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What if it's happening on a small scale many times over? Thousands of links, posted to forums in all kinds of languages.

And we're both assuming that the people running those mirrors won't work out a way to disable the watermarks in real time. I've not read up on digital watermarking technology, but it's hard to imagine that it's bulletproof.

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Fair point. I think detecting and booting some fraction of those streams would have a deterrent effect on the rest, but who knows for sure unless it gets tried?

And yes, I'm assuming that robust-enough watermarking methodology is possible. I don't think it has to be bulletproof, I just think it has to be good enough to enable cancelling enough stream consumer accounts to deter casual mirror-ers. DRM isn't bulletproof either; watermarking is preferable for users because it doesn't require that the stream producer take control over your machine.

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