HomeA chilly morning here in Melbourne. Winter was here, and should be gone soon, but I’m not waiting around any longer. I shall be making my escape to somewhere a lot warmer later this week.
But before that glorious event, there’s the news to go through for this WNR, and unfortunately, it was a quiet week again. As a result, this will be yet again a short WNR and yet again another one focused on Game of Thrones. I know, I know, I’m tired of covering it too, but (news) beggars but be choosers.
I hate to keep on talking about Game of Thrones, but people have to stop leaking episodes first
So another week, another Game of Thrones leak. Winter is supposed to be here, and I’m guessing most of the water (in the North, at least) have all frozen over. So why so many leaks?
At this point, it’s almost a sport now to see who can leak the next episode first. This time, it was HBO themselves, or rather, both HBO Nordic and España. HBO Nordic has history when it comes to leaking GoT episodes, so it’s good to see that no lessons have been learnt from past mistakes.
That’s the problem with digital distribution. In the past, it would have required a daring break-in into a TV station to steal the master tapes, whereas now, it could be as simple as an intern pressing the wrong button to make an episode go live much earlier than it was suppose to. Even a digital break-in, like the HBO hack, is a lot less risky and requires less of an “Ocean’s 11” style operation.
The HBO hackers though continues their digital rampage and public ransom negotiations this week, with the revelation that they appears to have threatened to release more sensitive HBO data. Specifically, they might have the logins of all of HBO’s social media accounts (cue rush to change passwords by said HBO intern), and more worryingly, access to the last two unaired episodes of GoT. The hackers want $6.5 million in Bitcoins, or they’ll release GoT S7 episode 6 and 7 “as soon as possible”.
Will HBO play ball? They’ve said no, but the hackers have released an email in which HBO offered the hackers $250,000 for their “kind” help in pointing out the security flaws in HBO’s systems.
Meanwhile, the hackers have leaked more unaired episodes, including episodes of the eagerly awaited return of Curb your Enthusiasm (so that’s a pretty, pretty, pretty bad development for HBO). But is this worth $6.5 million? Probably not. It’s not as if people are cancelling their HBO accounts just because leaked episodes are now appearing online.
And you can bet law enforcement is already well on its way to tracking the hackers. They’ve always caught up with them, even if it takes a long time, so I don’t know why hackers even bother with high profile hacks like this one. As for the people who leaked episode 4, a copy obtained from Star India, four arrests have already occurred on the subcontinent.
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So my previously mentioned escape will mean there will be no WNR next week. Which might be a good thing, as it might allow this while Game of Thrones leak-a-thon to finish by then (well, considering the season will be finished by next Sunday, I’d say our chances are pretty, pretty, pretty good).
Until next time, have a good one!
