
Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-08/netflix-hbo-and-cable-giants-are-coming-for-password-cheats
======
LeoNatan25
No worries, I'll just use the torrent sharers. I bet those will give me a
constant 4K quality on all my devices, no ridiculous DRM, get to keep them
once I terminate my "subscription", etc. Oh and it's free, not 10-15$ USD for
each service.

~~~
kempbellt
I may (or may not) have built my own Netflix competitor. It had more content
than all of the major providers combined.

Legal buffer: I will not say what the content was. It may have all been non-
copyrighted cat videos ;)

The service was available cross region. Stored videos in multiple resolutions
for streamability in low-bandwidth situations. No DRM bs. It cost me under
$400/month to run the whole service, and I could access it from any device,
anywhere I had internet.

I gave access to a few friends and family and they all chipped in to help
cover expenses (it was never profitable). I ran it for a few months before I
started to lose interest in maintaining it - it was mostly just a proof-of-
concept, and fell back to Netflix/HBO/other subs for convenience.

I applaud Netflix, HBO, etc for offering competitive solutions to monopolistic
cable companies and other restrictive media outlets, but this will _always_
remain a problem.

Once you create a piece of art and put it out for the world to see, you
_cannot_ control how/when/where it will be shown. Stop trying... Just make it
more convenient for people to pay to view it.

Going after people for low-level copyright violation, like sharing a password,
is childish.

~~~
comeondude
Dude ...

This comes off as incredibly self-entitled and arrogant.

That piece of art? It takes years and tremendous amount of people hours to
bring these films into existence your enjoyment. I grew up in Hollywood, in
family of filmmakers. My friends are actors, producers, and well anybody else
who is involved in the business - and we all dedicate unbelievable hours of
love and labor into the “non copyrighted cat videos”

Yes. The system isn’t perfect, but ... what you’re doing is quite frankly,
stealing. It’s offensive. We’re entitled to our livelihoods as much as you
are.

Show some gratitude please.

~~~
sp332
It's not that you can't make money. It's that this particular business model
doesn't jibe with reality. There's a reason iTunes switched to DRM-free
formats early on. For video games, piracy can actually increase profits,
because people really like a try-before-you-buy model. (Piracy is not as
helpful for movies.) It's possible, actually not super difficult, to make
money for "bringing films into existence" without trying to keep 100% control
over distribution. Check out all the Patreon accounts that put out freely-
available YouTube videos for a trivial example.

~~~
LanceH
Or, you could just not watch what you haven't paid for.

~~~
sp332
That's one option among several. For example, don't take money for content the
user hasn't experienced yet.

~~~
bitwize
It's also the only legal option for the audience to take. The companies who
own the copyright make the content available under certain terms. Don't like
the terms? DON'T WATCH THE FUCKING CONTENT. If you do somehow contrive to
watch the content despite not accepting the terms, then you are stealing and
will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Capisce?

~~~
LeoNatan25
How rich that you speak about law, yet insist calling it “stealing”, when the
law is very clear that copyright infringement or breaking a civil agreement is
not stealing.

------
joshstrange
> If none of those tactics work, pay-TV subscribers could someday be required
> to sign into their accounts using their thumbprints.

This feels like an idea from some idiot corporate suit who said "Well there
are fingerprint readers on phones, let's use that to lock down accounts"
without understanding that your app just gets as "Yes" or a "No" when you ask
the phone to scan a fingerprint. The apps themselves don't get to the see the
scan.

> The pay-TV industry is projected to lose $6.6 billion in revenue from
> password sharing and piracy this year, according to Parks Associates. By
> 2024, the number could grow to $9 billion, the research firm said.

BULLSHIT, we heard this SAME argument about piracy. Piracy/Account sharing DO
NOT equal a 100% loss in sales. I'm willing to concede there are some people
stealing who would pay but I can promise you it's nowhere near 100%.

~~~
megablast
> This feels like an idea from some idiot corporate suit who said "Well there
> are fingerprint readers on phones, let's use that to lock down accounts"
> without understanding that your app just gets as "Yes" or a "No" when you
> ask the phone to scan a fingerprint. The apps themselves don't get to the
> see the scan.

I don't know what your point is, but that would work just as well for them
too.

~~~
joshstrange
How would that work for them?

All I have to do is login once on my friend's device then from then on even if
the app asks for biometrics it will work since it will be THEIR biometrics.

Also I can add 5 different people's fingerprints to my device (if that even
what the companies are trying to prevent, which it's not).

------
magashna
> “I feel like I’m beating my head against the wall,” Tom Rutledge, the chief
> executive officer of Charter Communications Inc., said during an earnings
> call last month. “It’s just too easy to get the product without paying for
> it.”

Boo hoo. All these companies thinking they can split all their content up and
get people to pay for every single service are in for a (totally expected)
surprise.

I'll share my plex server with friends and family long before I pay for more
than 1-2 services.

~~~
criley2
The entitlement people feel to steal is always surprising. Especially on this
board. I understand a lot of reddit is younger and irresponsible so piracy-as-
the-norm is a popular trope, but among the engineers whose livelihoods depend
on subscription models, we still promote service theft without so much as a
hint of shame?

If the economics of a service don't make sense to you, then do not subscribe.
But to turn around and steal from the engineers and artists who work to create
these experiences is just indefensible. You are not entitled to television
shows.

~~~
maxsilver
> The entitlement people feel to steal is always surprising.

 _It 's not stealing when you already paid in full_.

Sharing my Netflix password with my wife and/or child _is not stealing_ , I
paid in full for that account, and have now for many many years.

My Plex server is full of DVDs and BluRays I paid full retail price for
(that's $20 to $30 USD each), it's _not stealing_ to use it, and it's _not
stealing_ to let some friends occasionally borrow films from it.

The entitlement companies feel to micromanage the lives of their _paid-in-full
customers_ is ridiculous. If you don't want people to have your product, stop
selling them the product. And if you sell someone a product, don't act all
surprised that they now _have the product_ and are free to use it accordingly.

~~~
reaperducer
Wife and child is one thing. But the problem the problem is that people are
sharing with people who aren't relatives. Old college roommates from 15 years
ago who live on the other side of the country. Coworkers. People they meet in
bars. None of these are legitimate.

I get the attraction of getting content for free. I used to pirate software
when I was young and broke. But I'm an adult now and I do adult things,
meaning I pay for what I consume.

Amazingly, people can survive without consuming other people's content. You
don't _have_ to watch a streaming service. There are other things in life to
do.

Much like I think people who don't vote forfeit the right to complain about
politicians, I think people who steal content don't get to complain about the
quality of the available content.

~~~
basch
>Old college roommates from 15 years ago who live on the other side of the
country. Coworkers. People they meet in bars. None of these are legitimate.

But you can lend those people a Blu-Ray, which only deprives __you __of
watching it while they have it.

~~~
reaperducer
Which is perfectly fine. Just as it's perfectly fine for you to purchase a
Netflix subscription for someone else.

~~~
criddell
Wouldn't the analogy be that you lend them your service credentials and don't
use it until they are done with it?

~~~
basch
Rehosting and serving that file is costing the streaming company electricity,
bandwidth, cpu etc. Your agreement with them is that you can press pay an
unlimited number of times in a month, but they didnt agree to serve that file
to other people in other households. It's not quite the same as lending
someone a disc, because in this case you agreed to terms of service that
specifically address sharing.

~~~
LeoNatan25
Going by that logic, if I watch a movie twice or more, I should be charged
more? What is the difference, “electricity” and “bandwidth” wise if I watch
twice, or me and my coworker watch once?

~~~
basch
You signed an agreement for your own use, not to allow your friends to use
their servers. Its about the agreement you made.

~~~
LeoNatan25
But that's moving the goalpost. You said that sharing an account has a cost. I
ask you, if I watch once and my wife watches another time, how is that
different from me watching once and my coworker watching at another time?

------
crikli
> “If you ask any cohort of young people if they will ever pay for Netflix or
> video services, the answer is unequivocally no,” said Mike McCormack, an
> analyst at Guggenheim Securities.

Good grief what a stupid quote to use as a pretext for tacitly supporting
these measures.

When I was “young”, whatever that undefined number means, I swore there were
lots of things I’d never pay for. Streaming music services, are a germane
example. Then I got older, developed a bit of discretionary income, my time
got more valuable, and the services become the best option. The once “no way
ever” is now an unthought monthly cost.

~~~
chadlavi
also -- if a demographic says they don't want to pay for your product, why
would you think cutting off their free access to it would change their mind?
There's a lot of competition in the streaming video space.

~~~
x2f10
Corporate ego. Executives think their media is in-demand and without
substitute. Most young people have already replaced traditional media with
YouTube & Twitch.

------
usrusr
Tolerating a small group of users on a single account is a soft power to keep
subscription hopping in check. Rotating subscriptions is so much easier when
you don't have to create consensus amongst loved ones. It's a magic brand
loyalty machine.

~~~
tonyjstark
I couldn't agree more. There is always one friend still using the service
while you're already saturated and because of that the subscription is kept
instead of cancelled. Once cancelled, a service can have a hard time to win a
user back.

But it seems the industry does not want to learn: don't make it harder to use
your service for the honest users. They're worth it to keep happy!

~~~
tracker1
I've cancelled Netflix a couple of times. What actually got me back is the
fact that they didn't inundate my inbox like some services and stores do. I
mean like one email every couple months. There are some stores I get at least
half a dozen a week.

They also didn't pull what XM/Serious do and make it nearly impossible to
cancel. 4x 40m phone calls, then all I wanted to do was drop one of 3 radios
when I sold a car. After the third call drop after a 40min hold time I
cancelled the entire service. If I ever use them again, it will be a
disposable single use cc #.

In the end, 2-3 streaming services is all I'm willing to pay for. More than
that and if rather pirate just for the usability aspect, let alone the costs.

~~~
devicetray0
I guess instead of email, they [Netflix] have been spamming my phone about
every new original show they created, usually something I'm not interested in.
It got annoying enough one week to actually go turn notifications off.

------
floatingatoll
Imagine how all these comments glorifying "let's steal paid content and share
it for free because content should be free" must read to a YCombinator founder
who is misled into thinking that it's okay to sell content for money.

What is even the point of starting a startup that offers content of any kind
if people are going to do everything in their power to rip you off, share your
value everyone they know for free, and claim that they have the moral high
ground while doing so?

Do those glorifying torrents here also use ad-blockers, to ensure that
absolutely no revenue whatsoever reaches a content creator, no matter how much
you enjoy that content? Is the goal of revenue starvation here to simply bring
an end to content creation altogether?

It's hard to see what other possible outcome exists given the overlap amongst
HN readers between "I torrent" and "I adblock". I've never hoped more strongly
that y'all are _not_ representative of reality than I have reading these
comments today.

~~~
sp332
iTunes sells DRM-free music. They seem to be doing just fine. Trying to keep
100% control over distribution is not at all necessary to make a profit.

~~~
lern_too_spel
Apple Music has DRM and is a subscription service like these video services.

------
golover721
These threads are always interesting on HN. I'm not going to pass judgement on
folks who think they its ok or not ok to pirate media based on cost or
sometimes how difficult it is to obtain "legitimately".

What I do think is interesting is that folks seem to solely place the blame on
the large media distributors and seem to place no blame on the content
creators. Creators have a huge influence on the industry, from the writers, to
directors to the actors etc. Big names in the industry could easily choose to
pressure to change things. But they don't, so they are just as much to blame
as the distributors themselves.

~~~
Sebguer
Do you blame individual engineers for the business decisions that their
companies make?

~~~
golover721
That’s somewhat different. Individual engineers are more analogous to the crew
working on a particular production. They for the most part are not in a
position to use their authority to sway the production. Unlike say a famous
writer, actor or director would be.

------
dfxm12
_“If you ask any cohort of young people if they will ever pay for Netflix or
video services, the answer is unequivocally no,” said Mike McCormack, an
analyst at Guggenheim Securities._

Ah, yes, " _young people_ " are the problem here. No one born before the 90s
has ever stolen cable...

Growing up, tons of families had chipped cable boxes in my neighborhood
(including cops & judges). My dad calls me once a week to ask how to stream
this or that for free.

What a joke.

------
koolba
> But taking more aggressive measures poses risks. The people using services
> for free — especially younger consumers — may never agree to sign up for a
> subscription, no matter how many hassles they endure. That means companies
> would mostly just be alienating paying customers, who could get frustrated
> and stop using an app or cancel their service. In other words, there’s
> plenty of downside and possibly little upside.

They should offer a lowball “add a user” price because Johnny Millenial might
get his parents to tack on a few bucks but he’s not going to sign up for the
$150+/mo package.

I’m also surprised they haven’t cracked down on the source IP addresses. It’d
be trivial to look at the net bandwidth and see that the usage is at a totally
different physical address (and not just a mobile phone).

~~~
ghaff
>I’m also surprised they haven’t cracked down on the source IP addresses. It’d
be trivial to look at the net bandwidth and see that the usage is at a totally
different physical address (and not just a mobile phone).

I regularly use these services when I'm traveling. If any of them start
restricting me to my home IP (which isn't static anyway) or otherwise start
making it harder for me to use their service, I'll be dropping them in a
hurry. There's a lot of content out there and not really any that I _must_
have.

~~~
koolba
I’m referring to massive consistent usage from the same IP. Most residential
IP addresses are dynamic but remain fixed for weeks or months at a time. It’d
be easy to see that the same IP not associated with the actual customer
account has streamed every day for the past month.

Hell I bet they could go a step further and identify the exact person as well!
There’s so little competition that it’s likely the account holder and sharer
are on the same ISP (ex: you both have Comcast). They would know the name and
account on the sharer’s source IP and, more importantly, that it’s not the
original account owner.

~~~
ghaff
Yes. I'm sure it's very "easy" and wouldn't end up making mistakes and
generating lots of customer support calls and subscription cancelations.

~~~
papln
As long as they are careful and work their way down from the most egregious
offendors, it wouldn't be such a big deal.

They could also do techniques like gentle shaming "Your account has been used
from 46 locations in 7 states today. We might start charging for this level of
account-sharing in the future"

------
AllegedAlec
> The pay-TV industry is projected to lose $6.6 billion in revenue from
> password sharing and piracy this year

Implying that EVERYONE using it 'illegally' would keep watching if they
couldn't access it for free.

~~~
close04
Yeah, it's the same "logic" as when calculating losses to torrenting by
equating the number of pirated copies with the number of lost sales. Of course
they ignore the fact that the vast majority of those pirates would _never_
consider paying even if pirating was absolutely impossible.

~~~
croon
I'll venture a guess that a good portion of those downloaders aren't even
watching everything they download to begin with.

I have bought 10s if not 100s of DVDs and Blurays that to this day are still
in plastic wrap, as well as books with uncracked spines. I don't think I'm
that weird, and that "tsundoku" [0] is likely a thing with downloaders as
well.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku)

~~~
hiccuphippo
And gamers with dozens of unplayed games.

~~~
me_me_me
Hey, hey! I am going to play them when I am in a mood for it.

Thats the reason I put to_finish label on them in my steam catalogue xD

------
II2II
A slightly different perspective:

I have zero interest in copyright infringement for video content. I am okay
with streaming and have no desire to archive what I watch. I am okay with the
10 to 15 USD per month subscription model as long as it is easy to subscribe
and unsubscribe.

If my claims make it sound like video content is unimportant to me, it is
true. Part of the reason why it it not significant in my life is that it is
difficult to access. If I have something in particular in mind and have to
figure out where it is available, they have probably lost me. If I know where
something is available and have to subscribe to a service to access that
singular title, they have lost me. Whenever I look for something and discover
that it is not available in my region, I have even less incentive to put in
the effort in the future. Whenever I look for something that I have already
viewed and discover that it is no longer available, the frustration simply
grows. Simply put, so much effort has been put into placing barriers to access
that have lost interest in even making an attempt to use these services. Given
that some people place a higher priority on video content, I can understand
why they share passwords or find other means.

What is the solution? In this highly biased to the point of near disinterest
opinion: make it easier to legally access content. Exclusive and time limited
contracts with service providers may offer short term gains, but they
encourage piracy among consumers or even turn off consumers completely.

------
filmgirlcw
Lol. Good luck.

I’m the weirdo millennial who pays for cable and Netflix and Hulu and
Criterion Channel and Amazon and Disney+ and Apple TV+ (well, that’s free for
the first year) and basically every video service offered, but I still share
passwords with people.

Like, my cable provider (who gives me access to HBO, Showtime, Starz, cable
and networks on-demand and live stuff) offers me 6 or 7 user accounts. I have
one. My husband has one. And then I create logins for my friends.

Like, I firmly believe in paying for content (as evidenced by the fact that I
pay hundreds of dollars a month for it), but I’m also not blind to the reality
of the current world, which is that people like me are what prop the business
up. Plus, I pay Netflix like $18 a month or whatever for 4K and however many
simultaneous steams. Netflix shouldn’t care what cities those streams are
taking place in — especially since for half the year I’m out of town in a
foreign country for half the month.

But what these companies risk, whether they know it or not, is risking making
paying for content such a pain in the ass that the few of us keeping this
industry afloat will just bail and torrent or use newsgroups or whatever.

I pay because it’s generally easier and is convenient and b/c I want to
support creative work. But if it’s hard to use what I pay for and less
convenient, I have no problem putting those several hundred dollars a month
into seedboxes, adding redundancy to my NAS, and in spinning up VPS’ located
around the globe.

~~~
techsupporter
I do the same thing. I pay for cable TV including HBO--through Comcast, no
less--because I want to pay for the content I am watching. However, my friend
who lives in Ireland has a subaccount on my cable account and uses a VPN to
watch sports. And I run my cable TV through my Plex server to both DVR content
and to be able to watch whatever is coming through the coax to my house
without being told "you can't stream outside the United States" or whatever.

I will absolutely pay for the content but I have no shame in reformatting it
into something that then makes sense for me. I happen to disagree with people
who _could_ pay for it and don't, but that's on their conscience and
shoulders.

------
excalibur
> “I feel like I’m beating my head against the wall,” Tom Rutledge, the chief
> executive officer of Charter Communications Inc., said during an earnings
> call last month.

I feel like you're screwing your customers, so ain't we both content.

------
Dobbs
For the love of all that is holy let us split our netflix account out! My user
is on my brothers account from when we lived together a long time ago. Every
year I check to see if there is a way to split the user out. Every year I
remain disappointed and continue on using the same account.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Is there some sort of data you require from your user? I guess there's a
preferences algorithm you may have cultivated, but that's really it. Unless
you really care about having handcrafted the Netflix algorithm, it kind of
feels like that's just an excuse.

~~~
croon
I have the premium Netflix subscription level (4 streams), and Netflix
accounts are personal. Obviously I share this with my wife and daughter.

I want to split out my accounts too, for both the above reason, and that I
don't like sending them a password so they can log in on their devices.

Why can't we have our own accounts and manage them into a family account?

But since accounts are personal, do Netflix expect me to watch 4 streams
simultaneously on my 4 different devices, using my 4 eyes with my 4 brain
halves?

I recognize that I'm probably not classified under "password cheat", but their
still current solution feels really dirty.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Yeah, that's a different use case than above - I'm fairly certain that's
exactly what the family plan is meant to be used for - multiple users in the
same household.

Even then it's not great that you have to share the master account password
which contains the billing information (maybe they need a read-only and admin
password, but now we're complicating it past the "password123" crowd), but
really that seems to inadvertently encourage good password discipline - if you
don't trust the people using your account, they probably don't qualify as a
user on your account.

~~~
ghaff
Some of us who have at least some involvement with security do have to cringe
a bit at this. Yeah, I have a unique password for Netflix and there's only so
much harm someone with access to the account could do. But _don 't share
passwords_ even with people you trust is still ingrained enough that it just
feels wrong and certainly isn't a good practice in general.

Who knows who a kid, for example, is going to share the password with?

Though, as you say, requiring the password to be shared to share the account
probably helps limit how casually people will give others access.

~~~
croon
This is exactly my problem. I can't imagine any less than at least 75% of all
engineers at Netflix cringing at the current solution regarding shared
passwords.

A further gripe is them not having a netflix.com/link system in place for
settop boxes, so I need to enter a randomized 30+ character/multi-word phrase
or whatever scheme password using a directional remote on my Nvidia Shield.
Not often, but when I do it's with seething rage.

------
stevenjohns
Perhaps Neflix, HBO and Cable Giants don't realise that in 2019 the internet
is super fast, storage is super cheap and piracy is easier than ever.

If they want to take an inch, I'm prepared to revert to hosting a media server
for all of my friends and family with all sorts of wonderful cat videos.

~~~
notatoad
Yeah, i'm a somewhat reformed pirate, and the only reason i've switched from
piracy to netflix and prime is because netflix is easier. If it stops being
easier, i'll be back to piracy pretty quickly

~~~
jplayer01
I was subscribed to Netflix for years until recently. I’ve given up. It’s the
high seas for me. And anybody who argues I just want stuff for free is
twisting the narrative. I was and still am more than happy to reward content
creators as long as they make some effort towards ensuring my convenience. All
I see now is maximum rent-seeking, so I’m out.

------
missosoup
I still pay for netflix+spotify but at this point I'm spending more per month
on my piracy setup and associated fees. Because it's more convenient, more
centralised, more timely, and more portable.

The USA entertainment industry doesn't want my money.

It's funny to think back on the original MPAA ads about hooded thieves robbing
poor creators of their hard-earned cash, in light of how the last decade
turned out with the golden age of streaming followed by MPAA gutting it again
in their never-ending greed.

------
xg15
I predict the following article in two years:

"Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Co-Watchers"

"A coalition that includes Netflix Inc., HBO, cable-industry titans and Smart
TV manufacturers is stepping up efforts to crack down on people sitting on a
couch and watching a movie together, discussing new measures to close a
loophole that could be costing companies billions of dollars in lost revenue
each year."

------
Shivetya
they should simply have published numbers for how many simultaneous stream
they permit and just drop the oldest connection active when a new one would
exceed the limit. that is a soft way to clamp down, eventually those sharing
will tire of it if they have too many friends borrowing it.

now the idea of having to put in a number texted to me to continue watching is
annoying enough to drop a service.

not sure how much room the other streaming services will have for raising fees
to compensate for sharing with the pricing on D+

~~~
Cthulhu_
Well, from experience I know Netflix's accounts only have 1, 2 or 4
simultaneous streams (for family sharing), so there's already restrictions in
place for amount of content consumed per paid account. I'd say that's already
a pretty fair deal / limitation, and if anything it's helped family members /
people who you share an account with get used to watching Netflix.

What I'm saying is that they allowed it on purpose, to make Netflix more
prolific with consumers. If they crack down on it now, it probably won't
suddenly cause a big increase in subscribers though.

------
cdcox
Also seems to ignore that social pressure keeps people from account hoping.

Personally, I'd be much more likely to a la carte services on a month by month
basis if I didn't have the subtle social pressure that 'well I'm not using
this but my friends X, Y, and Z all are'. Even lacking the pressure element it
seems like a small 'gift' to my family and friends who are on it and that it's
not 'going to waste'. There is even the element of watching tings your friends
are watching that keeps you watching. If they eliminated that I'd probably
never keep more than one active at a time and likely not even that. Also once
I've dropped a service for nonuse I'm much less likely to go back.

------
temporallobe
The CEO of Charter is banging his head against the wall? How about legitimate,
paying consumers (such as myself) who happily pay for these services yet
endure pure bullshit like unskippable ads on DVR recordings or disabling
accounts because of IP address changes? These chumps are making money hand-
over-fist yet feel like they’re “losing billions” to password sharers. If
these streaming services move to the tactics the article mentions, consumers
will drop them like a hot potato. I can tell you that the day Hulu (for
example) starts using crap like 2FA to allow me to continue watching a stream
is the day I would cancel my account without hesitation.

------
manojlds
Piracy will come for Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants

~~~
Endy
Piracy already came for them. Netflix digital video content is on a tracker
usually within a few hours of release.

~~~
steve19
I think he means for the users. A lot of people who gave up piracy are going
to return when 6 different services are required to watch the four shows they
like in any given month.

------
scarface74
I bought my dad a 49" Roku TV. When I set it up for him, I used his cable
credentials to log in to all of the apps that could use his credentials.
Within a week, they all wanted him to revalidate. He's not going to go on a
computer, go to an activation link, choose his cable provider, login with his
credentials, and put in a code.

I finally gave up. I deleted all of the apps that required a cable login and
signed him into my Amazon Prime Video and Netflix Account, I also installed
the Roku channel (a few free movies), Crackle (free with commercials), and my
Plex server. That was more than enough for him.

------
squarefoot
This is a lost battle. There are devices out there with a HDMI port in and
Ethernet out that can remove any protection then stream everything on a
broadband line. Make them upload to a decentralized service and just one user
can cover an entire continent and beyond without sharing any credentials, and
the traffic is encrypted so no way to bust the originating account unless
either they get someone inside the circle, or hide different data among the
streams so that they can be identified and shut down. Looks like some services
are already doing this, but apparently the identification data is found and
polluted/deleted.

Paying for use doesn't scale. It did when there were 2 good TV series, 3 good
movies and a dozen interesting sports events per year, but today a normal user
cannot pay for access to a fraction of a fraction of what is being produced,
and paying for the single event is more costly than a yearly subscription. It
simply doesn't scale anymore and should be rethought differently. Make the
access to media arranged as flat rate for everything in categories, that is,
Sports, Movies, TV series, News, Concerts etc. at a very convenient rate, say
€5 per category, all included, per year. That would scale as hell, probably
increasing the user base by two orders of magnitude. Fair advertising would do
the rest. Of course this scenario doesn't go well with the principle of
maximizing profits no matter what, and that old say "the best seller isn't the
one whose customers are the most happy, but the one whose customers although
angry would continue to buy anyway".

------
throwaway5752
I consider myself obnoxiously sanctimonious on this matter. I will not steal
video. The furthest I will go is to rip dvds to play on my own Plex, and I
won't share access to it. I do not and would not share passwords. I pay to
stream content I don't buy. This is a matter of personal honor.

That said, there is a maximum inconvenience I will bear. I can live without
movies or tv. Honestly, I'd probably live better.

This feels a lot like 20 years ago with Napster and Limewire. I hope the
content industry has learned something in the interim.

------
chadlavi
This is a great way to encourage me to go back to torrenting their content,
but I know that I represent a tiny minority of their users. I'm sure this will
work with non-technical folks.

------
hiccuphippo
Looks like this is going to become another case of piracy turning easier to
use than the legitimate product.

------
siffland
I have netflix, hulu, sling and amazon (mostly for prime delivery). The family
asked me if i would get Disney, i said no. Kind of wanted to watch the Picard
series, but not going to get CBS access (or whatever it is on) for 1 show. I
will wait to see if it survives a few seasons and get the dvd's or something.
Just tired of the streaming fragmentation, and the cable is no better because
it is missing all the content and way to expensive.

The entire scene is frustrating, perhaps it is just me. I now watch a lot less
than i use to, it is pretty much just put on "Family Guy" or "Rick and Morty"
in the background and do other things (i have all those on DVD's so i just set
the plex player to keep playing, although now plex is going to stream
to....sighhhh)

------
eutropia
I think one trend not to be ignored is the democratization of media piracy. It
used to be that only the motivated and tech savvy had access to vast troves of
content at their disposal; but recently sharing the spoils has become easier
and easier thanks to Plex and the general improvement in software dedicated to
piracy.

Now, and I suspect, increasingly, the "technology adoption curve" comes into
effect: almost everyone knows someone that has access to a Plex server. As the
adoption curve progresses, it will put pressure on price and convenience for
access to media. The companies that dont piss poeple off will last the
longest.

------
sys_64738
TV execs need to stop seeing consumers as thieves. This mentality that viewers
are the enemy hasn’t historically worked yet they keep repeating it. One exec
even accused consumers of being thieves for not watching network ads.

If execs actually listened to consumers then most of these problems would go
away. E.g. no DRM in music. But it took Steve Jobs to convince music execs of
that.

Execs are only greedily into chasing the money as they are not generally
technically savvy. They also don’t understand economics as they always trot
out bogus lost revenue numbers where such revenue was never possible as those
people wouldn’t watch if they had to pay money.

------
me_me_me
All I hear them say is:

"Hey customers, it's time to dust off your pirate hats!".

------
crazygringo
Huh? You don't need password resets or thumb prints... that sounds ridiculous.

Just limit playing to one device at a time. Spotify does this and it works
great, and the instant sync/control actually makes it seem like a feature
rather than a limitation. Most people watch in the evening at around the same
time, so problem solved _real_ quick.

Or pay an additional fee for a family plan to allow a set number of multiple
users to stream simultaneously, if Mom and Dad want to watch something in the
living room and the kids want to watch something upstairs.

~~~
aianus
Netflix already limit the number of simultaneous devices playing and you can
already pay more for more devices.

~~~
edgartaor
Then I don't know what they are talking about. People is already paying for
those extra users.

------
brentonator
Meanwhile, AT&T and Comcast made it so difficult to sign-in and stay signed in
let alone all the false positive "this is only available at your house"
nitpicking that I rarely was able to use my TV service except when I was ass-
in-seat in the living room.

I do not plan on ever getting cable again. If NetFlix wants to work with them
to start being anal about how I use the service too I know who's on the
chopping block next.

------
Grue3
Just allow account users to charge the owner's credit card (via in-app
purchases etc.). That'll stop password sharing real quick.

~~~
Gustomaximus
And cancellation of said account for many with young kids.

------
thewhitetulip
> The possible measures include requiring customers to change their passwords
> periodically or texting codes to subscribers’ phones that they would need to
> enter to keep watching, according to people familiar with the matter.

Hahaha and what makes them so sure that people won't share the new password/
the one time code?

These execs re seriously disconnected with reality.

------
fma
Presidential candidate Andrew Yang was asked if his platform of $1000 a month
Universal Basic Income was passed, how much would be spent locally. He said
the majority of it would...but not all, and joked because people would spend
it on their own Netflix account.

Based on the comments here, I doubt that'd even get people to buy their own
subscription.

------
wolco
The remedies seem foolish.

Require them to enter a text-code. If the person who is sharing wants the
other person to have the code they would just forward the text. All one is
doing is making it more difficult for everyone in the hopes of making it more
difficult for one group of people.

You buy 4 streams you should get 4. Trying to determine who is watching is
fruitless.

------
siproprio
Well, I used to pay for a Netflix subscription but I canceled it out of spite
because they started forcing me to have animated video previews and trailers,
with audio.

I did not share passwords, but I would also totally cancel purely out of spite
and find something else to do.

I also starting to feel like they're scheming me out of my money.

------
gwbas1c
At least with Netflix, where I pay for a given number of screens, I don't see
how this will work in their favor.

~~~
papln
Netflix uses password sharing as a marketing tactic. They've announced that.
At some point, passowrd sharing gets too efficient, and Netflix would have to
switch to something like an Xhr for $Y plan, like cell phone minutes and GBs.
IMO that plan makes more sense anyway.

~~~
kevinh
I'm not sure you want to create a subscription plan where you're punished for
using it in a situation that's not a monopoly.

------
someexgamedev
I would happily pay per show or movie I watch if I knew the people involved
got the cash. As long as there's money men in the middle, wringing their hands
over how to extract their middleman tax, I'll work to subvert them.

Delivering content is not a valuable service. Making content is.

------
mantoto
I'm right now notperfectly happy about the streaming situation but it is much
better then ever before.

I don't cancel Netflix because I don't mind anymore. There have and still are
a few really good shows which would have cost me much more money what Netflix
costs me.

------
m-p-3
They need to accept that collateral and put clear limitations (ie: x
simultaneous users for x/month), or they'll end up alienating their userbase
and we'll be back to square one with more users going back to illegitimate
providers.

------
freeflight
Password sharing is also used by semi-legal outfits to offer content across
services with only one "meta subscription".

The websites for these services look very slick and "proper", so for the
consumer, there's pretty good plausible deniability involved.

------
arthurcolle
Totally off-topic, so sorry, but the juxtaposition of "established networks"
and "Netflix" made me think to ask the following: Does anyone know the story
of how Netflix bootstrapped itself and came into its own?

------
Debugreality
This article keeps describing how much password sharing and piracy cost but is
only proposing a solution for password sharing without talking about which
issue is bigger. For all we know piracy might be 99% of the problem.

------
revlolz
>By Gerry Smith

I'm really suppressing the urge to crack a Rick and Morty joke because this
article is fear mongering. The quote from Reed Hastings even demonstrates
Netflix acknowledges this issue is one they are likely not going to tackle.

------
wdb
Next step is that you aren’t allowed to Netflix/HBO with friends and family

------
baq
i don't think netflix is worth the full asking price to be completely honest.
hbo go would be worth it if the stream quality wasn't down there in the
dumpster (final GOT season night scenes made me cringe - a great example of
how encoding can ruin some otherwise good parts). haven't used amazon yet and
eagerly waiting for disney's platform to be able to tell how things settle
down.

i can tell right now that i won't ever have more than two subscriptions active
at the same time because it's ridiculous to even have more than one, but i'm
making some concessions.

------
throwaway122378
Password share is today’s version of lending DVDs to friends and families.

------
PostOnce
Greed has a ceiling, eventually the customer will unsubscribe entirely.

Maybe we could also measure by wifi how many phones are present and refuse to
play video until the # of viewers in the room has dropped to the contracted
level.

Maybe we should ban book and DVD sharing. If I finished reading my book,
should I be allowed to just give it to someone who didn't pay _the publisher_
? No, I should be thrown in jail in fact! Along with the presumptive reader!

Calm the hell down and go take a swim in your Scrooge silo.

(remember, these are paid accounts! Paid "unlimited viewing" accounts that can
only be watched by X logins at a time, they're making plenty, and the sharing
has a limit on it already by virtue of how many devices can be simultaneously
viewing)

------
rogerkirkness
The amount of lifetime wasted avoiding paying $10/month is hilarious. I would
never start a consumer facing tech company.

------
loeg
> But taking more aggressive measures poses risks. The people using services
> for free — especially younger consumers — may never agree to sign up for a
> subscription, no matter how many hassles they endure. That means companies
> would mostly just be alienating paying customers, who could get frustrated
> and stop using an app or cancel their service. In other words, there’s
> plenty of downside and possibly little upside.

Yeah, they never learn, do they?

------
neonate
[https://outline.com/Rwabyg](https://outline.com/Rwabyg)

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richardARPANET
A sea of greed..

Happy I cancelled my Netflix last month. Hypothetically, Plex is a great
superior alternative.

------
sqldba
Same article gets regurgitated a few times a year ever since Netflix started.

------
dzgoldman
Guess I better send a heads-up text to 3 ex-girlfriends

~~~
reaperducer
Or maybe don't. Let a Netflix deactivation serve as a passive-aggressive way
to get them to call you.

~~~
onedr0p
Might be a bad idea to Netflix and chill with 3 past girlfriends, unless it
was all at once.

------
Bud
Can anyone post a paywall-free link to this article? I don't want to pay for
Bloomberg. ;)

