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."

Dogs sniffing data?

[hakr89]

I wonder what would happen if I were to ship a burned DVD with Linux on it instead.

Privacy?

[Alcimedes]

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.

Wrong idea!

[Jerry Coffin]

Given that the MPAA has been sued under racketeering statutes, shouldn't we be training dogs to sniff out any MPAA (or RIAA) executives who travel? Clearly their traveling would be a strong indication of collusion with their fellow racketeers, otherwise known as conspiracy. Given the way my nose wrinkles at even thinking about them, I'd think it would be easy to train some dogs to recognize their stench.

Of course, if the dogs were trained to attack when they found this particular illegal substance...

Insanity

[reldruH]

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:Dogs sniffing data?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better - ship a dvd with "very valuable" data - say the roster for your breakfast book club, write an appropriate label (eg "breakfast club") and wait for them to destroy it! (and the $$ to roll in when you sue for destruction of your personal data)

awesome!

By what authority?

[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]

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.

Spooky... er... Spot

[BrynM]

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)?

Home movies

[michaelmalak]

What if you're FedEx'ing a home movie of your child's birth (including states of undress of the mother) to your mother-in-law who couldn't be there? Would the FedEx personnel be gawking at that?

It's analogous to the P2P crackdowns where the assumption is that consumers are incapable of authoring content and only Big Media can.

And, yes, I'm a bit surprised and quite alarmed that the tampering laws that apply to U.S. mail do not apply to FedEx.

Re:FUD?

[afaik_ianal]

I doubt FedEx is going to let them open some little envelope from you to your grand-mother. I doubt MPAA is going to effort or cost of training dogs to catch you sending a pirated movie to her, either.

FTFA: "These DVDs are often smuggled by criminal networks involved in large scale piracy operations from around the world."

If there's some big shipment labelled as "computer monitors", and the dogs pick up a scent, they're probably going to want to know if it really is monitors, or thousands of pirated DVDs.

Change of Media?

[monopole]

Do I smell a transition to DivX/XviD based CDs. Or just a lot of flash media which happens to have DivX/XviD content encoded on a one time pad?

Seriously, if they make possesion of a DVD tantamount to piracy, force people to show all of their DVDs including the naughty ones, they will simply force a transition to other less controllable physical media. Couple that with the nascent clusterfsck which HD-DVD and BluRay is becoming and you have a total loss of control over media and distribution which is the ony justification for the MPAA!

Re:By what authority?

[Anonymous Coward]

FedEx is private company. When you send a package through them you have NO RIGHTS beyond what you have agreed to in your contract with them. They can open your package for any reason or no reason. All you can do about it is not ship through FedEx.

I honestly doubt this is legal in the US

[Jerf]

As the title says, I honestly doubt this is legal in the US. The mere existance of a DVD doesn't constitute probable cause.

I don't recall signing any contract with FedEx that says they can search my goods, but even if I did the Constitution trumps that. I haven't got a problem with them opening it for technical reasons (repacking a mangled package, perhaps, which I'd accept gladly), but opening them for the purposes of determing if you've broken some law probably won't pass 4th Amendment [findlaw.com] muster.

As a positive example, while I'm not a fan of the drug war, a trained drug dog identifying a package as containing an illegal drug would probably be probable cause, because whatever small quantity of legal cocaine in the country (for research), if any, is unlikely to be sent through FedEx. But the mere existance of a DVD is nowhere near probable cause by any reasonable standard; I can't imagine that anything but the vast majority of optical media going through Fedex is perfectly legal.

However, my guess is the MPAA knows this, and this is a publicity stunt only.

(Finally, I'm not a dog, but I wouldn't be surprised they're not smelling DVDs so much as the packaging they usually come in, which has that New Plastic smell so strongly a human might be able to do this. If so, this is almost funny, because they'll never come up with the illegal DVDs that way. It'd depend on the training, and we don't have enough data to be sure either way.)

No way this is happening.

[nsmike]

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:So...

[Joe Tie.]

The urge, yes. But the history of the war on drugs has shown the legal system to not find those kind of pranks as funny as we do.

Re:Spooky... er... Spot

[batkiwi]

Probable cause and customs have nothing to do with eachother, and have never. Bags of anyone passing through customs can be searched without any reason at all. Typically if you declare nothing, they xray your bags, and if you declare something, they take a glance through to make sure you've not conveniently forgotten something.

I guess you've never traveled internationally? You basically have no rights (and this isn't a "bush change," it's always been like this) while you're between countries, which is legally where the customs checkpoint is.

Re:Now I can sleep better at night

[rolfwind]

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".

Snort - FACT - yeah. Anyway, if you look up "Copyright Theft" on google (with quotes), it has very few hits (1500). I'm just remarking that it's an odd and ironic term, as no actual "copyrights" are being stolen.

Actual "copyright theft" is what you can argue the RIAA does against some unsuspecting artists (with their contracts in a way) or what faceless unscrupulous organizations do to others:

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=14 495&Page=1&pagePos=2 [macworld.co.uk]

That's why when people copy, share, pirate - I prefer copyright infringement - it's more technical and says exactly what one did, not a confused term like "copyright theft." Unless you are telling me that someone stole sony's copyrights and are now legally licensing the content in their own name?

Re:Insanity

[twistedsymphony]

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

[JourneyExpertApe]

I think the most effective strategy would be to burn actual movies whose copyright has expired from archive.org and labeling them something like btlegmovrip3241.avi. Imagine how much fun they would have trying to determine the copyright status of all these movies.

Re:and DRM 'em while yer at it...

[muridae]

That would be very interesting, putting a backdoor trojan on a dvd and adding an autorun.inf. Reminds me of a post someone made about the CEH 312-50 study disc on a pirate website.

Then again, would shipping a DVD loaded with trojans and backdoor programs count as transporting a weapon of mass (data) destruction?

Re:Spooky... er... Spot

[Killshot]

When I ship any package to another country or recieve a package from another country. I fully expect that customs will open and inspect the contents.

They usually don't but the expectation is there.

Now if this was being done to domestic shipments then I would be more concerned.

Overall, it is still a waste of resources that could be put elsewhere.. especially since the pirate dvd problem is bigger in Asia.

Re:Privacy?

[melvin xavier]

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.

Let me get this straight...

[krunk4ever]

They're planning on opening fedex packages up which they believe to contain DVDs without any other reason to suspect that illegal copies of a DVD is being mailed? I feel that's kind of wrong, for someone to go through my mail or packages just because I ordered some DVDs online (maybe even foreign DVDs I can't get in the states).

Doesn't the law require them to actually have a high probability of some offence before they're allowed to open packages to check its contents.

Smell Test

[Doc Ruby]

"Seriously, this is like training drug dogs to find plastic bags."

Excellent analogy that punches through the clouds that the "Terror War" have cast on our sense of personal violation by the state.

Corporate globalism, with no basis in justice or recognition of any rights beyond corporate property, means everyone is guilty until proven not liable by a corporate lawyer. Accusation = proof, just like medieval faith governments.

Re:Who does fedex work for, customers or the MPAA?

[JourneyExpertApe]

On the one hand, you're saying that shippers always comply with the law w.r.t. inspecting packages. On the other hand, you're saying that they can legally inspect any package they choose for any reason. That second point would seem to make the first moot. Anyway, it wasn't USPS or DHL or UPS that participated in this "test"; it was FedEx. FedEx's customers have to wonder why FedEx would be so eager to aid in these fanatical (and potentially very intrusive) inspections.

X-Ray

[GumphMaster]

Surely a bulk shipment of DVD/CD media will show up on X-ray machinery already in use? The X-ray machine doesn't need food or shelter, won't crap on the floor, and you already have trained operators. What have they gained here?

dirty little secret about pig dogs

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

They do stuff like that all the time.

Anyway, I don't have a big problem with them finding legitimate counterfeit disks, indications of mass piracy for profit. There's an easier solution, a few nations specialise in that trade, the authorities know who they are. Stop trade with them, cut it off.

  The US and UK have borked their manufacturing base so much now through "globalism and wonderful 'free' trade" that they can't do that very effectively.

The movie industry could cut "piracy" off overnight, they choose not to. Retail sell disks for a few dollars, which they could do. They would rather bitch, get new laws, and insist on a hugely jacked up artificial price that in no way reflects costs and a reasonable profit margin. They still want as much for a new release on disk as they charged for a new release on tape 10-15 years ago. I mean, c'mon now, it is MUCH cheaper to duplicate movies now, and the transportation/warehouse, etc costs are much lower, and cost of movie production has only gone up a little, nothing like what these prices represent compared to their past cost of actual physical production.

In short, they have brainwashed themselves into believing their own bullshit. They honestly believe that 20 or 25 bucks for a quarter disk is a deal to the drooling masses. At three bucks they would sell BILLIONS of freaking disks. 3$ is an impulse item charge, people would be grabbing handfuls of them, not even bothering with most file trading or looking up "CD Leroy" at the flea market.

People are just not that stupid or naieve about costs anymore, not when EVERYONE knows how cheap it is to make dupes. Cost of movie production today-not a lot different from ten years ago. It has gone up some, but not that much. They refuse to drop prices on their offerings though, flat out refuse. All they want is lock on advanced tech for themselves, they want you to keep paying like it's 1990 or something. THAT is what wrong with their current business model and why piracy and file sharing is so common now. People have little moral qualms over shafting the mafia if it looks like they can get away with it, and that's all the **AAs are, mafia goons masquerading as businessmen. The **AAs-the companies they represent-screw the talent, screw the customer, and screw each other, it is one of the most shameless corrupt and bogus industries out there.

It's a cartel,and if that NY prosecutor always in the news wants to investigate price fixing,collusion, etc, he could start there with the DVD movie selling industry.

Someone needs to smack the Hollywood dweebs with the reality cluestick and introduce them to the concept of "volume sales" and how "net" is more important than 'gross" and how "serve your customer" is a better idea than "gouge-shaft-screw and prosecute" your customer.

They are so used to being in a scumbag industry and dealing with fellow scumbags and being around scumbags all day long they just ass-ume everyone is like that. And they wonder why people have so little respect for them or could give a care about their profits now.

Re:This is a TheOnion article, right?

[pyrote]

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.

Re:OMG! Poniez!!!!1

[homer_ca]

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.

labels aren't digital rights management

[SuperBanana]

"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.

A label isn't "digital rights management"...

Re:labels aren't digital rights management

[Loconut1389]

Perhaps if the label contained a 30 digit hex unlock code that is the encryption key for the disc. The fedex folks in a hurry wouldn't write down that number and cut right through it- which would of course be on that metal film that disintegrates easily and would thus be unreadable after the fact.

Are DVDs detectable on X-Ray?

[gameforge]

You know those X-Ray things that your laptop has to go through at airport security?

Have you ever seen a CD/DVD in the microwave? I realize it's a different energy... but I'll bet that a case of 1000s of DVDs is going to look suspcious enough on X-Ray to give them a perfectly legit reason to open the case; that is, if they can't immediately tell that they're DVDs.

Sorry, I don't know any facts here... they do use X-Ray on international FedEx packages, don't they? Wouldn't a DVD show up on it?

To be perfectly honest, I've never heard of these giant pirating rings in the US. That doesn't mean they're not there, but... it seems like the MPAA is trying to get the public to associate pirating with the same subcutlure as drugs. Everyone's nailed the coffin shut on the practicality with this. Why else would they resort to being so eccentric? Desperate, even.

And think of the poor dogs! Instead of enjoying the good life being someone's pet, or saving peoples' lives, or being attack hounds, they catch... movie bootleggers. What a life! Hehe.

Re:OMG! Poniez!!!!1

[shawb]

While all were legitimate shipments on the day

Translation: physical piracy really doesn't happen much.

Re:Insanity

[Sycraft-fu]

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:dirty little secret about pig dogs

[ClamIAm]

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.

Re:labels aren't digital rights management

[ClamIAm]

Yeah, but most DRM schemes amount to about as much...

Re:Privacy?

[farble1670]

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.

How can this even be legal?

[Nonillion]

How can this even be legal? What bone head brainless piece of shit at FedEx allowed the MPAA to do this? If I ship a DVD to some one I expect it to only be opened by one person, the recipient. This would be like the RIAA going to the post office and opening everyones mail looking for lyrics. Un fucking believable! Well, the MPAA has pushed me into buying even FEWER DVDs this year.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think it is legal to attempt to interfere with and impede the operations of the US Customs?

Clearly you've missed a step in your logic - the step which assumes it is somehow illegal to ship a DVD full of random and meaningless data. There should be no problem with this.

If doing such a harmless and legal thing would somehow "interfere with" the US Customs, then the US Customs should put themselves onto the right side of the law. If there is any problem, it is a problem on the part of Customs.

The thing with "rights" is that if you don't use them, you lose them.

Why?

[Jugalator]

Why do so few question how MPAA can have these legal powers to train dogs to find DVD discs and get them to open them to check if they were pirated? When there's apparently no good legal ground for it (the DVD's were all legal). How much of a police *are* these guys anyway?

In USA, can anyone basically gain police powers if there's a suspicion for crime? Wait, scratch that. Can anyone basically gain police powers when ther's NO suspicion for crime?

MPAA isn't even a government body. It seems to surely be an organization that unifies the government, police, and media industry though. I just wonder how the heck they do it and have so few complain. This is obviously not just a concern for the pirates, but for anyone who wonders what a basic organization can and can not do even without suspicions of crime.

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

[flonker]

You can say you're shipping a one time pad for future communications.

Re:OMG! Poniez!!!!1

[Crayon Kid]

While all were legitimate shipments on the day

Translation: physical piracy really doesn't happen much.

Mod parent up. He hit the nail right on. MPAA picked a random day at FedEX, picked a bunch of packages with DVD's and found nothing.

I'd have kept my mouth shut in their place until I found something. Would've made much better propaganda. This way it just sounds idiotic. "We have this new great way of detecting recordable DVD's in shipping. It turns out it's useless, but we have it." ...unless it's just a form of power-play. "See, you peons, we can stick our noses in your luggage and shipments just like the FBI can. We're all-powerful. Bow to us."

Hmmm....what next....

[PCeye]

There's been great concern and priority put to training dogs to sniff out drugs, bombs, weapons and illegal immigrants. I've heard CNN doom and gloom reports over the years concerning efficiency of the above activities being detected. In light of such "concerns" that would threaten a shipping network, FedEx train dogs to detect DVD's.

The "press release" pointed out the DVD's found were all in legal packaging. Message is clear alright, FedEx could have invested in x-ray equipment instead. So FedEx are going to tear apart every package sniffed out to contain DVD's and hold up these shipments to figure out which are MPAA approved? Must have taken many snausages to get Flo & Lucky to additionally detect region codes.

Next, I wonder how long it would take and how much money FedEx can additionally waste to train Flo and Lucky to sniff out counterfeit Rolex watches?

Re:and DRM 'em while yer at it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Put a tiny label somewhere on the CD saying "Malware and virus samples for antivirus research purposes" in a 1.5 point font, virtually hidden by the big 16-point one with "Lesbian Schoolgirls" on it. Then it becomes their fault for putting it into the drive, because as any lawyer will tell you, you should always read the small print.

Re:OMG! Poniez!!!!1

[Zemran]

I am one of those evil English teachers in Asia that my grandparent talks of :) I prefer to buy the legit disks as the cheap copies are unwatchable. A legal copy of a film will cost 5 pounds which is a lot cheaper than back home and a copy will cost a fifth of that but as I will not enjoy watching it there is no real saving. As for the grandparents comment about arrest, if I send a legal copy to someone they get arrested??? Who would you like to get rid of next?

Write to Fedex

[Benzido]

I suggest everyone does as I did, and writes to Fedex via the website to protest.

If they are in fact allowing a private commercial interest to open up the packages of unconsenting customers, they deserve a full boycott.

There are other good alternatives to Fedex.

Re:Insanity

[16K Ram Pack]

The "you wouldn't steal a car" thing makes me really mad. I've rented/bought the film, idiots. You don't need to tell me.

How about something at the start with the cast and crew saying "Thank you for paying for this film. We appreciate it". Real customers feel better, and those who ripped it might feel some guilt if they see it.

Musings

[Stanislav_J]

When I saw the headline, I thought sure this HAD to be a hose. Is it any wonder April 1st isn't as big a deal as it used to be -- what with reality becoming more and more absurd, satire just can't compete any more.

I wonder, do the dogs give a stronger reaction to movies like Gigli, Waterworld, or The Postman? Hell, you don't need dogs -- I could smell those stinkers a mile away.

Just goes to show to how great a degree private industry and big corporations have this administration in their back pocket. I mean, think of the cost and expense of training these dogs, the man-hours involved, the delay of legitimate shipments, the questionable nature of the searches, and all at the behest of a PRIVATE industry trade group. It boggles the mind.

All the more imperative that the master geeks get cracking on that Star Trek Transporter techonology, so you can beam your contraband directly to the recipient.

Re:OMG! Poniez!!!!1

[The Evil Couch]

I do not think those jokes mean what you think they mean.

well, the dog and the throwaway gun things

[alizard]

seem reasonable enough. I've seen references to the throwaway gun for years and years, and with respect to the dogs, all one has to know is that any system that can be easily abused WILL be abused.

With respect to DVD pricing and piracy... if you can find a double-sided DVD-R at a reasonable price, I'd like to know where, the pricing I've seen is in the >$5 range. It's either that or pick and choose tracks using DVD-shrink... while the disk may be 25 cents, my time is worth something.

While you may not like DVD pricing, DVD piracy is NOT a serious problem in the USA because DVD movies, unlike music CDs just aren't all that expensive if you don't insist on movies newly released on DVD.

The hysteria about piracy is mainly so the movie industry can plug all Internet distribution channels they don't control, in order to freeze independents out.

They know as well as we do that we're only a few years away from making movies technically equivalent to current Hollywood product (NO, I DON'T MEAN LOTR, that's another few years) on conventional desktop PCs.

It's about control. They want to be able to say to people who want to sell movies to the public "Do it our way or not at all."

Any resemblance between this and the record industry, of course, is purely coincidental.

Re:dirty little secret about pig dogs

[john83]

...At three bucks they would sell BILLIONS of freaking disks. 3$ is an impulse item charge, people would be grabbing handfuls of them, not even bothering with most file trading or looking up "CD Leroy" at the flea market.

People are just not that stupid or naieve about costs anymore, not when EVERYONE knows how cheap it is to make dupes...

They wouldn't sell billions. In fact, I doubt they'd increase sales enough to even come close to making what they do now. That would be okay though for most movies, but it's hard to convince people that cutting their profit margin is sensible (even if it'll help revitalise the industry). The blockbusters, the ones they spend more than $100,000,000 on making, they'd find it tougher to pay for those. Still, if it was $3 for a decent small film, and $10 for Tom Cruise's latest heap of shit, they'd probably start recognising that there's value in making a good small-budget movie. I wish I could see it happening.

Re:dirty little secret about pig dogs

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact: Sniffer dogs can't work 8 hour days, figure two hours per dog max. To them, sniffing is a game, and they get bored, well, it the game gets boring, performance drops.
They may smell a type of plastic, but they sure dont know whats on on it.

Go figure how they will react to magazine giveaways, or a Sunday newspaper insert.

There is nothing in it for shareholders - dogs are an expense, that don't add to the bottom line, unless to satisfy token regulative requirements. So the article is blustering. Plus overworked dogs will fake 'hits' to get a reward. Yes, the dogs are as intelligent as the gorillas on the x-ray machines - all show and NNNN for brains.

uhh... no

[Ender Ryan]

Where'd you get this? Why would an illegally owned firearm necessarily have been given so much attention? The "perp" could have picked it up just recently, all the prints could be nothing but smudges, etc. Any firearm, for that matter.

Besides, if no prints are found on the ammo, or on the rest of the gun, then... Then someone was careful about getting prints on their illegal firearm, that doesn't at all indicate the officer did it.

Re:"Throw-down" guns

[Scrameustache]

I do know this one to be utter BS, at least where there is at least one honest forensic investigator.

That's a big "if".

I'm not saying there are none, but some aren't honest. Too many, in fact. Try not to forget that.

Re:"Throw-down" guns

[Maximum Prophet]

Most places don't have forensic investigators. I was just reading about how many juries are throwing cases because the police didn't use all the latest stuff as seen on CSI and Law & Order. The prosecuter in the interview seemed to think this was a bad thing. If I were on a jury, I'd want as much information as possible.

Many people are convicted on eyewitness testimony alone. If that eyewitness is a cop, well... Most small towns in American might as well have the judge, jury and executioner be the same person, because they think alike anyway.

Re:Probable Cause?

[shystershep]

You handed your package off to a third-party: you don't have any privacy right in it. Especially when you consider that (in the fine print) you expressly gave FedEx, UPS, etc., permission to open that package. The only things you have any privacy right in are those that you keep under your control. Once you put those things out where the public can get to them, or even worse, give control of it to a third-party, you might as well take a out full-page ad in the NY Times for all the good it's going to do you to gripe about someone looking in your package.

The problem isn't that these companies are 'trampling' over anyone's privacy rights. The problem is that most people have no idea what their rights really are, and just assume that anything they don't like violates those rights.

Re:This is a TheOnion article, right?

[IAmTheDave]

And can they search these packages without any sort of warrent or anything?

And here is the real question. At what point in time did FedEx get the OK to open my mail? Is my mail shipping something that can only be illegal? Last time I checked, shipping cocaine is ALWAYS illegal. But shipping DVDs - does this mean that every time I send a DVD as a birthday gift, FedEx suddenly has MPAA (new name for the US government) permission to open my package?

If there was a line at rediculous with this **AA shit, this just blew the line away in it's dust.

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

[Wolfger]

Imagine how much fun they would have trying to determine the copyright status of all these movies.

I'm trying to imagine that, but I just can't. Instead, I keep imagining that they will waste my time and money right along with their own by filing a lawsuit against me. Even a groundless lawsuit can be expensive to the defendant, and the MPAA has more than enough money and lawyers to just sue everybody in sight, and see what pans out. You know... the RIAA business model!

Re:This is a TheOnion article, right?

[cc_pirate]

Please tell me how we can "win" a war against an undeclared and unidentified enemy? How do you define an "end" to such a "war". Answer: You can't.

Face it, the "War on Terror" will NEVER end, just like the "War on Drugs". It is the perfect political tool. Do whatever you want and justify it based on the "war". And since the "war" never ends, you can do this forever.