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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

How can the author tell Stranger Things producers didn't take a photo of any of billions of same-looking VHS tapes?

I understand the verification that the author took the images they claim they did. I can't tell how that proves that the images strange things used are the same as the ones from the author's screenshot.

Wouldn't every straight-on cropped photo of a VHS tape look the same?

Edit: looks like I didn’t read/observe carefully enough. There are details that are too much the same.

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I'm not sure what you're getting at here.. these are quite obviously the same images. Down to the reflection of the camera on its tripod. Generic as they are, you can't just google search for an image and steal it from a website to produce a product you then sell millions of times over.

Check closer, even the position of the teeth is the same. If it is so easy, Netflix should have photographed one instead of stealing an image.

What about the top and sides though? They look significantly different.

Read the gosh darn article. He says the sides are not his image, but the top is.

I guess my question was more about why the effort of changing portions of it.

If you read the article, you'll see that he identifies specific details about the VHS tape (location of dirt, plastic defects, etc.) that would uniquely identify his particular photos.

There's metadata, too.

The metadata is just proof that he owns the original images. Not that Netflix stole the images.

I mean, how could you prove that anyway then? If you can show the images on his website are the original images, the only alternative is that he copied the Netflix images and is randomly pretending he was the one ripped off.

Did you read the post? The answer to your questions are well detailed within.

I’m convinced they’re the same. There’s an identical spec of dusk under the left window. Also the reflections on the transparent plastic are the same.

I recently built an app that embeds an invisible watermark in photos, specifically for cases like this. I call it an "InvisiMark". It works surprisingly well (and was quite a pain in the butt to implement).

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zing/id1265492686?ls=1&mt=12

There is dirt on the tapes and scratches. I think its awfully silly since its just a vhs tape in a top down photo. But...since Netflix is bags o money, I'd make myself care.... who wouldn't harpoon a treasure chest? The worlds most profitable shot of a crappy tape :-)

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