Lucky and Flo were a pair of black

Labrador Retrievers The Labrador Retriever or simply Labrador or Lab is a British list of dog breeds, breed of water dog retriever gun dog. It was developed in the United Kingdom from St. John's water dogs imported from the Newfoundland Colony, colony of Newfoun ...

trained by Dr. Neil Powell, notable for being the first animals trained to detect

optical disc An optical disc is a flat, usuallyNon-circular optical discs exist for fashion purposes; see shaped compact disc. disc-shaped object that stores information in the form of physical variations on its surface that can be read with the aid o ...

s by scent. In 2006 they were sponsored by the

Motion Picture Association of America The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the Major film studios, five major film studios of the Cinema of the United States, United States, the Major film studios#Mini-majors, mini-major Amazon MGM Stud ...

(MPAA) and Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) as part of an initiative to combat

copyright infringement Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of Copyright#Scope, works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the c ...

of film

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) 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 ki ...

s. The dogs' abilities were first demonstrated in May 2006 at the

FedEx FedEx Corporation, originally known as Federal Express Corporation, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate holding company specializing in Package delivery, transportation, e-commerce, and ...

shipping hub at

London Stansted Airport Stansted Airport is an international airport serving London, the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It is located near Stansted Mountfitchet, Uttlesford, Essex, northeast of Central London. As London's Airports of London, third-bu ...

, though inspectors found all the discs the dogs detected that day to be legitimate. Another demonstration was held at the MPAA's

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

office on September 26, 2006. In March 2007 the two dogs were sent to

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

to help sniff out DVDs. After a raid on a bootleg DVD ring in

Johor Bahru Johor Bahru, abbreviated as JB, is the capital city of the Malaysian state of Johor. It is the core city of Johor Bahru District, Malaysia's second-largest district by population and the second-largest district economy. Covering an area of ...

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. Although the dogs worked to detect

counterfeit A counterfeit is a fake or unauthorized replica of a genuine product, such as money, documents, designer items, or other valuable goods. Counterfeiting generally involves creating an imitation of a genuine item that closely resembles the original ...

DVDs, they had no ability to distinguish such counterfeits from other

polycarbonate Polycarbonates (PC) are a group of thermoplastic polymers containing carbonate ester, carbonate groups in their chemical structures. Polycarbonates used in engineering are strong, toughness, tough materials, and some grades are optically transp ...

optical discs. In March 2008 the MPAA, along with children's magazine the ''

Weekly Reader ''Weekly Reader'' was a weekly educational classroom magazine designed for children. It began in 1928 as ''My Weekly Reader''. Editions covered curriculum themes in the younger grade levels and news-based, current events and curriculum themed- ...

'', released a

curriculum In education, a curriculum (; : curriculums or curricula ) is the totality of student experiences that occur in an educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experi ...

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 Daniel Robert Glickman (born November 24, 1944) 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 represen ...

. Glickman lavished praise on the canines, saying that the dogs were "some of the greatest employees we have here at the MPAA".

References

Copyright enforcement Motion Picture Association Individual dogs in the United States Detection dogs Dog duos Labrador Retriever {{law-enforcement-stub

See also

References