Game of Thrones leak and watermark: a stupid tracking system • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by azakai » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 6:03 PM UTC

tbabb wrote: post #153

fredley wrote: post #2

...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…

I will say that steganography is definitely in use already, at least on feature films. (It's particularly easy in animation, where literally anything can be changed seamlessly). A film pirated from a theater (even by a camera pointing at a screen) can easily be traced to the exact theater and showing of the movie, and IR cameras in the theater permit authorities to identify the exact individual with the camera. In sh…

Yes. The author of the article is barging through an open door: It's very likely that those Game of Thrones episodes had individual hidden watermarking, and that using those they can tell exactly who leaked it.

The author jumped to the conclusion that those don't exist, apparently because they aren't visible (but that's the point!) and that there is a visible watermark which the author apparently assumed was the only one (but it almost certainly isn't).

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

#172

Post by zenojevski » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 6:07 PM UTC

xenophonf wrote: post #158

slayed0 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those episodes would immediately be leaked to everyone after becoming available and HBO would lose a ton of viewership on its own platform.

I don't mean they should charge $10 or $20 for early access. I think they should be charging a couple hundred dollars - think VIP bottle service prices. Human nature being what it is, I suspect that people who are willing to pay for that level of access won't want to share it with the rest of us proles.

It works. Take, for example, $1,600 Photoshop Extended, which has never been pirated.

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

#173

Post by bru » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 6:11 PM UTC

deckar01 wrote: post #138

alanh wrote: post #130

Does all the math littering this post add anything? "Add a few ms variation to each each scene" seems extremely self-explanatory, and so does the concept that only a few bits per scene are needed to produce a meaningful number of variations.

As much as I enjoy using summations liberally, a simple visualization of the spacing between frames would have been more useful.

Author here. I can easily use summations, but I'm definitely incompetent when it comes to making a visualization!

And as per your parent's remark, most math is there "for fun" as written in the article.

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

#174

Post by bru » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 6:14 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #120

This is a stupid blog post. There are two goals: 1) Prevent copies from being leaked 2) Trace leaks if they happen Watermarks are actually great for the first goal. They are big, ugly, and obvious. This discourages people from leaking. If they do leak it's crystal clear they're taking a huge risk. This is also why the DVD screener is low-res SD. HBO already tracked down where the leak came from. Whatever methods they…

That you for that "typical HN comment".

>This is a stupid blog post.

Have you seen the topic discussed on the Internet? I looked for it and I haven't, so I simply started it. Given the score of the submission and the number of comments, that goal is reached. I learned a lot from other comments and I'm happy.

> HBO already tracked down where the leak came from.

Source?

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

#175

Post by speakeron » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 6:15 PM UTC

The only thing that needed to be done when distributing the review copies was to ensure that they were 1080p Blu-ray instead of SD DVD. This would have ensured even more global jonesing to see the 5th episode after after the cliff-hanger in the 4th.

Apart from that, mission accomplished.

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

#176

Post by worklogin » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 6:19 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #154

Kalium wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A compromise already exists. It's really very simple - you and friends agree on a pace to watch a show at. This is flexible, and can fit any schedule! You and friends can watch in whatever pattern you want, and it requires exactly nothing of Netflix! You can deploy this method today ! This would unquestionably satisfy your needs. Why would you need anything other than a dump from Netflix?

It doesn't satisfy the needs of the larger community. Yes, if you watch in person with a group of a few friends and that's all you care about, this works fine. It can't realistically be implemented on the scale of something like a subreddit or a whole office. There is a massive difference in both quality and activity between /r/HouseOfCards and /r/GameOfThrones. The "season dump" just doesn't work on a scale that exc…

>It doesn't satisfy the needs of the larger community.

Do you think there is a "need" missing in the larger TV watching community that must be addressed regarding the pace of releases? Should there be a vote after each TV show on how many days people need to think about the episode before the next one comes out?

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

#177

Post by bradleyjg » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 6:21 PM UTC

waspleg wrote: post #148

The website says his method of randomly changing the length of the credits is a step in the right direction. I think that's completely wrong. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130808/02084524106/time-... "Our experience is that it leads to more paying subs. I think you're right that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world," he said. "That's better than an Emmy." - Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes THAT is a…

Even if you decide that you are okay with some leaks, you still want to know which employees / partners / journalists you can't trust.

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

#178

Post by aamar » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 6:21 PM UTC

damon_c wrote: post #63

How about a scheme where some selection of 16 shots throughout either are or aren't missing a single frame? You could number 65k unique distributions that way and the overall length would rarely be affected by more than a frame or two. It could be implemented with a pretty easy python script.

Speaking as a former film/tv editor, one frame here or there can definitely affect the pacing and feel of a scene. Yes, sometimes external constraints—broadcast formats, licensing issues—can force compromises, but it's still an artistic decision where to cut a frame and where to keep one.

Much better to adjust coloring slightly in central but low entropy parts of occasional, appropriate frames, sort of like Omron rings[1], but designed specifically to be visually inconspicuous while surviving encoding.

The newish CineFence supposedly does something like this. In any case it wouldn't be hard to improve on the horrible Deluxe code.[2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coded_Anti-Piracy

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

#179

Post by nissehulth » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 6:21 PM UTC

HBO spins this into a marketing activity. Every news outlet seem to report about this leak. Remember some year ago, some HBO executive said that GoT was the most pirated show in the world and that it was better than getting an Emmy.

Not saying that HBO did leak the episodes, but they do benefit from all the free marketing...

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

#180

Post by ryanlol » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 6:22 PM UTC

Author is plain wrong here. The big visible watermark is there for the psychological effect, not to trace the leaks. There's always a plenty of hidden ones. (Missing frames etc)

HBO will definitely know who they sent the episodes to, but that doesn't necessarily mean they know who leaked them.