
Cable TV’s Password-Sharing Crackdown Is Coming - uptown
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-20/cable-tv-s-password-sharing-crackdown-is-coming
======
jdblair
The Netflix policy here is a good compromise: limit the number of concurrent
streams for each account and then turn a blind eye to password sharing. That
way sharing passwords is allowed in practice, but also has a clear consequence
- you may be blocked from playback if too many of your family members (or
friends) are watching simultaneously.

Implmenting stream limits is tricky, as there are edge cases that are hard to
get right. However, common DRM services like Widevine and Playready have
adopted the extensions necessary to implement stream limits, so there are
already "of-the-shelf" solutions.

In short, this is a non-issue with available technical solutions.

Full disclosure: I'm an engineer at Netflix who works on cable set-top boxes.

~~~
Klathmon
So I tried out a service called "Playstation Vue" a while back, and I'm very
inclined to believe that "stream limits are tricky"

There were dozens of times in the 2 months that I had the service that I was
unable to stream, because I had hit a "concurrent streams" limit.

Switching between devices, having my browser auto-login (which would take up a
"slot"), And the fun bug they had for a while where if I started a stream on
my phone, then "cast" it to a chromecast, it would count as 2 streams, and due
to a limitation where playstations were given their own dedicated "slots"
meant that 2 people couldn't watch on a chromecast at any given time even
though I should have had 5 simultaneous streams allowed.

I ended up canceling the service because of it, and I appreciate the limits
that Netflix has much more.

~~~
tedunangst
The better solution would be to always start the new stream, but disrupt the
oldest one.

~~~
inetknght
...and a counter for how many times a new stream started so that you can send
warnings to an account for bad behavior?

...and then the customer complaining that their poorly-behaving device keeps
getting interrupted?

Disrupt the oldest one, sure, but make sure to have some sort of clear
indication of what happened and why.

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samschooler
One way to solve this is to look to Spotify. They changed their restriction:
only playing music out of one device; into a feature: you can now control your
music from any device. In addition to this, they used things like playlists,
the discover weekly recommendations and other strategies in order to make it
annoying to share an account. WHILE also having the barrier to getting your
own account to the point where the annoyances (listening to ads, or paying
$7.99 a month) are still better than pirating (possibility of low quality, no
seeders, sketchy websites).

Of course this isn't to say this is how cable companies should exactly go
about solving their problem, but by cracking down on their PAYING subscribers,
they will drive more people NOT less to either pirate, or share passwords.

~~~
adrr
Spotify's way of handling is completely terrible and i am very tempted to
cancel. I have a bunch of Echo's around my house and the Spotify family plan
which i share with my wife . My wife can't play music on our the Amazon Echo
if i am using Spotify elsewhere on my phone, or laptop because of the one
account one stream rule Spotify implements..

You can't create fake accounts for your Echo's, they actually make an effort
to verify you actually exist with some identity database. All to prevent a
legitimate customer from being able to use their service.

~~~
figgis
Have you even tried searching your problem..?

[https://www.spotify.com/us/family/](https://www.spotify.com/us/family/)

[https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Family-Premium-
mul...](https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/Family-Premium-multiple-
devices-playing-own-music-simultaneously/td-p/1349248)

~~~
rconti
My Sonos is logged into Spotify with my own creds. So if I'm driving around
using Spotify and my wife fires up the Sonos with my creds saved to it, it
stops playing in my car.

She's got her own account on our family plan, but she's not going to change
the username/password to hers every time she uses the Sonos (and me do the
reverse).

I suppose I could generate a "dummy" family member account used just for the
Sonos, but then it wouldn't have my playlists....

~~~
anderiv
I’m fairly certain that Sonos allows multiple streaming accounts for each
provider. I currently have three Apple Music accounts registered on my Sonos,
and have had multiple Spotify accounts registered in the past.

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kabdib
> "The CEO has said that one unidentified channel owner had 30,000
> simultaneous streams from a single account."

This is more about bad implementation (and possibly design) than anything
else, then. ALL of the other online services I've worked on have had a
reasonable and enforced policy here. It's not that hard to do (there are
harder corner cases if you _do_ allow customers to do things like family
sharing, but it's still not rocket surgery).

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chrisBob
No problem. I want to stream the Olympic Channel, and I even pay $100 for a
cable subscription that includes it.

Oh, I can't stream it though. Uverse only lets me stream from 3 of the NBC
Sports channels, and not that one. Guess I am going to just cancel the cable I
pay for and use someone else's Comcast login instead.

I don't mind paying for streaming service, and when HBO cracked down I bought
a subscription that night. But some services you can't even pay for if Comcast
doesn't run cable to your house.

~~~
Klathmon
I don't like pirating content. I feel it's akin to stealing even though
nothing physical is "stolen". (not trying to impose this on anyone else, this
is just a personal belief of mine)

However there is one exception, and it's when a company will not allow me to
purchase a tv show or movie.

All too many times I've watched seasons 1-4 of a show on something like
Netflix, only to find that the most recent 4 episodes of season 6 are on a
cable "on demand" service, and season 5 is only available as a DVD box set
purchase, with the first half of season 6 literally 100% unavailable anywhere.

I want to pay for their product, they have the product, in most cases they
created the product! But they aren't selling it because of reasons that I
honestly don't care about any more. I will happily steal that content without
remorse.

~~~
QAPereo
The BBC is an excellent example of doing it wrong, and giving me the choice
between nothing, and piracy.

~~~
exhilaration
Have you looked at [https://acorn.tv/](https://acorn.tv/)

~~~
QAPereo
Thanks, I agree that’s one of the best ways to access that content, but they
can do so much better!

------
SauciestGNU
I can only see a crackdown on this as resulting in inconvenience for paying
customers. There are so many options for piracy that people will probably find
another way to watch streams almost immediately.

I suspect that if you invited friends to sit on your couch and watch a
broadcast with you, the content companies would claim that as piracy too,
since your friends are not necessarily paying subscribers.

~~~
justizin
Right, in most cases, esp with live sports, these things are already
restreamed. In some cases, I have paid for the official streaming service and
used the pirated one because it was more performant.

------
bcg1
> About one-third of internet users stream cable TV without paying for it by
> using credentials of someone they don't live with

There is no way this is true. Not saying that it isn't a problem, but
statements like the above are approaching the same level of BS as when the ad
industry says most people would prefer to trade their privacy for the
privilege of being manipulated by targeted ads.

~~~
rconti
Maybe "one third of internet users WHO stream cable TV do so without paying
for it" ?

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kodablah
> But the prevalence of password sharing suggests many of those customers
> [...] are watching popular shows [...] for free, robbing pay-TV providers
> and programmers of [...] advertising dollars.

Can someone help me understand how it is robbing them of advertising dollars?
I understand it's robbing them of fees (though I don't like the double-dip
model and especially loathe the concept of retransmission fees). But I don't
understand how more "free" eyeballs are costing advertising dollars. In fact,
I would think more eyeballs would be an advertiser's goal.

~~~
The_Egg_Man
They probably get advertising dollars per subscriber. The people stealing
passwords arent counted as subscribers so they dont get revenue for those.

~~~
kodablah
Ah, so they are being "robbed of advertising dollars" because they assume that
password stealers would otherwise be legitimate subscribers? Ha. In the
meantime, a non-subscriber viewing something isn't technically taking anyone's
money and this type of weasel-wording keeps public opinion against them.

Also, they would be wise to get advertising dollars per viewer as TV streams
are often legally multiplexed in a household. This had traditionally been the
case in the pre-digital world w/ Nielsen ratings.

------
bryanlarsen
This could work, but only if they treat the people affected as customers and
potential customers rather than as criminals.

\- make it easy for the legitimate customers to actually watch their streams.
Instead of "too many streams in use", try "click on this link in your email to
start watching"

\- make it easy for free-loaders to watch. Instead of "too many streams", say
"click here for an instant 3 month free trial!"

Or something like that. You have people who want to watch your stuff. That's a
very valuable lead, don't throw it away by offending them.

~~~
talmand
>> click on this link in your email to start watching

How would that work with my Roku?

~~~
amdavidson
use the smartphone in your pocket to click the link?

~~~
talmand
So I now need two devices to watch something on my TV? I would need to wait
for said email to show up to click the link? What if my email server is down,
no TV?

What if I use an email address I share with my friends and family which
defeats the purpose?

~~~
phil248
If you don't have a readily available email address for things like password
resets and two step verification, can you please tell us how you managed to
travel back in time to 1998?

~~~
talmand
I do have such a thing, don't be willfully obtuse. Those that you mention are
for things that require security for me and my stuff, not to watch TV.

------
Apreche
Pointless. If you crack down on this successfully, people will just find
another way. If they don't find another way, they'll move to different
content. Too little too late. We're way past game over.

------
rco8786
Password sharing is a symptom of cable companies inability (or indifference)
to innovate on either content or price. They are driving millions of people a
year away from their services and the idea that cracking down on password
sharing will bring people back to them is quite silly.

Speaking anecdotally, I cut the cord years ago and do have some shared
password access that I use, but purely "because it's there". I got along fine
without it and will continue to do so if this crackdown gets me.

~~~
xadhominemx
I think you're confused about the role of the cable companies in all this.

The cable companies are just the pipe. Cable company margins on video are low.
Content providers control the content production and price.

Unless you're suggesting the solution to the problem is more vertical
integration (a la Comcast NBCUniversal)?

~~~
talmand
From the article:

"The chief executive officer of Charter Communications Inc., which sells cable
TV under the Spectrum name, is leading an industrywide effort to crack down on
password sharing."

Seems to me the cable companies are heavily involved. Which makes sense
because they would like to sell the cable TV access just as much as the
Internet access. If customers only need streaming and no cable TV then I would
imagine they would stand to lose quite a bit of revenue.

~~~
xadhominemx
I was responding to this bit:

>Password sharing is a symptom of cable companies inability (or indifference)
to innovate on either content or price

Because video is barely profitable and HSD is very profitable, cable companies
definitely do not like to sell TV as much as they like to sell HSD. Cord
cutting is not as big a deal for the cable companies' profitability as most
people think. If anything, the bandwidth required for streaming (now in HD but
soon in 4k and then in VR) is so high DSL becomes less viable as a competitor
and cable companies can raise prices for HSD even faster.

~~~
rco8786
by "content" I was mostly referring to how that content is packaged and
delivered. Cable customers are paying huge premiums for channels they don't
want but have no other choice.

~~~
xadhominemx
That is by the design of the content providers

~~~
ankushnarula
This is mostly correct.

For cable/satellite/OTT, most of the _package_ (Viacom, Time Warner,
NBCUniversal, etc) content providers bundle content and get a large lump sum
up-front per annum from each distributor. However, premium a la carte content
providers (HBO, Showtime, etc) receive a small lump sum plus a a bulk of the
per subscription fee.

For Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime - content is bundled and paid for up-front
per annum on a multi-year contract. For example, Paramount/MGM/Lionsgate/EPIX
distributed solely through Netflix thru 2014 and then switched sole
distribution to Amazon Prime.

Hollywood traditionally likes cash up front because production and marketing
costs are "bursty" rather than evenly distributed. And this is because the
success to failure rate (risk) of entertainment products is too abysmal to
easily obtain reasonable financing rates from lenders or reasonable terms from
investors.

------
ivanbakel
>The more the practice is viewed with a shrug, the more it creates a dynamic
where people believe it’s acceptable. And it’s not.

This kind of diktat is actually pretty comical. Social consensus is pretty
clear on how little people care about this, but for cable companies isn't not
only a profit impact but a deep moral wrong. Might they not have more success
by understanding exactly this disconnect in mentalities over streaming
services, rather than trying to pump petulant propaganda?

~~~
pessimizer
> Might they not have more success by understanding exactly this disconnect in
> mentalities over streaming services

There's no disconnect, because they don't actually believe this. It's just the
line they're using, and the line that their lobbyists and lawyers will use.
Until there's a robust technical solution (maybe facial registration?), they
need to try social and legal ways to maintain and boost their margins.

------
ChuckMcM
The screams of a slowly dying business model. This is what I expect them to be
very effective at shutting down sharing streams, and then getting a small
boost of new subscribers, followed by an increase in the rate at which
subscribership goes down. And as the revenue falls, and contracts expire, more
and more companies will skip the 'middle man' of the cable provider and offer
their stuff on aggregating services like Apple TV, Roku, or Amazon Video.

~~~
BrianGragg
Most of the money you pay into your cable company goes to the broadcasters and
not the cable company. Thats why cable companies have so many strange fee's.
Thats about the only way they can make profits. -Not saying its right, or that
I support their model. Nor do I agree with how much profits they are garnering
off people with no choice in most places.

~~~
fapjacks
Actually, if you dig into the documents, you'll discover that cable companies
make thin margins on their television/content broadcasting, but they make
_orders of magnitude_ worth of margins on providing broadband internet
service. I pay Spectrum about $90/month for something which costs them
literally just over a single dollar/month.

------
megaman22
If they cut the shit and stop splicing the same 3-4 minute ad cut into their
on-demand streams every five minutes, maybe we can talk. Especially if they
cut the ad providers that go ass-over-bean-box on 50% of their loads, forcing
you to reload the stream, and rewatch the same show about eight times to get
to the end, because they have disabled fast-forwarding and seeking.

------
rednerrus
I am going to cancel my cable if I have to reenter my password more often.
It's already a huge pain in the ass.

------
teilo
> About one-third of internet users stream cable TV without paying for it by
> using credentials of someone they don’t live with, according to Parks
> Associates.

I call bullsh*t.

------
gumby
This is absurd: I pay for two simultaneous streams on Netflix and thats what
they give me. What businesses is it of theirs who is watching them? My car has
two seats: it's none of the manufacturer's business who sits in which seat.

We shouldn't let these self-righteous selfish neanderthals try to justify
their egregious rent-seeking.

------
stblack
I watch any live sporting event I fancy, for free.

Once you know where to look, the cost is about a minute of your time to pick
which particular feed, among many, to watch.

Do you want the home-team's broadcaster, the visiting team broadcaster, and do
you want that in another language, maybe? It's à-la-carte.

A cable company password is never involved.

In the future, the old-fashioned companies we know today who don't "get" it
will not exist. This Bloomberg article illustrates why, albeit indirectly.

~~~
sowbug
Usually when people use the term "get it" on this topic, they're referring to
a better business model that sustainably supports all the participants in the
marketplace. You don't seem to be using the term that way. Rather, you seem to
describing ordinary theft.

What exactly is there to "get" from your comment? That you're gleefully
infringing copyright? If so, yes, we already know you exist. You're not adding
anything to this conversation.

(By the way, this comment also applies to ad blockers in web browsers. If you
don't like ads, that doesn't mean you still get to view the content without
ads, any more than you still get to attend a concert whose ticket prices are
too high for you.)

~~~
SauciestGNU
Actually, I think to your point about blocking ads, if your server sends me
data I am entitled to render it any way I choose, omitting any element I am
not interested in (ads, etc). Similar to how it is not infringing copyright to
leave the room or not look at the screen during a commercial break on
broadcast television.

If you don't want ad blockers to view a site then find a technical means to
prevent it. You are not going to convince me that I have a moral obligation to
consume psychologically manipulative content that is unrelated to what I am
seeking to view.

~~~
sowbug
Don't be surprised when that happens. Entire websites sent as a single PNG, or
Widevine increasingly determining how/whether you view content. It didn't have
to be this way.

You can frame this as civil disobedience against duress, or attack a strawman
of morality (which I never brought up). It's not that complicated or
subjective. It's a business transaction. I'm saying if you don't like the
store, don't patronize it. You're saying that if you don't like the store's
prices or how they do business, then you get to take the goods without paying.

~~~
bestnameever
> Entire websites sent as a single PNG,

Interesting. Are there any sites that you know which do this?

------
shmerl
Pretty dumb, like most "anti-piracy" time wasting. They should start releasing
video DRM-free, if they want to do anything positive about it.

------
Feniks
Expected, after the VPN crackdown.

