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Watermarks

muppler

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Hey guys,

on another forum a user wrote AMZ watermarks the stream to the user. Is this true?
Im just curious, not planning to upload any file to the internet. :)

How is this done technically? Would a reencode remove the watermark? Or is this all nonsense?

best regards
muppler
 
I've read this too in the past, but I don't know if this is done yet.
AFAIK they put something invisible into the video. So you can't see it, but if they know where to look they could identify you.
Someone also wrote (in this forum) tha a reencode would not remove the watermark, but I don't know.
 
It is very much true, just unknown if it's been implemented yet. And no it can't be removed, not even with (multiple) recoded. It's not a visible watermark, it's a hidden watermark in the video stream data itself.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk
 
This is something you need not worry about if are just going to watch your movies with your family. It's the people that upload these to torrent sites that need to worry. The watermarks are invisible, if they arent I have never seen them.
 
This is something you need not worry about if are just going to watch your movies with your family. It's the people that upload these to torrent sites that need to worry. The watermarks are invisible, if they arent I have never seen them.

Not uploading torrents does not necessarily mean you're safe. If you'd put your files on NAS and decide to share it over DLNA to your TV, everyone who you share your Wi-Fi with is able to download the data. Of course it's rather marginal example, it would mean many things, including either you wrongly choose people around you or some people are jerks. But still, we're giving our Wi-Fi passwords to our friends and we don't ask what stuff they've got on their devices and if they take care of updates (so they're not unconsciously checking all of your devices).

Back to the topic - the only way to check it, IMO, is a kind of reverse-engineering attempt by downloading an item several times using different accounts, maybe from different IPs (but from the same region and using the same method), extract tracks and compare them. I don't think that providers have enough power to encode a video stream for every user yet, as it is going with watermarked audiobooks. I don't know, however, what kind of things to check, as everything may be a part of steganography. in HLS or DASH streams, for example, we interact with playlists which contain chunks of video/audio. If the provider has a given quality stream encoded as two slightly different but interchangeable copies (e.g. P+B+I frames at the same time, the same encoder settings but unnoticeable bitrate/quality difference...), the server-side orchestration software is able to serve different chunks' combination for each user. And there may be more fuses than this one.

Sceners, I think, have either a possibility to obscure the mechanism by mixing two or more streams together, doing other things they think it's necessary or not caring at all, as they usually can use bogus accounts. That's my idea, I don't know how it works, and I suppose I don't know way many more thinks than I know. Hence, I like the ability to download the content uselessly and use it on whichever capable device I can (I don't like DRMs, I like fair customer/provider approach), but I would recommend avoiding sharing it somewhere else (and the possibility of being "catched" is closer to the end of the list).
 
For grins and giggles, grab a good hex editor and start looking through the file in question......
 
I still don't have to worry, all I do is download what I want to watch to a file on my computer, pick out what I want to watch that evening, and stream it to my TV. I don't even need a NAS. I usually have about 10TB of a selection at any one time. I could have more but for me its not necessary. But I will reiterate if you don't upload anything to " The Scene" , I think you have peace of mind, sure if you want to get neurotic, you can worry about everything but as long as you do not upload and just using for personal use, I think, you are fine.
 
I still don't have to worry, all I do is download what I want to watch to a file on my computer, pick out what I want to watch that evening, and stream it to my TV. I don't even need a NAS. I usually have about 10TB of a selection at any one time. I could have more but for me its not necessary. But I will reiterate if you don't upload anything to " The Scene" , I think you have peace of mind, sure if you want to get neurotic, you can worry about everything but as long as you do not upload and just using for personal use, I think, you are fine.

I personally don't think companies like AP and NF and such care much about personal use. It's the uploading and sharing they want to crucify you over for obvious reasons.
 
One could probably verify this for at least one download by just downloading the same show using different Amazon accounts and see if anything is different between the two. It's also possible they watermark them by region which this approach probably wouldn't detect. Having a region wouldn't really narrow things too much in my opinion though.
 
a user wrote AMZ watermarks the stream to the user. Is this true?
How is this done technically? Would a reencode remove the watermark? Or is this all nonsense?

Hi @muppler

Personally, I was unaware of this topic until now. However, after a little bit of research online reveals that this claim is true.
I read three articles on this topic and they offer some insight as to the need and the implementation. It appears to target those who are taking streaming content and then re-streaming it over the Internet, such as Pay-Per-View programming, live sporting events (behind a paywall), etc.

Obviously, any content you have in your own possession shouldn't be a concern unless you're trying to turn a profit by selling it, or simply sharing it out where you have no control where it goes from there. So, long story short. If you don't compromise yourself, then you have nothing to worry about.

If you are interested in knowing more about this topic, try these articles.
These URLs have the read:// prefix which will load the page in Immersive Reading mode in Edge. Just remove that part of the URL if it doesn't load in a different browser.
Code:
read://https_pallycon.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpallycon.com%2Fblog%2Fsecuring-ott-content-with-multi-drm-and-forensic-watermarking%2F
read://https_www.limelight.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.limelight.com%2Fblog%2Fforensic-watermarking-at-the-cdn-edge%2F
read://https_www.verimatrix.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.verimatrix.com%2Fblog%2Fdrm-watermarking-the-dynamic-duo-of-content-security%2F
read://https_blogs.akamai.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fblogs.akamai.com%2F2019%2F10%2Fwatermarking-a-content-owners-mark-to-prevent-piracy.html
If you share your Plex library with family and friends, just make sure you have the "download" feature disabled for them.
See this Plex Support Article if needed:
Code:
 https://support.plex.tv/articles/204232573-restricting-the-shares
 
Sharing is caring. If you aren't doing that, I don't see any reason to download from Amazon or Netflix when you can just watch it from the app.
 
Sharing is caring. If you aren't doing that, I don't see any reason to download from Amazon or Netflix when you can just watch it from the app.
If you are going to share anything--and again, Redfox does not condone that--I suggest that you never use your personal account. Set up an anonymous one and use VPN (anonymous = not your real email, not your real name, not your credit card).
 
If you are going to share anything--and again, Redfox does not condone that--I suggest that you never use your personal account. Set up an anonymous one and use VPN (anonymous = not your real email, not your real name, not your credit card).
First of all I am always on Tails to being with, I do not need a VPN with Tails
 
Watermarks are old news. Studios have been using them for movie theaters for decades. Even when movies were on film. Studios can tell where a video may have been hand recorded in a theater due to those invisible water marks. If it happens too often, studios start to look really closely at the theater/ company. Source: used to work in a theater running the projection booth many moons ago. It would not surprise me at all if there are no watermarks on the downloads or streams from places like AMZ and NF.
 
Visible watermarks are old news, this new method is in fact very new hiding the watermark inside the video streams metadata in such a way that it survives re-encoding.
 
Thanks to all your feedback, of course i will be keeping the files for my own usage. I think the idea of a hex compare with 2 files from different accounts won't work, as there are timestamps in the metadata.
 
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