Netflix Cracking Down on Password Sharing in Four More Countries, Including Canada

[thecombatwombat]

...

Actually, in the US at least, it kind of is. And the actual details are really, really, really relevant to what Netflix is doing right now.

Really interestingly, the bar for it being one, is basically Netflix's response to users they know are sharing despite what the TOS says. If Netflix does what they've been doing, being so lax about enforcement, federal prosecution is insanely unlikely. But if they "affirmatively revoke," send notices and try to force non-paying users to pay, make suspicious users verify their identity, and those users try to cicrumvent those things, it very well might escalate.

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The Blog is a platform in partnership with the NYU School of Law Engineering Center of Innovation Law and Policy.

blog.jipel.law.nyu.edu

 

[bookofxero]

Can we please consider a rule on this forum that you must identify if you are a lawyer or not when dispensing legal advice and opinions. I am not a lawyer, but I do know that many (most? all?) states have laws against practicing law without a license. In addition to that proposed rule, there should be a requirement to disclose conflicts of interest (eg, employment, stock ownership, etc).
Everyone is entitled to an opinion and to share their opinion, but that does not give you the right to try to add weight to your arguments by claiming - directly or otherwise - authority you do not possess.

 

[bookofxero]

Actually, in the US at least, it kind of is. And the actual details are really, really, really relevant to what Netflix is doing right now.

Really interestingly, the bar for it being one, is basically Netflix's response to users they know are sharing despite what the TOS says. If Netflix does what they've been doing, being so lax about enforcement, federal prosecution is insanely unlikely. But if they "affirmatively revoke," send notices and try to force non-paying users to pay, make suspicious users verify their identity, and those users try to cicrumvent those things, it very well might escalate.

JIPEL Blog

The Blog is a platform in partnership with the NYU School of Law Engineering Center of Innovation Law and Policy.

blog.jipel.law.nyu.edu

Thank you for citing a legal source’s opinion and explanation.

I have no vested interest in Netflix either way. I would sign up for a free month when they offered them and find no value in keeping the service beyond that. That, to me, is the real problem they need to address. Stop dumping tons of money into adoptions no one wants or cares for, making changes that alienate longtime fans while failing to attract new one, or pulling production budgets after the first 1-3 seasons figuring your have enough of a catalog now without completing the story. Make the value prop worth it and people will pay, and right now that value prop just is not there for many people to keep this service.

Also, I wonder how much of this will bite them as users who have been sitting on autopay are reminded that they have had a small bleed from their account that they only set up for their family member or significant other and never use. I wonder how much of the bite has already come from services that help identify parasitic subscription services growing in popularity.

 

[highberry]

I travel 100+ days a year for my job and I bring an appleTV with me so I can watch in hotels. how will that work?

 

[GizmoDVD]

Some of the people on this forum must have Netflix stocks.
even then with the exodus and cancellation I am not sure I understand their positions.
I never understood the mindset of defending a company which forces you to pay for ( 4 extra movie tickets to watch a movie at High res but limit who can use this tickets).
If you share your 21 dollar Netflix account with a friend. This is not thievery.
the only slithering, 2 face, bloodsucking one is Netflix . Why can’t all plans have 1080p /4k and we just pay for extra people ?
No, what they want is to force you to pay 21$ for 5 viewers, and waste 2 of them.
this is the most backward and wasteful way to implement a service. What is this? cable?

Every other streaming is going to move this direction as it's the only direction to being profitable and sticking around. You don't follow streaming news enough to see every single one of them are losing billions each year and need to increase revenue. Ad plans is one way, which everyone has now incorporated, and not allowing CLEAR account sharing is another.

No one is forcing you to get the highest tier. No one is forcing you to subscribe. Cancel. Go ahead. Netflix wants that to happen because eventually you and a few of the people that leech off of you will subscribe themselves when they want to watch a Netflix show.

 

[bookofxero]

I travel 100+ days a year for my job and I bring an appleTV with me so I can watch in hotels. how will that work?

Honestly? Probably through a long-lived auth token tied to the AppleTV if they gave it any thought at all.

 

[I7guy]

There must be something going on in the boardrooms of Netflix though. They didn't have to enact these new policies... and yet here we are.

Netflix used to say "Love is sharing a password"... but now they are changing their tune.

So I dunno.

Netflix should have added in parentheses; within your household. An incomplete slogan backfired.

Yeah people complain about Apple all the time. But there are obviously enough reasons to choose Apple products instead of the Android/Windows alternatives.

Netflix better be careful though. There are plenty of alternatives to Netflix.

Well yes and no. I already have besides Netflix; prime, d+, Apple TV, peacock. And the myriad of services I pay for through cable, such as HBO Max. Netflix still has content my family really likes so we are not getting rid of them.

All this negative attention might get people thinking "Do I really watch Netflix enough to keep paying for it every month? Maybe I'll try HBO Max"

It's a helluva lot easier to change streaming services than switch from iPhone/Mac to Samsung/Dell.

Yup.

 

[I7guy]

Some of the people on this forum must have Netflix stocks.
even then with the exodus and cancellation I am not sure I understand their positions.
I never understood the mindset of defending a company which forces you to pay for ( 4 extra movie tickets to watch a movie at High res but limit who can use this tickets).
If you share your 21 dollar Netflix account with a friend. This is not thievery.
the only slithering, 2 face, bloodsucking one is Netflix . Why can’t all plans have 1080p /4k and we just pay for extra people ?
No, what they want is to force you to pay 21$ for 5 viewers, and waste 2 of them.
this is the most backward and wasteful way to implement a service. What is this? cable?

Netflix is free to charge what they want and the customer is free to evaluate the price to value ratio. I defend Netflix to lose their corporate shirt if they make the wrong move.

 

[Michael Scrip]

It'll be interesting to see if Netflix's subscriber numbers go up after they enact these policies.

There's a lot of talk here saying that people who were using a shared password will get their own subscription.

But... the reason they were using a shared password is because they didn't want to get their own subscription.

So I'll be curious to see how this all shakes out.

 

[fwmireault]

Just because you won't be arrested doesn't mean it isn't illegal. If their terms of service say that it must be one household (defined as a group of people living in the same location) and you aren't living in the same location, it is illegal. Just because a law isn't enforced doesn't make it illegal.

You'll be happy to know that their terms of service don't limit exclusively the usage to one household.

From their terms of service: The Netflix service and any content accessed through the service are for your personal and non-commercial use only and may not be shared with individuals beyond your household unless otherwise allowed by your subscription plan. (Source: https://help.netflix.com/en/legal/termsofuse)

And terms of service have no force of law. Netflix very openly let people share accounts in the past. It's up to them to convince people to do otherwise now, but it is certainly not illegal.

 

[thecombatwombat]

Thank you for citing a legal source’s opinion and explanation.

I have no vested interest in Netflix either way. I would sign up for a free month when they offered them and find no value in keeping the service beyond that. That, to me, is the real problem they need to address. Stop dumping tons of money into adoptions no one wants or cares for, making changes that alienate longtime fans while failing to attract new one, or pulling production budgets after the first 1-3 seasons figuring your have enough of a catalog now without completing the story. Make the value prop worth it and people will pay, and right now that value prop just is not there for many people to keep this service.

Also, I wonder how much of this will bite them as users who have been sitting on autopay are reminded that they have had a small bleed from their account that they only set up for their family member or significant other and never use. I wonder how much of the bite has already come from services that help identify parasitic subscription services growing in popularity.

To your second point, what I think is really interesting here, it's a good bet Netflix knows all that really, really, really well. These are the "Netflix Prize" people after all. They practically invented "you might also like." Their data science game about such things is second to none.

I think the real gamble is their competitors. They are betting that if people don't have the option to share accounts, the overall amount of money being spent on streaming won't go down, it will more or less stay the same. And with it staying the same and some sharers going to ad supported tiers, their revenue will go up. And they're likely right.

But if Amazon and Disney hold out on enforcing the same, *Netflix* will lose. even if the overall spending by consumers stays the same.

 

[StudioG]

YES! And with the vehicle one, and analogy is will NF somehow spy on you and get you for having friends over to watch, since they don't actually live with you?

 

[sjsharksfan12]

If Corporations thought piracy was bad in the mid 2000s (The reason why they were created, from a streaming perspective) by the way, it's going to get a whole lot worse in the months and years to come. We might be entering a new golden era of piracy if other streamers follow suit.

 

[thecombatwombat]

If Corporations thought piracy was bad in the mid 2000s (The reason why they were created, from a streaming perspective) by the way, it's going to get a whole lot worse in the months and years to come. We might be entering a new golden era of piracy if other streamers follow suit.

It seems more like we'd be leaving one? The golden era is now.

 

[The Mad Kiwi]

For a company that is struggling to retain subscribers, it's surprising that they're so keen to piss off the subscribers that they still have.

 

[sjsharksfan12]

It seems more like we'd be leaving one? The golden era is now.

Not if subscribers leave and end up pirating something because these subscription plans are too expensive and they add up. A 19.99 a month subscription plan could turn into the price of cable depending on how many subscriptions you have a month. I'm actually surprised they are going after Passward sharers first instead of finding ways to keep subscribers for longer than a month, like having them sign a year contract.

 

[visualseed]

I didn't leave Netflix because they raised their rates or started cracking down on account sharing. I left because they started stuffing the service with crap content and habitually canceled really good shows midway though their story arcs e.g. "Mindhunter" , "1899", "Archive 81", "The OA" , "Altered Carbon" , and many more in exchange for shows that they should have know were crap in the early production stages e.g. "Cowboy Bebop" and "Jupiter's Legacy" but went ahead with anyway.

 

[Canyda]

It'll be interesting to see if Netflix's subscriber numbers go up after they enact these policies.

There's a lot of talk here saying that people who were using a shared password will get their own subscription.

But... the reason they were using a shared password is because they didn't want to get their own subscription.

So I'll be curious to see how this all shakes out.

I would argue there's a difference between "didn't want" and "didn't have to".

 

[Canyda]

For what it's worth, both my non-resident family members who were sharing our account have agreed to pay the $8 to get their own sub-account.

 

[antnythr]

Under the old plan, if I wanted to have the premium plan shared with my sister, mom, and dad that would be $20.99.

Under the new plan, I would have to cut someone off (only max of 2 additional accounts), and it would still cost either $36.97, or $57.96 if I didn’t cut anyone off by paying for another separate account.

Netflix can try whatever they like with their pricing schemes, but I just cancelled my service on the news that this nonsense was coming to Canada. There are far too many things that eat into my wallet and in my opinion their content isn’t good enough to justify the insane cost they’re asking.

I hope this strategy fails hard.

 

[klrobinson999]

Why am I not surprised that Apple should be looked at as the pioneer with their Apple One offering? Up to 6 separate accounts on one plan, with no "household" rules or IP restrictions. Apple doesn't even try to define what a "family" is.

 

[kaycrystal626]

Good, now people can go back to Kodi.

 

[Mainsail]

One of our subscriptions (Hulu?) allows you to purchase more simultaneous streams on mobile devices (I bought 5) but only allows one stream at a time on a TV device (AppleTV, Chromcast, etc..). So, the way I understand it, they are ok with us sharing streams with our "kids", who live all over the country, on their Laptops, iPads, iPhones but they want only one home TV at a time. That seemed reasonable to me.

There is a possibility I misunderstood the TOS, but I am not going to wade through 30 pages of lawyer double-talk to try to find an issue.

 

[Fleeecy]

Canadian here. Saw the changes @ Netflix this morning. Until now we were paying the 4 screen plan. Our 17 and 21 yo daughters were sharing it from campus. This change made us realize that we don’t actually watch Netflix enough to justify paying an extra $16 for the service. Plus taxes.

Now, instead of a $21 Netflix plan, we have a Crave plan and we reactivated Disney+.

Thanks Netflix! If you had not changed your plan restrictions, we’d still be your customers. You made us look at alternatives this way, and we will not be coming back.

Ciao Netflix

 

[ThisBougieLife]

My sister and I have been sharing an account since we were in high school. And the fact is that I don't really watch Netflix much anymore, mostly just for cooking/travel shows. At this rate I will probably just cancel and potentially open a new account if there's a show I really want to watch (which is what I do with HBO Max).