Quotes of the Day

On their recent trip to Malaysia, Lucky and Flo did what many visitors to Malaysia do. The Southeast Asian nation is one of the global centers for pirated DVDs, and tourists often load up on illegal copies of Hollywood blockbusters that are available for a tenth of what they cost in the West. Lucky and Flo, too, nosed their way to back-street shops that hawk bootleg films. But unlike the average Western tourist, this American duo was there to bust, not buy. The pair of black Labradors, who arrived in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur in March, are the first dogs specifically trained to sniff out DVDs and, thus, lead investigators to any hidden caches of pirated material.

Lucky and Flo did not disappoint. During their five-month mission in Malaysia, their detective work helped unearth $6 million in pirated DVDs and led to the arrests of 26 people. One bust targeted a bootleg-DVD factory near Kuala Lumpur that Malaysian officials estimate could have produced 60,000 copies a day.

Shortly before the canine crime fighters headed to their next assignment in the U.S., they received an outstanding-service award from grateful Malaysian officials. Sadly, no big boxes of Scooby Snacks were handed out, but Flo and Lucky did receive nifty medals that complemented their lustrous coats. Their efforts were so effective that the Motion Picture Association (MPA), which had the Labradors trained to identify certain chemicals present on optical discs, reported that Malaysian bootleggers had placed a $28,000 bounty on the dogs' heads. Luckily the hounds escaped any would-be assassins.

Malaysia is hardly unique in Asia for the ubiquity of pirated DVDs. The U.S.-based MPA estimated that in 2005 its six member studios lost $1.2 billion to Asian movie pirates. In Shanghai, where I used to live, a popular shop called Movie World started up in March offering thousands of bootleg DVDs to a mainly foreign clientele. But competition is fierce in China. The next week another store opened for business across the street. Its English name? Even Better Than Movie World.

While China is the king of flouting copyright protection, Malaysia still consistently features on the U.S. government's piracy watch list. Local officials report that 2,000 raids were carried out last year across Malaysia, netting 5 million counterfeit DVDs. Lucky and Flo's effort will likely boost this year's bootleg count. But walking around Kuala Lumpur during the dogs' visit, I saw little evidence that video pirates were running scared. Vendors openly hawked copies of recent Hollywood hits along with popular films from India's film industry, Bollywood. Many of the covers featured misspellings — Judd Apatow's Knicked Up, anyone? — but at $3 each, it's still a buyer's market.

Indeed, despite Lucky and Flo's admirable efforts, there's only so much a single pair of pups can do. "To really investigate every nook and cranny of K.L., you'd need a whole kennel of these dogs," says Allan Miller, head of AJ Miller Consulting, a professional corporate investigator based in the Malaysian capital who spends one-third of his time on intellectual-property issues. "To say that [Lucky and Flo] really made a huge difference borders on the ludicrous. It's more publicity hype than anything else." Miller notes that police crackdowns come and go, but pirated DVD shops usually ride out the brief business hiatuses just fine.

Malaysian officials have contacted Lucky and Flo's Northern Irish trainer to inquire about teaching local dogs the same tricks. In the meantime, the two Labs head to Toronto this month to grace the city's annual film festival with their presence. Perhaps there's a movie deal in the works — a spunky thriller about a pair of dogs who take a bite out of crime. Of course, if such a film ever were to be released, Flo and Lucky might have to track down pirated copies of their own life stories. Talk about chasing one's own tale.

• Hannah Beech