It seems some people can't wait for the theater release of Spider-Man 3. It hasn't even premiered in America yet and it's already available on the black market! But Hollywood and law enforcement agencies are really cracking down on the movie piracy business.
Pirated movies are not a huge problem in America, at least not to the extent they are abroad. Spider-Man 3, expected to be one of the big summer blockbusters here, is only one of many theater-only releases buyers can find in countries like China, Malaysia, Russia, and Thailand (just to name some of the really bad ones) for as little as $1.00! Even at that rock-bottom price, the movie bootlegging business is booming; professionals estimate it to bring in nearly $500 million a year.
It's costing Hollywood much more - to the tune of something like $6.5 billion in 2005 alone! So they've hired two new cops to sniff out the pirated copies - literally. It's called Operation: Double Trouble.
Two dogs - Flo and Lucky - have been trained to sniff for the scent of specific chemicals used in the manufacturing of the discs. The dogs can't tell between a bootleg copy or an original, but their human counterparts can. In fact, the dogs have been so successful that pirates in Beijing actually put a price on their heads!
Luckily, the dogs are on their way out of that country and into yet another DVD piracy hot spot.
- culled from an airing of NBC Nightly News, all figures and facts came from that source.
Pirated movies are not a huge problem in America, at least not to the extent they are abroad. Spider-Man 3, expected to be one of the big summer blockbusters here, is only one of many theater-only releases buyers can find in countries like China, Malaysia, Russia, and Thailand (just to name some of the really bad ones) for as little as $1.00! Even at that rock-bottom price, the movie bootlegging business is booming; professionals estimate it to bring in nearly $500 million a year.
It's costing Hollywood much more - to the tune of something like $6.5 billion in 2005 alone! So they've hired two new cops to sniff out the pirated copies - literally. It's called Operation: Double Trouble.
Two dogs - Flo and Lucky - have been trained to sniff for the scent of specific chemicals used in the manufacturing of the discs. The dogs can't tell between a bootleg copy or an original, but their human counterparts can. In fact, the dogs have been so successful that pirates in Beijing actually put a price on their heads!
Luckily, the dogs are on their way out of that country and into yet another DVD piracy hot spot.
- culled from an airing of NBC Nightly News, all figures and facts came from that source.
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