Blizzard Watermarking Screenshots

[Passionario]

I think it is probably simply to catch out NDA breaking Alpha testers.

Most likely, yes. Possibly also to track down private servers (hence the IP info).

[Skye1013]

Given that it's now becoming public knowledge, won't that somewhat counter the effect of catching private servers? I mean they already have the capability to do all kinds of other hacking, I don't see why they wouldn't be able to disable this somehow.

[Fetzie]

Given that it's now becoming public knowledge, won't that somewhat counter the effect of catching private servers? I mean they already have the capability to do all kinds of other hacking, I don't see why they wouldn't be able to disable this somehow.

Apparently the stuff does not appear if you set your screenshot quality to 10.

[Nooska]

If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about.

This is demonstrably untrue, and has been used as the main argument to curtail privacy and civil liberties in most western countries over the last decade.

In a system where the system is benevolent and where abuse of information was unheard of, unthinkable, and as impossible as being able to fly (without outside aid), the statement would be true.

The problem is that all countries have humans handling all the information, and humans are corrupt (as in, there are corrupt humans), and as long as this is the case, you should worry as soon as some system wants to register, track or pass on any information that could be considered private, that they do not absolutely have to.
Also most western countries have the effect of the 5th included in the jurisprudence, though it doesn't even have to come into effect as what you may want to hide could be possibly embarrasing, without being illegal in any way (how many of you would want for instance porn surfing habits be public? Or have a camera in the bedroom? (It isn't illegal, so nothing to worry about, right?)

End Rant on worrying = having something to hide.

[Worldie]

Am I a bad person for not knowing what watermarking means?

[Fetzie]

A watermark is where you place a text or logo in an image so that people can't steal it and repost it as their own content.

[Nooska]

Quite Interestingly, the term comes from paper production, where you could have an indentation on the form for a piece of paper, making the paper slightly thinner at tghe spot, thus you can see the form (logo, writing or whatever) when holding the piece of paper up to the light - and themark was made in the water while coalescing the paper material.

It was primarily used to authenticate a piece of paper, and today is primarily used to add important information to a piece of paper - like "classified" or "private" or "draft" on company (or the like) papers and documents.

[Shoju]

Nooska, I'm normally with you on the privacy stuff, but I just cba'd to care about about blizzard watermarking screenshots from their game, played on their servers, with programs such as Warden already being a part of the mix. Honestly, I'm surprised that at 10 it shuts off.

I tried really hard to care, when it was pointed out that people have extrapolated the data from its coding. I did. I just don't care.

You could say that it's because I don't play anymore, but that's not it. The watermarks wouldn't have any bearing on a decision to come back to the game.

[Koatanga]

You know what I am taking from this discussion? That I can improve the quality of my WoW screenshots.

I have all these awesome moments preserved in artefact-riddled low-quality jpegs, because it didn't occur to me there was a hidden setting to boost the quality.

[Nooska]

@Shoju, re my post on the previous page, I don't think this is a privacy problem at all - I just reacted to the nothing to hide, nothing to fear argument (red cloth to a bull)

[Andurin]

You know what I am taking from this discussion? That I can improve the quality of my WoW screenshots.

I have all these awesome moments preserved in artefact-riddled low-quality jpegs, because it didn't occur to me there was a hidden setting to boost the quality.

That was my first one to. The second thing I took was: Damn. I wish I could do that to! (from a technical point of view). Not to use it anywhere... Just to know how it works and how I could make it Not to fussed about the information in it really. Yeah its an account id, but then again, since its in a battle.net account with a diffrent id, I dont really mind to much.