Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

The technical issues could probably be tackled, but realistically I doubt we'll ever return to the screener copy glory days. By now everyone who receives a screener copy knows about the watermarking software, and release teams would have a hell of a time convincing them that the watermark can 100% for sure be removed. The person in possession of the screener copy has every incentive not to share it, since the costs of getting caught are so high (fired and/or sued and/or blacklisted in the industry).

I don't have any source for this, but screener copy leaks were so prevalent at one point that I have to imagine that money was changing hands. Release teams behind paid sites were probably bribing recipients of screener copies so their site could have the pirate copy first, and later it would spread to free sites. Given the number of people that receive screener copies, studios realistically had no way to figure out who was leaking them so it was essentially free money for the leaker. The price paid to the leaker was probably not all that high since the risks were so low.

As soon as the watermarks were in, the risks for the leaker went up dramatically and so would their price. Watermarking was actually a very clever solution to the problem. Rather than adding DRM, which would bog down their workflows and piss off their customers, studios added watermarks that made it uneconomical for the leaks to continue.