[HN Gopher] Netflix's password sharing crackdown is here - it co...
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Netflix's password sharing crackdown is here - it costs $7.99 per
month (USA)
Author : edsimpson
Score : 32 points
Date : 2023-05-23 18:45 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| zem wrote:
| finished watching the good place just in time!
| neither_color wrote:
| A tip if you travel often is to set up a wireguard tunnel to a
| home computer. You just need port forwarding on your router
| enabled. Works better than any paid VPN service for watching your
| local netflix and it can't be detected.
| fakedang wrote:
| Here's anotharrrr tip matey!
| roody15 wrote:
| Here is another tip: Don't pay for a service that makes you
| jump through hoops to access its content.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| I think this might be moot. "Everyone living in that household
| can use Netflix wherever they are -- at home, on the go, on
| holiday ..."[0] suggests that they'll use some mechanism other
| than IP to determine that there is against-terms "password
| sharing" going on. Probably something like device sessions
| instead.
|
| [0] https://about.netflix.com/en/news/update-on-sharing-may-us
| andromeduck wrote:
| Probably just cooking sniffing and some sort of grace period
| if you're not on the same network for a while.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| Time will tell if this is the right move. Personally I can't
| remember the last time I watched any content that came from NF. I
| think the last time I even considered something on their platform
| was when Stranger Things season 2 was released. Maybe.
|
| Something tells me this isn't going to go the way the would have
| hoped.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Something tells me this isn't going to go the way the would
| have hoped.
|
| Netflix is renowned for testing changes to the product,
| learning from the data, and iterating. We know that they have
| been testing in various markets over the last year or so.
|
| So I'd be pretty sure that they are confident in this change.
| infamouscow wrote:
| This is always said when a large public company does
| something that's:
|
| 1. controversial enough people begin drawing lines in the
| sand
|
| 2. increasing prices without any customer benefit
|
| 3. going against the headwinds of the economy as consumers
| tighten their belts
|
| Maybe you're right, but I can't think of a single time this
| hasn't backfired. The Law of Unintended Consequences is a law
| for a reason.
| Marsymars wrote:
| This is relatively easy to handle for e.g. family sharing for
| Apple - everyone uses the same billing method, so it's naturally
| limited to people where you feel comfortable covering the cost of
| all their Apple digital purchases.
|
| Netflix has no such "real-world" limit to apply that naturally
| covers students and other dependants, so they seem stuck with
| various contrived options.
|
| I feel like # of simultaneous streams really ought to have been
| the natural limiter. If you're allowed two streams, it doesn't
| make a difference in the real world whether the two streams are
| to the same physical house or not.
| remote_phone wrote:
| As soon as I get this email I'm going to cancel Netflix and start
| pirating anything I want to watch, which frankly isn't very much
| on Netflix anymore.
| alyandon wrote:
| Yep, I'm divorced and my minor son goes back and forth between
| his mother's house and mine on a weekly basis. I have a NF
| subscription and he is signed into my NF account over there on
| his xbox and the moment NF tries to extort additional money
| from me is the moment I cancel my subscription.
| m4jor wrote:
| Just throw Plex onto a spare computer, NAS, or something like
| an rPi4.
|
| I have 600 movies on my Plex setup and 10ish TV shows w
| multiple seasons.
|
| I aint ever paying for Netflix/HBO/Apple TV/etc.
|
| Come to the dark side
| fakedang wrote:
| We are invested in a company that does TV productions for
| regional markets, the content often being sold to the major
| streaming partners of that market. One of our partner's produced
| shows was a top 10 global Netflix production. Yet even they
| contend that Netflix's acceptance process is by far the most
| whimsical of them all. And with the recent shift to
| Americanization and wokification of content, it seems they are
| losing ground to Amazon Prime in regional markets. With these
| kinds of faux pas, I wonder if Amazon won't eat their lunch (and
| their daily bread) very soon.
| edsimpson wrote:
| What happens to students? If you're on your parents' plan but not
| physically in their "household"?
| leros wrote:
| From previous information I've seen, they'd have to physically
| go home once a month and use Netflix on their device there.
| Otherwise that device will get flagged.
| bombcar wrote:
| I suspect students are considered part of the "household"
| because they are for tax and healthcare purposes. But who is
| going to sue to establish that?
| hgsgm wrote:
| 1. "household" is not a general legal term.
|
| 2. Dependent is different from household.
| andsoitis wrote:
| You can add extra users to your account and who aren't living
| with you: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/123277#:~:text=The%2
| 0accoun....
| harshalizee wrote:
| Nope. Sorry, Netflix. I paid for 4 concurrent streams and now
| you're reneging on your contract. I didn't care much when they
| constantly bumped the price either. Been a Netflix subscriber
| since 2012. I don't really watch as much, but my mother
| occasionally watches a movie or two a month. My brother in
| college binges a tv show once in a while. I know that neither of
| them will go out of their way to subscribe to Netflix.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| I'm sure Netflix will deeply miss your brother and your mother,
| neither of whom have ever paid for Netflix.
| jszymborski wrote:
| They might miss OPs business, though
| takeda wrote:
| I think it was relatively clear that OP is considering
| cancelling the entire account.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| That seems like a punitive effort to respond to netflix,
| but I bet if they do it they will be likely to resubscribe
| later on if they actually enjoy watching it.
| takeda wrote:
| I don't know about OP, but there are people who don't
| feel particularly guilty about not contributing money to
| starving multi-billion dollar publishers. The only reason
| they used Netflix was because it was convenient and
| affordable.
| autoexec wrote:
| I bet they missed the 1 million subscribers who canceled
| netflix in Spain when they pulled this shit. Maybe some
| people in his family weren't paying for the bill out of their
| own account, but the service could easily be worth the price
| for the value all three members of a family get out of it,
| but not at all worth it for just one.
|
| Even when a family member, friend, or a romantic partner
| watches a netflix show on an account that they didn't
| personally pay for, they're still watching netflix, still
| talking about good shows they saw on netflix with others,
| still posting about things they saw on netflix online, and
| still providing netflix with valuable data and metrics and
| netflix is still making money.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Netflix can't be that concerned about it if they are
| continuing to roll out this change into their biggest
| markets after having tested it in Australia, New Zealand,
| Spain, Portugal etc.
| autoexec wrote:
| They'd better be a little concerned
| https://www.reuters.com/graphics/EARNINGS-AUTOMATED/NFLX-
| OQ/...
|
| I really wonder if they genuinely think all the broke and
| massively in debt college kids on their parents netflix
| accounts will just fork over the cash for Netflix's ever
| increasing monthly fees and that they have data showing
| that it'll make up for the loss of subscribers and
| viewers this will cost them or if there's a CEO caught up
| on a sunk cost fallacy or something. It seems like this
| couldn't come at a worse time for netflix considering
| that there are a growing number of competitors with
| better offerings for less money, netflix has been getting
| objectively worse, piracy is easier and more affordable
| than ever, and a huge amount of things that aren't even
| streaming television are competing for our attention.
|
| Low cost, convenience, and having a decent catalogue of
| content made netflix what it is today, but today netflix
| is getting more expensive and less convenient, while
| their library struggles to have enough worth watching to
| keep people around all year.
| wilg wrote:
| > I paid for 4 concurrent streams and now you're reneging on
| your contract.
|
| You almost certainly in fact paid for 4 concurrent streams in
| the same household, and you were just out of compliance on your
| contract the whole time.
| mikeortman wrote:
| That's probably a fair statement, but I highly doubt there is
| a substantial audience of families that want to watch four
| separate shows at the same time in the same house for them to
| justify the research and marketing to implement.
| hgsgm wrote:
| It's interesting that jumped all the way to this, instead of
| working down from the accounts that log in from 20 cities, 10
| cities, 3 cities, 1 city, etc.
| costanzaDynasty wrote:
| For many a format warrior it was an oasis. But it long since
| stopped being that.
| JoshGlazebrook wrote:
| > Extra members cannot be added to partner packages or third-
| party billed accounts.
|
| Looks like anyone getting netflix via T-Mobile/etc are even more
| out of luck.
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(page generated 2023-05-23 23:02 UTC)