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When my family visit here they have access to a guest network. (which is very limited in what you can actually do on it) And also there is very little time to do illegal stuff. But when they are at their own home there is really nothing for me to stop them to do something illegal.

Giving someone full access to your internet account / ip-address (VPN) is the most stupid thing you can ever do (on the internet). Sure you can filter out a lot of stuff, but you are never going to stop them for 100%. Don't let others access your internet connection.

You don’t really need that much ‘time’ to do illegal stuff on someone else’s connection, depends on how proficient you are, and how malicious you want to be.

Like I said — it’s all about trust; If you don’t trust your family enough, don’t do it.
 
Wow, you have a separate, limited network for when your family visit? Really? :oops:
What would your family do on your regular wi-fi? Break into the FBI's servers? Publish classified documents stolen from the White House? Download child abuse photos? Have a friendly chat with Putin? What kind of illegal stuff are you afraid of?

I keep family and friends on a guest network since I'm not sure how careful they are with their devices. I worry that compromised devices of theirs would pose risks to my own.
 
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Wow, you have a separate, limited network for when your family visit? Really? :oops:
What would your family do on your regular wi-fi? Break into the FBI's servers? Publish classified documents stolen from the White House? Download child abuse photos? Have a friendly chat with Putin? What kind of illegal stuff are you afraid of?
Datacap, porn, malware (mixed use of PC vs Mac devices), just don't want your password shared readily with visitors all things to be considered. When I gone to other homes, how often do you really need to leech on to their wifi? You have a iPhone that you can use a hot spot as needed. Just throwing out some reasons that some might not share their network as openly as others might. A lot of people will provide whats necessary when asked, but this assumption about just give it or your odd is questionable in todays world of careless relatives. :D
 
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Data cap and malware are fair points, but he said he was afraid of his family doing illegal stuff. That's what seemed strange to me. Unless you're from a drug dealing family that might sell cocaine on the internet, or you have a cousin who's a world-class hacker and can't be trusted not to hack into the Pentagon's servers if left unsupervised, what can happen?
Porn? I have no problem with that. My visitors can download all the porn in the world for all I care.
 
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I would guess Netflix will look at usage patterns to differentiate those sharing outside their household and teh RV/Vacation/college student. A snowbird is likely to stop using it at IP A in a cold area and start at IP B in a warm one seasonally. Similarly, a vacationer is likely to stop at one place and start at another for shorter periods. Pretty easy to differentiate from 2 users at different IPs in different locations.

Yes, it's pretty easy to differentiate usage at different IPs / locations.

What's less easy is differentiating whether that usage is the same household such as two spouses, or not a household such as you and your buddy. Even with snowbirds - which you'd think would be easier to discern - often one spouse may travel prior to the other or may travel "out of season" if they needed to do maintenance or had some other reason to go. Consider the couple with a weekend cabin - which can be a during the week in this post-COVID work from home work - where one may have obligations at home yet the other goes to the cabin for a few days.

Hulu Live TV never figured this out (or perhaps never cared to do so), even using the same login credentials at both locations, so I don't have much faith in Netflix doing so either.

Ultimately I don't really care - if my Netflix wasn't paid for as a benefit of my cellphone plan, I wouldn't subscribe.
 
I learned from reading this thread that my family bought Netflix in 2013 as a single household. We moved and separated but wanted to keep the account active. Because we moved to different locations, people consider me a criminal for "stealing" netflix, even though I never give my password out and it was a family account. By the way, I also pay for Disney +, Amazon Prime, and Paramount + (The latter two I share costs) and also Peacock.

I understand why Netflix is doing this, but to say someone is stealing the account when all people's situations are different is disingenuous. People move, have vacation homes, go to college, basically live life normally and Netflix can't understand that. I bet most of you are socialist leaning (Or liberal leaning) but to bootlick what they are doing and then say "You have to follow the rules" when I bet most people here were following the rules seems weird to me. And I thought it was the right that kissed up to corporations.

I don't really watch netflix anymore. If I got rid of it it wouldn't be a loss. I might get it back for Stranger Things and I appreciated being able to watch Better Call Saul on it, but maybe I start renting TV seasons from libraries now.
 
Data cap and malware are fair points, but he said he was afraid of his family doing illegal stuff. That's what seemed strange to me.
Porn? I have no problem with that. They can download all the porn in the world for all I care.

Yeah, again it really depends on your relationship with certain people. A friend of mine recently came to visit and had a couple work-related Zoom meetings to attend. I had no problem giving her the wi-fi password. I’ve also known her for years and she works in tech, so I know she’s smart about what she does online. If we had someone regularly coming over who just played online games all day, maybe I’d rethink giving them the password, but it’s not an issue with close and family and friends whom I trust.
 
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The funny part is one house hold has always been the rule, but wasn’t enforced.

And now it is enforced, as Netflix is losing substantial revenue. I don't see how that's funny.

Don't like the rules you agreed to and signed up for, find another service. Easy.
 
Taking something of value without permission and without paying for it is a victimless crime? And you think the fallacies are elsewhere…. 😄
Let's say you own the rights to a song file. You want $1000 for it, and I don't value it at $1000, so I won't be paying for it.

I download it from xyz torrent site instead, and add it to my library.

Are you worse off than if I hadn't downloaded it?
 
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Let's say you have a song file. You want $1000 for it, and I don't value it at $1000, so I won't be paying for it.

I download it from xyz torrent site instead, and add it to my library.

Are you worse off than if I hadn't copied it?
What if I want $5 or $1 instead? Why does the amount matter?

Now, let’s say everyone does this and everyone listens to my song and I don’t get any money at all? Think I am writing any more songs? If all that is true, then why doesn’t it matter that you pirated from the person who created the art you are enjoying?

So, yes, I am absolutely 100% worse off.

Edited to add: I am in the process of finishing up my first 120k word novel. You think you should get to read that for free?
 
What if I want $5 or $1 instead? Why does the amount matter?

Now, let’s say everyone does this and everyone listens to my song and I don’t get any money at all? Think I am writing any more songs? If all that is true, then why doesn’t it matter that you pirated from the person who created the art you are enjoying?

So, yes, I am absolutely 100% worse off.
I was setting it at an amount that everyone can agree is unreasonable in order to have the discussion.

Set at a lower price, the discussion becomes what is a "reasonable" price. I was explaining the logic of, if something is not worth the price to me, than they're not worse off if I copy it. What is a "reasonable" price varies from person to person and situation to situation, so only serves to distract from the point.

But, you are correct that would you be worse off if nobody finds the price worth it-- that's why the record industry had to change their business model from the old "you have to by 14 bad songs to also get 2 good ones (records/tapes/CDs)" model to the $1/song model, when piracy came a calling. Which, really, was a decent market correction, as they were formally acting in a fairly monopolistic manner. I don't think the entertainment industry is far off that today, especially with all the consolidations that have been occurring.

Edited to add: I am in the process of finishing up my first 120k word novel. You think you should get to read that for free?
I have an audible subscription, as it seems like good value to me. If it suddenly doubled in cost and gave me lower bit rate audio files (or, worse, started inserting ads), I'd switch to piracy for books.

It's pretty simple. To be selected over piracy is has to be better than piracy and at the price I value it at or cheaper. If the price is higher than how much I value it, I'll either skip it or pirate it.
 
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And now it is enforced, as Netflix is losing substantial revenue. I don't see how that's funny.

Don't like the rules you agreed to and signed up for, find another service. Easy.
Really hoping the funny part is going to be having people evaluate if they need Netflix and deciding to drop them altogether.

Families share services my brother and parents are all in separate houses a few miles apart. If Verizon told us we couldn't be on a family plan anymore we would leave Verizon just like we left Netflix. We are still a family. It would be fun to have Apple say we can't share iCloud anymore due to location. My family isn't smart enough to manage their own plan and I would shrink mine to a lower tier. Family is family. It's Netflix's choice and I hope they lose for it. I am against sharing with strangers but it's funny how most companies don't dictate what defines family. It's fine though I'm hoping we go the same route as Spain and they drop a few million customers as a result.

No one in my family watches enough Netflix to have their own account that's just fact. I was the one paying for it my parents usually only did if I put something on for them when I was visiting and my brother could care less. I kept the account so any of them could watch if they wanted. Netflix thinks they are dying because there was 50 people using my account and had a schedule to make sure only 4 people were ever using it at once. Sound ridiculous? It's because it is.

They didn't get more money from my family they now get nothing from us. I really hope that's the decision people make. My friend who lives in Colorado has a husband overseas most of the year. They just cancelled. No reason to try to talk to support or anything just drop Netflix. If the company dies maybe the content will end up with a better provider. I was honestly the ideal customer for them paying every month and maybe using the service 20 hours in a year between 4 family members.

I was going to subscribe for a month once a year to maybe watch a few things I've decided against even doing that. They will either suffer and lower prices or finally offer a cheaper 4K single plan or they will do great and I guess I miss out on the couple things I want to watch. Not really going to lose any sleep over it.

People need to stop spouting this moral high ground trash and look at real situations. Netflix has decided to define family their own way. People have every right to complain about it. Plenty of us are doing the right thing and just voting with our wallets. My favorite part of all of this is if I rent out my basement and three people move in they are family by Netflix's definition. They could fully use my account and its completely legal per the TOS. So yeah Netflix has a interesting definition of "Family" I hope it bites them.

If Netflix was smart they would just let each screen have a account. Plenty of services that if you buy a family plan you just get that many people/slots for that price. They could lock it down so each person is stuck to their home to prevent sharing with strangers. So literally do what they are currently doing but 4 streams is 4 people where ever they may reside. That would allow my friends Husband to use his account overseas. It would allow me to let my parents and brother have accounts and I would actually join again. The concept that I would pay over 20 bucks a month for 4 streams I can never use living by myself then pay more on top of that to let my parents watch is pretty hilarious.

I think I'll have more entertainment when Q2/Q3 stats come out for the company than I ever did using the service.
 
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I learned from reading this thread that my family bought Netflix in 2013 as a single household. We moved and separated but wanted to keep the account active. Because we moved to different locations, people consider me a criminal for "stealing" netflix, even though I never give my password out and it was a family account. By the way, I also pay for Disney +, Amazon Prime, and Paramount + (The latter two I share costs) and also Peacock.
When we first subscribed to Netflix we are all under one roof. Since then we are now under multiple roofs. So now I am going to continue paying for the premium because I want 4K. The remainder of the family that moved out is getting their own Netflix accounts.
I understand why Netflix is doing this, but to say someone is stealing the account when all people's situations are different is disingenuous. People move, have vacation homes, go to college, basically live life normally and Netflix can't understand that.
Netflix only cares their content is watch according to the TOS, which means the devices must check in to the home location. Netflix doesn’t know who is watching it only knows the mac or in case of a smart tv, some identifying information. I dont think it means watching on LTE/5G is prohibited.
I bet most of you are socialist leaning (Or liberal leaning) but to bootlick what they are doing and then say "You have to follow the rules" when I bet most people here were following the rules seems weird to me.
Wow way to pigeonhole those with opinions with a prejorative comment like that.
And I thought it was the right that kissed up to corporations.
This sentence should have rendered the above pointless.
I don't really watch netflix anymore. If I got rid of it it wouldn't be a loss.
So get rid of it. Why waste money on something you don’t watch.?
?
I might get it back for Stranger Things and I appreciated being able to watch Better Call Saul on it, but maybe I start renting TV seasons from libraries now.
I personally would rather give my money to Netflix as the time and effort to go to the library doesn’t seem worth it….to me.
 
So get rid of it. Why waste money on something you don’t watch.?
This reminds me of all the people that use more expensive cell plans for their iPhones. If you take that for granted even though you are spending more, why does the modest Netflix subscription costs bother some? I guess it must be based on one's principals, saving money on one, not thinking about the other. Yeah I know one is necessary, the other you can live without. In the states some cell deals give you Netflix for free anyway. :D
 
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Let's say you own the rights to a song file. You want $1000 for it, and I don't value it at $1000, so I won't be paying for it.

I download it from xyz torrent site instead, and add it to my library.

Are you worse off than if I hadn't downloaded it?
I was setting it at an amount that everyone can agree is unreasonable in order to have the discussion.

Set at a lower price, the discussion becomes what is a "reasonable" price. I was explaining the logic of, if something is not worth the price to me, than they're not worse off if I copy it. What is a "reasonable" price varies from person to person and situation to situation, so only serves to distract from the point.

But, you are correct that would you be worse off if nobody finds the price worth it-- that's why the record industry had to change their business model from the old "you have to by 14 bad songs to also get 2 good ones (records/tapes/CDs)" model to the $1/song model, when piracy came a calling. Which, really, was a decent market correction, as they were formally acting in a fairly monopolistic manner. I don't think the entertainment industry is far off that today, especially with all the consolidations that have been occurring.


I have an audible subscription, as it seems like good value to me. If it suddenly doubled in cost and gave me lower bit rate audio files (or, worse, started inserting ads), I'd switch to piracy for books.

It's pretty simple. To be selected over piracy is has to be better than piracy and at the price I value it at or cheaper. If the price is higher than how much I value it, I'll either skip it or pirate it.

I do wonder if you're aware of the contortions you're going through to justify taking something you aren't paying for.

  • You're working on the assumption that you're the one bad actor in a sea of lawful ones.
  • You're rounding small numbers to zero.
  • You're replacing the market dilemma of "something for dollars versus nothing for free" with "something for dollars versus that thing for free".
  • You're arguing out of one side of your mouth that your behavior leaves no one worse off and the other side that your behavior encourages more reasonable prices because they'd be worse off otherwise.
It is worth taking a minute to realize that these are all the reasons that companies like Netflix put restrictions on services. If you ask a Netflix exec whether they think it's wrong for someone's kid at college to use their parents plan, they may very well say no. But once you figure in what people will do to justify saving a buck, and maybe not all those shared passwords are because the kids are at your ex-wife's this month, then need to start locking things down to control the distribution of their product.
 
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Really hoping the funny part is going to be having people evaluate if they need Netflix and deciding to drop them altogether.
There was no evaluation and as stated above we are keeping Netflix.
Families share services my brother and parents are all in separate houses a few miles apart. If Verizon told us we couldn't be on a family plan anymore we would leave Verizon just like we left Netflix. We are still a family. It would be fun to have Apple say we can't share iCloud anymore due to location.
Apple’s business model is different than Netflix. There is no share hardware. If you have an iphone or iPad you can do whatever the software installed on the iphone lets you do. I pay for a family iCloud account, that’s part of Apple’s business model. Apple services can’t be consumed without an iphone, except for those exposed on the web and even then some subscription is required.
My family isn't smart enough to manage their own plan and I would shrink mine to a lower tier. Family is family. It's Netflix's choice and I hope they lose for it. I am against sharing with strangers but it's funny how most companies don't dictate what defines family. It's fine though I'm hoping we go the same route as Spain and they drop a few million customers as a result.
Sure hope that a company fails because you don’t like their TOS that’s schadenfreude. Netflix isn’t defining a family it’s defining a primary location.
No one in my family watches enough Netflix to have their own account that's just fact. I was the one paying for it my parents usually only did if I put something on for them when I was visiting and my brother could care less. I kept the account so any of them could watch if they wanted. Netflix thinks they are dying because there was 50 people using my account and had a schedule to make sure only 4 people were ever using it at once. Sound ridiculous? It's because it is.
The above is convulted. If you are saying you put on Netflix in your home for your guests, what’s the problem with that. If you are saying you gave out your password so that your family could watch Netflix at multiple locations, well that’s now gone. And if you cancel, Netflix won’t care.
They didn't get more money from my family they now get nothing from us.
And now you are within the tos and not stealing their content.
I really hope that's the decision people make.
It won’t go the way your think, imo.
My friend who lives in Colorado has a husband overseas most of the year. They just cancelled. No reason to try to talk to support or anything just drop Netflix.
This won’t encourage people. You can feel free to cancel and rant on the internet, but people will do what they want.
If the company dies maybe the content will end up with a better provider.
While anything is possible…remember when Tim Cook took the helm. Apple was doomed and Apple according to some still is doomed. People need to refresh their memories on what “doomed” really means.
I was honestly the ideal customer for them paying every month and maybe using the service 20 hours in a year between 4 family members.
Netflix didn’t care how much you used the service, nor that you were even a customer. They are providing a service and it’s up the customer to decide if the service is for them.
I was going to subscribe for a month once a year to maybe watch a few things I've decided against even doing that. They will either suffer and lower prices or finally offer a cheaper 4K single plan or they will do great and I guess I miss out on the couple things I want to watch. Not really going to lose any sleep over it.
So don’t subscribe for a month. You are missing out on content. I do agree a cheaper 4K option would probably bring up the subscriber numbers. But I guess Netflix did it’s homework.
People need to stop spouting this moral high ground trash and look at real situations.
Only you can decide if the service is worth it. People are posting their opinions the same as you as spouting yours.
Netflix has decided to define family their own way.
They have defined a location. They don’t care is it’s a college dorm room.
People have every right to complain about it. Plenty of us are doing the right thing and just voting with our wallets.
As people have a right to complain, people have a right to say it’s within Netflixs’ right to run their business as they see fit.
My favorite part of all of this is if I rent out my basement and three people move in they are family by Netflix's definition.
They are a location, not a family.
They could fully use my account and it’s completely legal per the TOS. So yeah Netflix has an interesting definition of "Family" I hope it bites them.
It probably won’t. As their are others who will now subscribe, where before they weren’t subscribers.
If Netflix was smart they would just let each screen have an account. Plenty of services that if you buy a family plan you just get that many people/slots for that price.
Their new TOS and plan doesn’t seem to suit your needs. Are you annoyed that Netflix is running their business the way they want?
They could lock it down so each person is stuck to their home to prevent sharing with strangers. So literally do what they are currently doing but 4 streams is 4 people where ever they may reside.
For whatever reason, Netflix doesn’t see the above as their business model. And I have to believe they did their homework, based on what happened in other countries prior to the US.
That would allow my friends Husband to use his account overseas. It would allow me to let my parents and brother have accounts and I would actually join again. The concept that I would pay over 20 bucks a month for 4 streams I can never use living by myself then pay more on top of that to let my parents watch is pretty hilarious.
It’s real hilarious. Sure 4 streams for 4 people. Maybe Netflix should lock down the 4 people with biometric authentication. That’s not the way it works. 4 streams simultaneously from 4 devices in the primary location.
I think I'll have more entertainment when Q2/Q3 stats come out for the company than I ever did using the service.
Or you may be surprised at the results that people don’t have the same thought process as you and see their numbers go up.
 
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To be selected over piracy is has to be better than piracy and at the price I value it at or cheaper. If the price is higher than how much I value it, I'll either skip it or pirate it.

Now I'm starting to wonder if you try to deduct all your actual purchases as charitable donations... "$3.99 donated in support of the arts."
 
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Families share services my brother and parents are all in separate houses a few miles apart. If Verizon told us we couldn't be on a family plan anymore we would leave Verizon just like we left Netflix. We are still a family. It would be fun to have Apple say we can't share iCloud anymore due to location. My family isn't smart enough to manage their own plan and I would shrink mine to a lower tier. Family is family. It's Netflix's choice and I hope they lose for it. I am against sharing with strangers but it's funny how most companies don't dictate what defines family. It's fine though I'm hoping we go the same route as Spain and they drop a few million customers as a result.
Family is not Family when it comes to different technology based services. You use the example of cell companies offering family group discounts. There they are just offering discounts for multiple lines no matter where you live, but via GPS they know where they are. In Netflix case it's not absolutely rigid for families such as the example of a son that lives a few days at home and then a few days close to school. That to Netflix is close enough for their rules to work. Going traveling or at work is in compliance beside at home. These examples of families all spread over well that shows up with MAC/IP address history if you don't see the devices never associated with the LAN at a home.

The interesting part of your post involves do you think this will reduce subscribers? If a lot of these people on a family plan weren't living together (friends/roommates also) and were separated that going to be a I got you. Since they weren't really paying for the service and you were, it will turn into why am I paying of (4) 4K connections? This is where it's questionable to which way this goes. If they miss Netflix you get another subscriber, if they were thinking it's a nice perk they might not miss it at all. But if I guess Netflix will actually gain subscribers not loose them depending on most situations but not everyones. Be curious to see which way it goes. :cool:
 
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I do wonder if you're aware of the contortions you're going through to justify taking something you aren't paying for.

  • You're working on the assumption that you're the one bad actor in a sea of lawful ones.
  • You're rounding small numbers to zero.
  • You're replacing the market dilemma of "something for dollars versus nothing for free" with "something for dollars versus that thing for free".
  • You're arguing out of one side of your mouth that your behavior leaves no one worse off and the other side that your behavior encourages more reasonable prices because they'd be worse off otherwise.
It is worth taking a minute to realize that these are all the reasons that companies like Netflix put restrictions on services. If you ask a Netflix exec whether they think it's wrong for someone's kid at college to use their parents plan, they may very well say no. But once you figure in what people will do to justify saving a buck, and maybe not all those shared passwords are because the kids are at your ex-wife's this month, then need to start locking things down to control the distribution of their product.
You can call it whatever you want.

The reality is, when you're selling an good which can be infinitely copied/distributed for near zero cost, you are competing with piracy. A viable business model has to be better (generally means easier, since piracy is already ad free and high quality) and priced such that people are more willing to pay for it than go through the effort of pirating. We know this to be true from the music industry.

For me, right now, that's still the case-- as by only paying for one service at a time (and rotating them out as I use up the content), the price is still quite reasonable. If they start, say, requiring year long contracts, that would push me past my limit and I'll be sailing the seas again.

Nixing account sharing is functionally a price hike. It's just another step down the path...
 
I think this thread has pretty much run its course. We are now down to "People on high horses", "thieves" and "Porn"!
 
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I learned from reading this thread that my family bought Netflix in 2013 as a single household. We moved and separated but wanted to keep the account active. Because we moved to different locations, people consider me a criminal for "stealing" netflix, even though I never give my password out and it was a family account.

People are just desperate for attention. They weren't campaigning that Netflix password sharing was thievery back when Netflix was Tweeting that "love is sharing a password" because they don't actually have a moral position on it - they just want the attention that comes from calling someone a thief.

This has been a good reminder that I'm paying $23 (Aus dollarydoos) per month for something I'm not really using. I kept it going as a "just in case" since my mother also uses it occasionally. Netflix just killed the "just in case" that was stopping me from analysing whether I really want to keep this subscription.

It's like a gym you don't go to anymore reminding you that you still have an active membership you're not using. Well, OK, thanks, I guess I'll cancel now that you've made me think about it.
 
Sharing the highest Netflix tier with 3 other people works out to $44, or $11 per head. I wish Netflix would just do this directly. Give me the option to have the 4k tier for 1-2 viewers at $12 a month, since I don’t have 4 people at home watching Netflix (it’s mostly just my mom).
 
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