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Sniffer dogs are the latest weapon Hollywood is using in its war against movie piracy, with British authorities deploying Labrador Retrievers to sniff out counterfeit DVDs, industry officials said.

A black labrador
© AFP/File Patrick Bernard

Just days after a leaked report revealed the industry lost 6.1 billion dollars to piracy last year, Hollywood's main trade group said that the two black labs have been trained by British customs to track down hidden DVDs.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) said the dogs, named Lucky and Flo, had been put to work at courier service Federal Express's British hub at Stansted Airport, near London.

"This is the first time dogs have been used anywhere in the world to search for counterfeit DVDs and the results were amazing," said Raymond Leinster Director General of the Federation Against Copyright Theft, which has partnered with FedEx and British customs to fight movie piracy.

The dogs were trained over an eight-month period to identify DVDs that may be located in boxes, envelopes or other packaging, as well as discs concealed among other goods.

DVDs are often smuggled by criminal networks involved in large-scale piracy operations from around the world, the organisations said in a statement released by the MPAA in Los Angeles.

"With the cooperation and assistance of FedEx and Customs we were able to properly test the dogs in a real-life situation and prove that they can work in a busy airport environment," Leinster said.

The use of dogs comes at the height of a war Hollywood is waging on piracy across the globe.

A report commissioned by the MPAA two years ago revealed last week that piracy cost Hollywood's big studios more than six billion dollars last year, far more than the 3.5 billion dollars annually that the industry had previously conceded.

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