Sony posts whole movie on YouTube in trailer's place | Hacker News Reader

Sony posts whole movie on YouTube in trailer's place

bbc.co.uk

122 pointsedward63 comments

This wasn't an accident. It was a marketing stunt to get some buzz around an otherwise unnote worthy movie release.

I was about to comment exactly this. Genius.

and this "leak" is worthless because a blu-ray version was already leaked last year.

Wow, was that the final proper? If so, what have they been doing with it for the last year, just waiting for the right time to release it?

Uh, "leak" you say? The movie was _released_ to DVD and Blu-Ray in 2017[1]. This is how their Indie films work; they typically get released to DVD and Blu-Ray then show up in some small theaters the following year. This was no exception.

[1] http://a.co/2aep4au

I think the use of the word "leak" was supposed to be clever/funny

A modified version of Hanlon's razor seems appropriate: Never attribute to intelligence, that which can adequately be explained by dumb luck.

(Or replace "never" by "always" if you're feeling kind and positive)

Edit: To be clear, I don't believe in either philosophy as an absolute, it just seems appropriate here :)

I disagree with that philosophy. I say "Always remember that assumed intentions are just that -- assumptions."

If you can't adequately explain intentions with available facts then you should say "I don't know" and leave the case open. We can speculate on why it was leaked but we really don't have enough case-specific facts that can shade light on the events that lead to this "leak".

But there's also a matter of probablity: Hanlon's Razor simply captures the fact that stupidity is much easier to come by than malice. So if you have to assume something, assume more probable thing.

If you must assume sure. My point was to not assume. If you need to know the intentions of the actor to make a decision,keep in mind assuming and knowing are very different. Especially in cases like this where we know so little about the individuals involved,I believe it's better to just say "Scenario X is statistically likely but we should probe for more facts".

Of course this specific case is not important to most people,but my point was regarding the accuracy of probability as more unsolved variables as well as yet unknown variables increase. If we knew specific individuals or had some track record behind the specific organization, I say logic like "Hanlon's razor" can be evaluated usefully.

If this was a more controversial case (think rodney king murder trial),it would have been more interesting. Since after all, an action is not a crime without criminal intent. Whether malice,negligence or incompetence assumptions can have an adverse impact on all involved parties.

>Hanlon's Razor simply captures the fact that stupidity is much easier to come by than malice //

Within the context of movie marketing is stupidity more usually the reason for a media megacorps release of media or is marketing more usually the reason? Surely then the probability lies firmly with marketing until evidence shifts that assumption.

Razors are not truth generating though they are often treated as if they were.

There is also selection bias in play. Most of the things done by stupid marketers we don't hear of, since stupid marketers have lower chance of getting stories in front of us.

Do you have proof or is this wild speculation?

It seems it wasn't a new release. It opened in Europe in 2017 to very low ratings, the film didn't cost very much to make (relatively speaking) and this stunt has brought more attention to the film than any advertisement could have on its own.

It has been available to torrent for some time. I can't think of a better candidate to try this experiment on. It worked fantastically. Beyond that I can't see this having gone unnoticed for 6 hours.

Assuming you're right, now what? They won't get the same amount of press the next time.

So, wild speculation, then.

Next headline: Sony is believed to intentionally mess up the trailer upload!

See. It's working.

How do you know? Not every accident that makes the news is a marketing stunt.

Maybe the file was mixed in a directory with trailers and the person uploading simply chose the wrong one and moved on without verifying.

The low-budget film - which is about a Los Angeles-based hitman - had previously attracted little attention, despite having already been released in parts of Europe and playing at film festivals.

It's hard to see this happening by mistake. Movie companies don't usually keep upload-ready copies of entire movies lying around in-house. The format sent to theaters is quite different.

I was thinking the same thing. It just so happens that the movie was in mp4 version in the same folder as the trailer as some dude uploaded it off his macbook? Just doesn’t make any sense. Although it could happen if they give the person who makes the trailers an mp4 he’d have to cut up and make. But even then, what are the odds he’d be the one with access to the trailer account and the one uploading. In no world does this seem like a mistake.

Legacy video-on-demand systems (the sort your cable box can access) get full copies of movies with no DRM that could easily be uploaded to YouTube. They're often sent as part of a package that includes a preview (the trailer), a poster image, and metadata.

It wouldn't be hard, given one of these packages, to put the wrong file in.

It would still take suspiciously long to upload/encode

I used to work at for a TV media company, working on catch up / video on demand. I can believe this happening - maybe someone uploaded it as they went to lunch, or just shrugged and though "this is taking a bit longer today. oh well".

Hell, I've made mistakes which any sort of critical thinking should have prevented.

The article then points out that Sony previously did the same thing for Spider-Man 2, so it definitely is a thing that happens by mistake.

Or it's an attempt to do some "viral" marketing that happens intentionally.

The 2004 version? Someohow this seems to happen for really bad movies.

While it seems absurd, It's good to exercise caution in this department. Never underestimate the possibility of absurd human error.

I am choosing to believe they'll turn around and try to sue everyone who watched the movie on YouTube in an attempt to recoup in law suits what was never going to happen with ticket sales. But I just enjoy cynicism.

They could attempt that and fail miserably. There is little to fear from casual intentional copyright infringement besides a letter that can be thrown in the garbage. Ive occasionally received those over the last decade and simply throw them out. Accidental infringement is going nowhere. And because it was officially uploaded it, there isn't any infringement at all.

It makes sense to keep full version of a movie along with trailers, promo pictures etc. So when you need to check something you can just watch it.

I have to disagree. I almost always see trailers and features stored right next to each other in the same folder.

I haven't worked for Sony Pictures since 2005, but I think that the suggestions of some sort of nefarious marketing plan and the expected safeguards against accidental content distribution are hilarious.

I can absolutely believe that this happened accidentally.

Films and trailers are uploaded rarely, and it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to discover that it's still a manual process.

If it is still a manual process, wouldn't the PEBKAC be more likely to notice the extended upload time? The difference in size between a 2 min & a 90+ min file upload would be considerable.

I'd imagine the process goes something like: hit upload, go to lunch.

"im just going to click upload and go to lunch"

Yes, if you were planning to upload the whole movie, but if you plan to upload a 2min trailer, you're not expecting it to take very long, likely only a minute or two. Unless Sony has considerably slower internet then I imagine.

There's a hardcore Starbucks culture in Culver City. Any delay is sufficient cause to go get coffee.

I’m not convinced there is somebody with the job of watching individual progress bars. I bet these things are done in batches and a large file wouldn’t really stand out.

On YouTube you can upload many videos at once so they will be queued.

Presumably Sony and other major corporate users of YouTube do not have employees selecting a file and sitting waiting for it to upload every time a trailer needs to go out, nor do they give employees access to these high value YouTube accounts. Presumably they have a system between their staff and YouTube that is responsible for uploads, and in that system a mistake like this —- referencing the wrong file —- would be much easier to make and go unnoticed.

Most of these accounts are run my external marketing agencies not by the companies itself. And from what I heard the process it's way more manual than you'd suspect. It's not impossible for a human to select the wrong file.

and why would the external marketing agency have a full copy of the movie, with no DRM?

Maybe they also cut and edit the trailer? I don't know how they work internally.

quick search says that trailers are either made by specialized companies, or by in-house departments.

I guess that's true in 100% the cases then and there's no room for a human mistake left in this case ;)

Maybe whoever sending the content to the marketing company did the mistake, and the marketing company just obeyed their orders and uploaded it without further checking.

According to the Ars Technica article on this, this is actually quite likely--the UI for these systems is apparently typically sufficiently bad that you have to copy a numeric ID, and you won't get feedback as to what the numeric ID actually referred to.

Ars quote in question:

>The processes used by organizations like Sony to publish videos to platforms both owned and otherwise could present opportunities for error. (I know this because I used to work for a major broadcast TV network.) It could have been as simple as a young, entry-level digital producer accidentally copying and pasting the wrong video ID number from the company's internal repository of video files into a proprietary publishing tool that bulk-publishes several videos in a daily push via the YouTube Data API and the equivalents on other platforms.

I don't buy this explanation because the setup would be hilariously insecure. It would be like having a company-wide file share that anyone can access, and placing all your trade secrets on it. It might make sense for broadcast TV networks, considering all their content is distributed for free anyways.

This is the same Sony that was famously hacked in 2014:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_hack

From the Wikipedia page:

“The hackers involved claim to have taken more than 100 terabytes of data from Sony”

“The data included personal information about Sony Pictures employees and their families, e-mails between employees, information about executive salaries at the company, copies of then-unreleased Sony films, and other information.”

The YouTube mistake sounds to me like a publicity stunt, but “hilariously insecure” isn’t necessarily an incorrect assessment of Sony’s infrastructure.

> It would be like having a company-wide file share that anyone can access

"Enterprise document/data management" usually means something along those lines, yes.

>I don't buy this explanation because the setup would be hilariously insecure.

I work in the industry, I 100% buy this explanation. Security is not great on all sides, confusing UIs and opaque IDs pasted into web systems (or excel spreadsheets) with little/no feedback (or excessive feedback that then gets ignored) are standard.

Also, even when media isn't directly available to a user, they may well still have the ability to send a particular file by house number through a pre-approved workflow (e.g. publish to youtube)

It's not unlike other trailers in that it spoils the whole movie.

I too read the jokes in the article

A few months back Sony pushed the full version of the latest Yakuza game on PSN instead of a demo build, but they pulled it a couple of days later.

To be fair the error seems it was made by Sega, but you know blaming Sony is more fun... ^__~

http://www.siliconera.com/2018/02/26/yakuza-6-demo-36-gb/ http://www.siliconera.com/2018/02/28/yakuza-6-demo-pulled-pl...

I'm not gonna mention "The Interview" from 2014 then...

or the various data breaches of both the PSN and the employees.

Someone didn't check their work before pushing to production.

I'd love to read their commit comment.

Was Sony hacked again?

Maybe NK's Dear Leader wanted to Youtube and Chill with his besties.

just like the early days of YouTube!

There are still plenty of full movies on YouTube, just search by profile not bye title.

Sony probably figured the best way to stay one step ahead of the North Koreans was to hack themselves.

Anyone know details of the file? (codec, bitrate, filesize).

Obvious marketing stunt is obvious.

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