirated DVDs, they'd have to sue themselves for six billion dollars. Logically, these dogs can only recognise legitimate DVDs, so the MPAA just has to search every parcel that the dogs don't identify.

Re:OMG! Poniez!!!!1

[surprise_audit (575743)]

You can easily DDoS the system by shipping a blank DVD in every FedEx package.

It might even be possible to improve the liklihood of a 'hit' if you include a fragment of a DVD. I'm sure we've all burned our share of 'coasters' - save 'em up, snap each one into 3 or 4 pieces and drop a piece into each package. If the dogs are sniffing the chemicals in recordable DVDs, a broken one should smell *really* good...

Re:Wrong idea!

[mikael (484)]

Reminds me of that April Fools announcement "The film and music associations announced today they are going to merge. The new organisations will be known as the Music And Film Industry Association".

Re:Dogs sniffing data?

[geekoid (135745)]

Or an autostart function the checks if it is in a PC, and if it is, deletes everything.

Re:Dogs sniffing data?

[modecx (130548)]

Or better yet, the DVD installs the Sony rootkit! If that's not poetic justice, nothing is!

Re:Dogs sniffing data?

[LocoMan (744414)]

Was wondering something like that, considering that we ship CDs and DVDs very frequently from where I work... Anytime we make a video and we need materials from other city (like a client that wants a specific voice narrating their videos) we receive a lower quality version trough email (MP3 in my example above) and then a high quality version on CD or DVD depending on what material it is, and then we send the finished version of the video on DVD. (either as a final format, or as a preview version to be aproved before sending it in a more professional and expensive format). Most of the times we're very pressed for time and need the stuff to be here or there the very next day, tops... so any post service that did something like this, possibly causing a delay while they get sure the content is legal, would loose lots of business from us.

Re:Dogs sniffing data?

[utlemming (654269)]

Make sure that you and your clients put the words "CONTAINS CONFIDENTAL TRADE SECRETS," on both the DVD/CD and the box. Then put a seal on the case that would indicate tampering. If they tamper with it you can argue that they violated your trade secrets, which are protected by law, and then haul them into court.

Another tactic would be putting "UNRELEASED COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL," or for a combination, put both.

If you have illegal material, then it is your problem. But if the material actually contains legitimate material then you could have some serious fun in the courts.

Re:Now I can sleep better at night

[MobileTatsu-NJG (946591)]

"You know, to some degree, I do agree with you but I was being literal with the name of the organization, which is "Federation Against Copyright Theft"."

Reminds me of a comment somebody made here a few years ago:

"I downloaded an MP3 once, and Metallica was no longer able to perform that song!"

Re:FUD?

[Megane (129182)]

Just to be safe, I think I'll be slipping a blank DVD with something mean written on it with all future packages ...

I think it would be more effective to write the name of a recently released movie on the DVD. Then they have to waste their time looking at it.

Re:I honestly doubt this is legal in the US

[greg1104 (461138)]

I don't recall signing any contract with FedEx that says they can search my goods

Sigh. By handing your goods over to them, you agreed to exactly such a contract. See http://www.fedex.com/us/services/intl/ground.html [fedex.com] and follow the link for FedEx Ground Tariff. Buried deep in the Customs area is this:

"Inspection of Shipments. FedEx Ground, or its agents or brokers, may open and inspect any or all packages in a shipment at any time. This action may be initiated by FedEx Ground or at the request of government authorities."

It's put there so people think it only applies to stuff going through customs, but the description doesn't restrict it like that so anything goes. You can be sure there are similar statements in all the other shipping services. The fact that people believe they have government mandated privacy rights when handing things over to a commerical 3rd party amuses me. FedEx can do whatever the hell they want with your package, and the worst you can do to them is try to get back your declared value by following their claim procedure. You have no guarantee of privacy whatsoever when sending things through them.