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Or there's another reason not to use a better tracking system: HBO is ok with leaks. The more the show gets leaked, the larger the audience. Some portion of that audience will pay for HBO, and hopefully stick around for the other HBO shows. HBO has been remarkably progressive on the piracy front. It's also only the first four episodes: enough to get you hooked enough to want to see the end. Of course, torrents are al…
Was talking to my partner about this and she had a pretty clever take: "Seems like a simple idea would simply be to change just the spelling of one seemingly insignificant name near the end of each version of the credits and then by actually watching the credits you'd know the leaker straight away." "Of course, you'd leave the watermark on there so the leaker doesn't know how you caught them and thinks that the water…
That's a mountweazel (better known as a fictitious entry) - reference books used to do it to trap people copying the text: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry
Or there's another reason not to use a better tracking system: HBO is ok with leaks. The more the show gets leaked, the larger the audience. Some portion of that audience will pay for HBO, and hopefully stick around for the other HBO shows. HBO has been remarkably progressive on the piracy front. It's also only the first four episodes: enough to get you hooked enough to want to see the end. Of course, torrents are al…
I'm not suggesting that's not accurate, but I'd love to better understand your sources for that, as my single point of anecdotal evidence suggests otherwise.
About six or seven years ago we torrented a single episode of an HBO series (I forget which—we were cable-cutters and it wasn't available to rent online at the time) and while we knew it was wrong, it was convenient and it worked.
However, we were surprised when, two days later, I received an email from Comcast saying HBO had reported that our IP address had pirated copyrighted material, and that if we did it again our service would be shut off and we'd possibly face civil charges. That actually shocked me into avoiding bittorrent altogether, which was undoubtedly their goal.
Empty threats or not, I hardly walked away feeling that HBO was "remarkably progressive on the piracy front".
Maybe things have changed?
(Note, I'm not actually pro-piracy, since I do think that copyright holders deserve a right to monetize their work as they see fit, within bounds. I just wish more of them had a more sophisticated view on how to make their content more broadly and conveniently available.)
...or just use steganography. Steganography in videos can be made to be invisible to the naked eye, and extremely robust - even to video compression. It's also difficult to detect, and even more difficult to remove/tamper with. What the author of the article is proposing is actually a kind of steganography, albeit a rather crude one, and probably rather difficult to implement (since scene timings will be different fo…
Of course we have no idea if they used steganography or not, right? He bases the article on the idea that they have no tracking info except the watermark, but I don't see any evidence that they don't know more.
Was talking to my partner about this and she had a pretty clever take: "Seems like a simple idea would simply be to change just the spelling of one seemingly insignificant name near the end of each version of the credits and then by actually watching the credits you'd know the leaker straight away." "Of course, you'd leave the watermark on there so the leaker doesn't know how you caught them and thinks that the water…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Binging makes the pacing of slow shows way more tolerable.
Yes, I was wondering why they sent 4 episodes for review. Then I watched the first episode and I saw why...nothing is going to happen until the 4th episode. They've been teasing us with white walkers since season 1. And those dragons too...they were born in season 1 or 2 and they've hardly killed anyone yet. I guess I'm a sucker for the never-ending suspense...best show on tv.
As a result you've got to focus a little bit on each person and in a 55 minute show that means 5-10 minutes per story arc per episode. This only gets worse as more characters become important. It's somewhat balanced by other characters being killed off, mind!
Anyone else here think HBO's missing out on a business opportunity? I wonder why they don't charge rabid fans (a _lot_) extra for early access to episodes. There appears to be a lot of demand for this.
I think illegal filesharing threatens the industry primarily not because it's free, but because it offers a lot of features and convenience which the content providers refuse to grant their customers willingly.
Was talking to my partner about this and she had a pretty clever take: "Seems like a simple idea would simply be to change just the spelling of one seemingly insignificant name near the end of each version of the credits and then by actually watching the credits you'd know the leaker straight away." "Of course, you'd leave the watermark on there so the leaker doesn't know how you caught them and thinks that the water…