I think you're wrong about the two sides. The guys with the orbital battle stations are the distribution channel. Watermarking isn't there to deter them, so their lasers don't matter.

Watermarking is a deterrent to the people who upload the content in the first place. The ones who're careless about who they'll share things with. A unique watermark (steganographic or visible) is about finding the source of the leak. In that arms-race the entertainment industry is facing people who can remove a watermark - but we have no idea whether or not they're winning. The fact that torrents exist with watermarks intact makes me think that perhaps they are.

The entertainment industry operates some 40 actual satellites that were put up into space using actual rockets, engages in petabyte-scale asset management as a matter of course, and constantly reworks its content acquisition pipelines as new digital and analog technologies come to market. We're a little bit more technologically sophisticated than you seem to imagine.

>reworks its content acquisition pipelines as new digital and analog technologies come to market.

I would have gladly paid them to watch a stream at 8pm last night, yet somehow that still isn't an option in 2015.

Instead I ended up with 4 episodes from a torrent at 8:15. Tell me more about embracing new technology as it comes to market.

In this case there's someone else who paid for you not to be able to stream it: Apple.

HBO Now is Apple TV exclusive for 3 months.

No, you can get it on Sling TV, too.

I thought HBO Now (I'm not a subscriber) allowed one to stream 5 minutes after air?

I remember hearing lots of noise about them offering a stand alone streaming service, I was even excited to try it out and see how it handled the traffic of a season premiere (HBOgo has been notably terribly on this front)

I googled around for about 15 minutes and was only able to find news articles announcing it. I'd be happy to pay them for what i've already watched if anyone could direct me to a sign-up for this elusive streaming service.

Here's the site: https://order.hbonow.com/

I don't have an iOS device or their specific supported ISP, so I haven't signed up.

I don't think "arms race" really applies when the two sides are building entirely different weapons. The entertainment industry is interested in pursuing the source of leaks - as the other comments here have mentioned, they've gotten pretty good at it.

I kind of assumed the laser cannons were on flying ostriches.