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Game of Thrones leak and watermark: a stupid tracking system

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Re: Game of Thrones leak and watermark: a stupid tracking system

#281

Post by hobarrera »

samstave wrote: post #244
anigbrowl wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not realize how complex the workflow pipelines are for a film or TV series of any kind? And how shows involving a lot of special effects like GoT are orders of magnitude more complex? For the publicity and marketing side of things we like to send actors out on talk shows to talk about character and costumes and drama and so on, and maybe show a few shots of a giant camera on a greenscreen stage to talk about h…

I am hooked on GoT, my response to HBO is thus: "Dear HBO, as a subscriber to HBO since 1983, I am saddened for this leak. As a huge fan of GoT, I am delighted, thank you, I will still watch all episodes in HD and DVR them every Sunday." --- HBO should allow for HBO GO users to see the whole season at a time - the same way netflix does. There is no reason to meter out the story. Netflix dumping a whole season on the…

By distributing it gradually, the get more subscribers. I know plenty of people who pay HBO only during the time of the year that GoT is broadcast. That's about 3-4 months.

I recall the the last episode was postponed one week last year due to some strike or something alike, forcing people to pay an additional month of HBO. I heard a few complaining about this extra cost (and the fact that there was no episode that weekend!).

Re: Game of Thrones leak and watermark: a stupid tracking system

#282

Post by tarpherder »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #260
tarpherder wrote: post #11

How can people so easily assume that the watermark was truly the only tracking present? HBO wouldn't immediately come out swinging even if they knew who or where the copy was leaked.

Thats an astute observation. Whenever you're tricking someone, you put something stupid easy in for the tricked person to defeat, so they assume they're tricking you. But it could be even easier. Why not put the watermark in a different location for every copy you distribute?

The silly thing is that nobody seems to realize that the public has only seen 1 leaked copy, probably from 1 source. HBO could be using any number of techniques and none of us would notice any of them because we have a sample size of 1. Even the odd techniques OP describes could be present in the copy, your described technique as well, any number really. We won't see them unless they are as in-your-face as the watermark.

Re: Game of Thrones leak and watermark: a stupid tracking system

#283

Post by VeejayRampay »

Someone1234 wrote: post #155
VeejayRampay wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still waiting for some clever chap to cut the opening out as well. The dream would be to have one version of the opening and a mencoder script to put the pieces back together. It would shave a few dozens megabytes on each file off.

People won't do this for GoT in particular as the opening changes episode to episode and gives you a preview into the locations that that episode will deal with. A lot of people enjoy the openings and pay attention to them. I liken it to the Simpsons or Futurama in the sense that things subtly change (e.g. locations which are destroyed in the show, are destroyed in the opening, and such).

I was not talking about Game of Thrones in particular though.

Re: Game of Thrones leak and watermark: a stupid tracking system

#284

Post by greggarious »

OSButler wrote: post #193

This is just a wild guess, but the visible watermark could be the result of a legal issue. Having hidden tracking elements in such videos could require disclosing them, whereas a visible watermark could be used to argue that the viewer is aware of the video being marked and therefore other included tracking elements do not need to be specifically named. It has the potential side-effect of the watermark getting blurre…

You're confusing eavesdropping law with tracking in general.

(You're probably thinking of the one party vs two party consent issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws)

If I were to somehow create a Game of Thrones video file that "phones home", yes that would need to be disclosed.

If I want to add an invisible watermark to a video file and note who got the video with that watermark, that is legal.

Re: Game of Thrones leak and watermark: a stupid tracking system

#285

Post by TrevorJ »

jjoonathan wrote: post #67
URSpider94 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The minimum difference in scene length allowable would be a single frame.

Do you actually know that or are you speculating? I wouldn't be surprised if MP4 (or other video formats) provided a mechanism for tweaking the timing of a given frame. Of course, if you're using such a primitive watermark you might as well just add a note in the metadata...

Yeah, it's not really possible and as others have said it's by far the silliest possible way to accomplish unique file fingerprints.

Re: Game of Thrones leak and watermark: a stupid tracking system

#286

Post by dTal »

psk wrote: post #28
mitchell_h wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't a simple re-encode break any sort of stenography?

Surely it would be possible to create encoding resistant stenography. Will the stenography be affected, sure, but it should be possible to create error-resistant stenography up to a certain point.

Stenography: encode information such that it is below the human detection threshold.

Lossy compression: discard all sub-threshold information.

Thus, in the general case it's fundamentally impossible. You can make a scheme that will survive certain known encoders and bitrates, but you can't make one that will survive all lossy compression.

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