AMC has one of the hottest shows on television with The Walking Dead, but that also means that the series is one of the most pirated on the Internet.
AMC hopes to deter some of that piracy with a new system, though. The network will embed digital watermarks in every episode of the series so that it can catch those who leak episodes on the Internet before they premiere on television.
AMC's system works like this: the digital watermark, created by Civolution's NexGuard, goes on each episode of its series, including The Walking Dead, Better Call Saul and Humans. This happens just before the episodes get distributed. Although the watermark won't keep episodes from leaking, it will help AMC track down where leaks happen and who is responsible for them, right down to the network partner or individual responsible for the leak.
"It is paramount for us to protect our assets when they are at their most valuable," said AMC's chief technology officer Steve Pontillo in a statement, as reported by Variety. "This enhanced content security is a powerful deterrent against piracy and protects our revenue and that of our distribution partners."
The cable network has a huge problem with international distributors and subcontractors - such as those who provide post-production dubbing in other languages for broadcast in foreign countries - having access to prebroadcast episodes, so it hopes that this new system will help it focus on where the problems exist, at least for situations where episodes get leaked online before their television broadcast.
Even HBO suffers from a similar problem, especially with press getting access to screener episodes before they air. That network recently shifted to streaming-only press access for episode screeners, something which many networks and film production studios continue to adopt.
However, AMC's new anti-piracy system does nothing for post-broadcast leaks of episodes, which is a bigger problem for the network, especially with The Walking Dead being the second-most-pirated television show in the world, just behind HBO's Game of Thrones.
The Walking Dead airs at 9 p.m. EST Sundays on AMC.
