The movie industry is cracking down on DVD bootleggers, but not with the kind of crime busters you might expect. While it's not uncommon for dogs to be trained to detect drugs or explosives, the Motion Picture Association of America has sponsored two dogs to take a bite out of the illegal DVDs.

Lucky and Flo recently helped bust three retail outlets in Queens, according to Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. The dogs, which are trained to find bootlegged discs based on chemical scents, helped uncover thousands of counterfeit DVDs during the raid, which led to three arrests. "Man's best friend has become a DVD counterfeiter's worst nightmare," the district attorney said in a statement.

  Earlier this year, the dogs helped investigators discover $6 million worth of illegal DVDs and disc-replicating equipment in Malaysia, where worried bootleggers reportedly offered a $29,000 bounty on the dogs.--Kevin Manahan

Trying to appeal to a younger, web-savvy audience, Playboy announced plans to launch Playboy U, a new social networking website along the lines of immensely popular MySpace and Facebook.

Playboy U includes the basic features of its competitors, such as the ability to write comments on other users' profiles and to post photos. But unique to Playboy U is the user base; the site is restricted to college students only, and Playboy U plans to monitor the site to ensure that school faculty, staff, parents and anyone else without a student e-mail address aren't able to access user profiles. Users can even find events and other information specific to their university while still accessing adult-themed message boards, photos and other content, although nudity is banned.

"It's a very lucrative market," said senior media analyst Michael Kelman of the Susquehanna Financial Group. "The college kids, they're going to be better-educated and have higher disposable incomes. [But] it's been a very, very tough audience to grab."

Playboy has been struggling with decreased profits in recent years and hopes Playboy U will give its company a much-needed boost. After posting a $47.6 million loss in 2000, Playboy has slowly recovered as a result of new ventures including a popular cable TV show and a satellite radio channel.--Kevin Manahan