Netflix's Password-Sharing Crackdown Hits Canada, But Not the US - Yet (theverge.com) 88
Netflix is expanding its paid password sharing to subscribers in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain starting Wednesday, the company announced in a blog post. From a report: The company had already started testing the change -- in a few different forms -- in some countries in Latin America. Now, Netflix is expanding its efforts ahead of a broader rollout in "the coming months." Last week, Netflix faced pushback after notes about when and how it might block devices used beyond your household popped up on support pages for the US and other countries where the new "paid sharing" setup hasn't rolled out yet.
Netflix said that was inadvertent, and now none of the support pages have any details about restrictions on streaming to devices that aren't on your home network. No matter what country you select, it only says, "A Netflix account is meant to be shared in one household (people who live in the same location as the account owner). People who are not in your household will need to sign up for their own account to watch Netflix."
Netflix said that was inadvertent, and now none of the support pages have any details about restrictions on streaming to devices that aren't on your home network. No matter what country you select, it only says, "A Netflix account is meant to be shared in one household (people who live in the same location as the account owner). People who are not in your household will need to sign up for their own account to watch Netflix."
USA is Largest Market (Score:5, Informative)
I'm guessing the USA is by far Netflix's largest market, so they want to be very careful in how they roll things out here. If things go smoothly in Canada, we'll probably be next.
Re:USA is Largest Market (Score:5, Funny)
I think they wanted to test it on a more polite population [harkavagrant.com] first.
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I think they wanted to test it on a more polite population first.
That's because they channel all their aggressions into those damn geese [myfunnymemes.com].
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If things go smoothly in Canada, we'll probably be next.
And if that happens just cancel and tell Netflix to fuck off. Nobody needs Netflix. If you put up with this shit they will do something worse in the future.
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If things go smoothly in Canada, we'll probably be next.
And if that happens just cancel and tell Netflix to fuck off. Nobody needs Netflix. If you put up with this shit they will do something worse in the future.
Your parents kicking you out but being supportive of you living on your own is a very big deal. Thank you Netflix; this is what I needed.
The funny thing is that I'll pay up to what I was paying for cable subscriptions with different providers just to get good content streaming but it's ridiculous what you have to do to get some services - it's just not worth it.
So far, I think that Shudder, HBO Max (aside from that expanding UI) and Hulu basic have been the most consistent. Apple's treading a dangerous pa
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I'm waiting to cancel Netflix for when they roll it out here.
it seems fair but impossible to implement (Score:3)
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They should just focus on number of simulataneous streams and forget about the 'household' requirement.
In ye olde cable TV days (before they started charging for DVR box rentals), you could utilize your service on every television in your household. Simultaneous stream limits are a real step backwards.
It's yet another situation where you get a superior user experience from piracy. I run a home media server and the only streaming limit is the amount of bandwidth available on my network. With modern 5Ghz WiFi, I run out of televisions before I run out of bandwidth. I gave up on Netflix quite awhile ago, af
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paying $20 not $80.
Although to get the same variety of entertainment as cable you have to subscribe to multiple streaming services, which diminishes the cost advantage. You also have to consider broadband service as a sunk cost, otherwise you're already pretty close to the cost of cable TV. But before anyone says it, yeah, linear format TV sucks. There's a reason most of us have moved to on-demand.
It really seems a reasonable way to handle this.
Thing is, people are already password sharing with the current stream limitations in place, so it's clearly not having the effe
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In ye olde cable TV days (before they started charging for DVR box rentals), you could utilize your service on every television in your household.
In ye olde days, some cablevision providers would charge you if you split the coax, though. The would send a signal down the line and see if any splitters reflected it. If you wanted to add additional TVs you would have to pay.
Furthermore, there was only so much you could split it before the analog signal started to degrade.
Re:it seems fair but impossible to implement (Score:4, Interesting)
it seems reasonable to limit usage in some way but trying to focus on a single household seems impossible to implement, they are going to just cause problems. They should just focus on number of simulataneous streams and forget about the 'household' requirement.
I agree. I'm paying for premium, I should be allowed 4 streams, no matter if they are in my house or remote
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That's called being an entitled brat. You should be allowed no more than what is being sold to you, and that is a household plan as defined by the person selling it to you. You may not like it, but you *should* get no more than what is on offer and your rights extend no further than taking your business elsewhere.
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That's called being an entitled brat. You should be allowed no more than what is being sold to you, and that is a household plan as defined by the person selling it to you. You may not like it, but you *should* get no more than what is on offer and your rights extend no further than taking your business elsewhere.
They don't define what a household is in their terms of service. All it says is "The Netflix service and any content accessed through our 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"
It also says nothing about where those services must be consumed.
Based on the information released earlier they still aren't defining what a "household" is. They are actually "authorizing devices", whe
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They should just focus on number of simulataneous streams and forget about the 'household' requirement.
That seems like a step in the wrong direction. If I have 5 bedrooms and a living room, and I want all 6 devices to be able to play netflix. Just like I can with cable service. I don't want a two TV limit.
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Doesn't netflix already limit the number of simultaneous streams? You can have it on as many devices as you want as long as you are not watching more than the limit at once. I could be wrong, the majority of my netflix watching is looking for something to watch and deciding there is nothing.
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I could be wrong, the majority of my netflix watching is looking for something to watch and deciding there is nothing.
I'm convinced this is why so many people watched that bizarre "Tiger King" documentary. You've got folks who sit down at the TV, figure I'm paying for this shit, might as well watch something, and there ya go.
Personally, I got tired of someone else curating my entertainment selections sometime after my parents bought me my first VCR.
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the majority of my netflix watching is looking for something to watch and deciding there is nothing.
I hear this over and over again online and it blows my mind.
Netflix has thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of programming from all over the world. Drama. Comedies. Documentaries. Movies. Series.
Yet there is nothing to watch?
Maybe it's because I don't spend a lot of time in front of the TV, but when I want to, I have never not been able to find something interesting to watch on Netflix.
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obviously your interests are different, wow that was a hard one. next mind blowing question?
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obviously your interests are different, wow that was a hard one. next mind blowing question?
Your unnecessarily snarky response makes no sense to me because my point still stands. With hundreds of thousands of hours of content they have stuff for all interests.
My wife, my teenage kids, me, we all have different interests. Yet there is so much content there is always something for each of us to watch.
So again, I don't understand this point that there is "nothing to watch?"
Are your interests exclu
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shut the fuck up, you are choosing not to understand the difference and i will no longer speak to you.
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Just claiming that I am "choosing not to understand" is indolent. I am trying to understand, not choosing not to.
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shut the fuck up.
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And as for shutting up, you're the one who keeps replying to me. If you want to shut it down, stop replying. It's easy.
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shut the fuck up!
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Walk away, dude.
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Does this mean you have BOTH limitation now?
Limited to 4 streams and limited to 1 household?
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I'm sure the simultaneous streaming idea was batted around by the engineers, but I can guarantee you marketing and/or sales people vetoed that because they have themselves convinced that when they flip the switch all these "extra" people logging in will instantaneously become new revenue by signing up for their own accounts. I'll never fully be able to wrap my head around sales logic. We get that at our company too. "If you make this, we will sell BILLIONS of them." We spend six months spinning it up, two y
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No, that's not a necessary assumption. Here are the outcomes, from best to worst for Netflix:
I don't have
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I would assume that they are making money on providing each streaming service otherwise why sell it. As the old joke goes, we are making a loss on every sale but we will make it up in volume. People with multiple households are already more likely to get the higher number of streams to avoid conflicts.
It would be like saying if people go over to their friends house to watch netflix they will loose money. If people are costing you more on average to stream than you are making just increase the cost per stre
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I think that assumption is the key. But netflix spends more on licensing content than producing original content, and they distribute via streaming, not broadcast - both of which mean each viewing costs them money.
https://variety.com/2021/digit... [variety.com]
(Not that Paramount necessarily charges Netflix per individual delivery, but the amount Netflix will be willing/able to pay is related to viewings per subscription and Paramount will push as close
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Impossible to implement? They have known about this for years. While you can get false positives geo-ip makes this trivial. The issue isn't a technical one but a political one (customer backlash) since there is a TON of password sharing going on and they don't want to rock the boat. This is Netflix's way of telling you to read in-between the lines:
We know you are password sharing and will be eventually putting an end to it. Here is your grace period.
Like usual Netflix is focusing on the wrong issue. Th
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Why not implement what services like Spotify and M365 do: for a fixed price you can invite up to "n" people to share your account. They all get their own logins. Enforcing the concept of "households" seems counter to their woke agenda anyway. I mean, what if your family included someone who identifies as a "brother from another mother" deployed to some free-fire hellhole in Chicago?
All these services include the ability to create "profiles". Why not just take it the next step and require unique logins for t
reasonable but hard to not fuck it up (Score:2)
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This is what they're telling us so far :
"But how does Netflix know if a password is shared between multiple addresses? The service believes it can achieve this by defining a "primary location" for each account, associated with the same wi-fi network and devices connected to it, according to the Netflix Help Center. A person located outside the household who tries to connect to the account will have 15 minutes to enter a code authorizing the connection. The key will be sent to the account owner via email or
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And when all your TV's are hard wired, how is that going to work? I will further add that in my family the WiFi network SSID and password is the same between my house, my mothers house and my sisters house. It just makes life *much* simpler and I would give them the WiFi password anyway when visiting and vice versa. There is a guest network that segregated. So how is that going to work then? Don't say the access point MAC address will be different as for example my sisters house needs two access points to g
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> Don't say the access point MAC address will be different as for example my sisters house needs two access points to get full coverage.
Yeah, I was just writing that, but it still works, they'll send a code by SMS, if that become tedious for a particular customer they might follow network IP addresses to see if it's plausible.
> I would note that with full fibre broadband coming to most of the families houses in the near future, it would be trivial for me to use VPN's to put the lot on a single layer 3
VPN users are SOL (Score:5, Interesting)
A small (but probably not insigificant) number of users in countries outside the USA use VPNs when accessing Netflix simply because the US catalog is a *lot* more comprehensive than the catalogs for Netflix in countries like (for instance) New Zealand.
This new policy will effectively render VPNs unusable (unless you can guarantee the same IP number at the exit point each time which is unlikely).
I suspect the result will be that they'll lose those VPN-using subscribers once they're forced to use only the tiny catalog that their own country's version of the service offers.
Hey ho... it's not like we (as consumers) are short of streaming alternatives eh?
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Really I don't see how this will work (well) based on IP, what if I use my cell phone to watch at someone else's house using their WIFI? How does it know who to block, if the password sharer uses it first does the subscriber get blocked?
Re: VPN users are SOL (Score:2)
Basic network analysis.
Example: 7 devices regularly connect from one IP address. One of those devices is found connecting from a different IP address for the first time. Assume the device is roaming and grant access.
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Or maybe you only use your cell phone to watch movies while roaming, so always a different IP. Or have an entertainment system on your car, or you login to netflix on another TV while traveling.
Re: VPN users are SOL (Score:2)
Are you saying your phone never connects to your home network? Then it's not part of the household almost by definition.
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What?
Since when is my household defined by how my technology connects to a network? That's ridiculous.
I think they *VASTLY* overestimate their value. Of course there's many people "sharing" accounts but I know in my case I let my mother use it and a close friend who never had Netflix and had no interest in paying for it. My mother rarely uses it and my friend uses it once a week. If they think either of those people would EVER pay for their own account then it's never going to happen. Not to mention those s
Re: VPN users are SOL (Score:2)
The purpose of Netflix allowing the whole household is to compete with cable. Not so you can be the harbinger of media to your friends. You fundamentally misunderstand what household means to Netflix.
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A small (but probably not insigificant) number of users in countries outside the USA use VPNs when accessing Netflix simply because the US catalog is a *lot* more comprehensive than the catalogs for Netflix in countries like (for instance) New Zealand.
This new policy will effectively render VPNs unusable (unless you can guarantee the same IP number at the exit point each time which is unlikely).
I suspect the result will be that they'll lose those VPN-using subscribers once they're forced to use only the tiny catalog that their own country's version of the service offers.
Hey ho... it's not like we (as consumers) are short of streaming alternatives eh?
Yes and no. Netflix is not very fond of VPNs*, so they paly whack-a-mole with VPN providers. HAving said that, netflix has indictaed that they will take many variables into account, like the mac-address of the devices themselves, and the name/bssid of your WiFi network. IF you put your "media VPN" on your router, and force the router to use the same datacenter (or reasonably close ones) always, it may be enough to make netflix think you are in your own household, and that your household is in the country yo
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VPNs have not been accepted policy by Netflix ever, and Netflix actively plays whack-a-mole blocking them.
You're complaining that you can't do one banned thing simply because the introduction of another banned thing, ignoring that it was very likely you get blocked from doing a banned thing regardless of the new policy.
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I think your mis-wording "Shitty public VPN service providers that pretend to be good" with "Actual VPNs Servers that your managing and have root access".
If you setup your own VPN service, rent a VM on cloud for 5$ a month, or get a router that the service run on it at your buddy house for 70$, and then tell netflix to fuck right off, how about not giving damn about them ?
They are a business, not "the law", and if they are not happy, they can just terminate your service and stop receiving your money, there
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I did nothing of the sort. The reality is regardless of what you do it was never as part of Netflix's policy to allow the use of VPNs. It doesn't matter why you get banned, because you used a public VPN, or because a different policy is affecting the principle of the household by giving you a different IP endpoint.
Either way the complaint is something that always has been banned is no longer working. Tough.
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Secondary homes? (Score:2)
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Netflix could conceivably make the argument that a second house = another household.
A more realistic snag to run into is watching Netflix from a cell phone, where you're highly unlikely to later use the device at home (since who wants to watch TV on a 5-7" screen if you otherwise don't have to?).
Re: Secondary homes? (Score:2)
Even if you don't watch anything on your phone at home, it's pretty straightforward to ping Netflix to keep the device active.
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Even if you don't watch anything on your phone at home, it's pretty straightforward to ping Netflix to keep the device active.
Why would I do this?
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The app could do it itself.
Still, just a band-aid on a steaming crock though.
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No regular user outside of us nerds is going to think to do this before leaving home. Expecting users to think-around rules that aren't clearly defined up front? No Bueno. Hell, even if they are clearly defined up front most users will shrug it off.
Re: Secondary homes? (Score:2)
You wouldn't need to. The app could just ping when it connects to a new network. And as long as you've pinged from home in the last 30 days or whatever, the whole process would be invisible to the user.
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Ah yes, yet another excuse to constantly run some bullshit in the background and phone home every opportunity it gets. I don't think your argument is the winner you think it is.
Re: Secondary homes? (Score:2)
If you don't want any tracking then maybe you should request a device-locked version of Netflix. Then you can't share with other devices in the house or with other people in the house. But you can avoid the evil tracking.
If instead you just want to reject the whole concept of DRM, then feel free to stop watching videos online.
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From what I've kind of gathered, it would depend on the usage in a stunningly sensible way.
If you go to your second home, and just watch there, it's fine. If you are regularly watching from both locations, it will count as two households. Because it will . . . be two households?
What I find really fascinating/hilarious, is they were happy to grow by differentiating themselves from cable. Now they are trying to put the genie back in the bottle, and make themselves cable.
Lawrence Lessig nailed this in one of h
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What about children with shared custody wouldn't they technically have a second home, and maybe quite poor.
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It wouldn't be a problem, they've covered this. Unless the kid changes locations for greater than a month at a time (a really uncommon setup) they'd never even notice.
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so long as all of the active logins are all from the same location / public IP at any given time?
That's not how it works. The devices work outside the primary residence just fine and in diverse locations at the same time too. You just need to prove you're a member of that primary residence by logging in there, I suspect once a month based on the previous "leaked details"
A holdover from a long gone era (Score:5, Insightful)
The origin of Netflix in '97, long before streaming was introduced, was to snail-mail you DVDs, and you had a maximum of DVDs (8, if memory served well) that you could have at any one time.
The household "thing" made sense. It was not like, if you were on a business trip, netflix would FedEx the DVDs to your hotel, or if you divorced, Netflix would UPS half your limit to you and half your limit to your ex so that the Kids would be entertained in both places, or USPS some DVDs to you and some DVDs to your offspring in college...
So, the ToS of Netflix, since time inmemorial (1997, an epoch in "internet time"), incorporated this "household/residence" thing.
When streaming started (in '07, another ethernity in internet time), neither Netflix nor the users requested changes to the ToS to account for the fact that digitally streaming content to different locations is significantly easier that snail-mailing DVDs to people... So the ToS (that users ageed to, may I remind y'all) were very clear, yet eople did not abide by them...
Well, now Netflix is adamant to keep the "per household terms" and make you abide the ToS. Y'all are free to cancel your subscription*, abide by the ToS y'all agreed to, or lobby Netflix to change the ToS to something more modern**...
What you can not do is to critizice Netflix for asking/forcing you to abide by the ToS you agreed to from day 1.
So, what will it be? Cancel? Abide? Lobby?
* Whether you move o other streamoers, use OtA, go plex/jellyfin, go to the high seas or some other option, is up to you
** And no, bitching on slashdot, ars technica, twitter, change.org and such is not lobbying, is just "digitally bitching"
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The origin of Netflix in '97, long before streaming was introduced, was to snail-mail you DVDs, and you had a maximum of DVDs (8, if memory served well) that you could have at any one time.
The household "thing" made sense. It was not like, if you were on a business trip, netflix would FedEx the DVDs to your hotel, or if you divorced, Netflix would UPS half your limit to you and half your limit to your ex so that the Kids would be entertained in both places, or USPS some DVDs to you and some DVDs to your offspring in college...
So, the ToS of Netflix, since time inmemorial (1997, an epoch in "internet time"), incorporated this "household/residence" thing.
When streaming started (in '07, another ethernity in internet time), neither Netflix nor the users requested changes to the ToS to account for the fact that digitally streaming content to different locations is significantly easier that snail-mailing DVDs to people... So the ToS (that users ageed to, may I remind y'all) were very clear, yet eople did not abide by them...
Well, now Netflix is adamant to keep the "per household terms" and make you abide the ToS. Y'all are free to cancel your subscription*, abide by the ToS y'all agreed to, or lobby Netflix to change the ToS to something more modern**...
What you can not do is to critizice Netflix for asking/forcing you to abide by the ToS you agreed to from day 1.
So, what will it be? Cancel? Abide? Lobby?
* Whether you move o other streamoers, use OtA, go plex/jellyfin, go to the high seas or some other option, is up to you
** And no, bitching on slashdot, ars technica, twitter, change.org and such is not lobbying, is just "digitally bitching"
The exact wording is: 4.2. The Netflix service and any content accessed through our 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
It doesn't say household members can only access it while they are in the actual house, and they have no expectation of that. My daughter is a member of my household but for a few months she is staying at college. She streams Netflix on her phone whereve
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No more "Netflix and chill" for you!
Well to be fair I don't think many people will be sad skipping the Netflix part and go strait to the sex... I mean chill part.
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It was not like, if you were on a business trip
Your business trip will keep working just fine. Netflix isn't blocking anything like that. You really need to be in another fixed location away from home for a very significant period without returning home before Netflix will flag you.
Already signed up for HBO Max (Score:2, Informative)
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Anyway I would like to thank Netflix for saving me a little over $15 a month by doing this.
Thankyou for your virtue signalling. In reality you would have been unaffected by this change, and you signed up to HBO Max, and dropped Netflix for other reasons. But good work trying to spin the story on this policy. 5 stars. Would read shitpost again.
Geez you're woke (Score:2)
Drive their own demise (Score:3)
Netflix is going to be the hand of their own demise. I'm already limited to X number of streams, which isn't going to change, but I'm expected to pay more and/or jump through hoops to use their service? I hope someone who works there reads Slashdot. If/when you get to my account, I will just cancel and you'll lose any revenue from me. And I suspect once I leave, the likelihood of me coming back is extremely low unless they reversed all this nonsense...
I already underutilize the service. I hope their algorithm is at least smart enough not to pressure people who already barely use it just because it might come from two locations.
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Netflix is going to be the hand of their own demise. I'm already limited to X number of streams, which isn't going to change, but I'm expected to pay more and/or jump through hoops to use their service? I hope someone who works there reads Slashdot. If/when you get to my account, I will just cancel and you'll lose any revenue from me. And I suspect once I leave, the likelihood of me coming back is extremely low unless they reversed all this nonsense...
I already underutilize the service. I hope their algorithm is at least smart enough not to pressure people who already barely use it just because it might come from two locations.
What they are hopping is that, instead of cancelling, you migrate to a lower tier, conmensurate with your (admitedly) low usage, even if that means geting less money, and that you convince the former freeloaders to get an account too.
Even if the sum of your new revenueand the revenue of the freeloaders is less than the revenue you are singlehandedly producing today, netflix is better off.
But, what they hope and what y'all do,is a completely different matter ;-)
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Netflix is going to be the hand of their own demise.
Not really. The market is causing Netflix's demise. They are playing the only hands they have left. The entire business model was predicated on being a service to other publishers. Now those publishers are taking their bat and ball and going home there's nothing left to do other than a) become a publisher yourself with shitty Netflix content and b) maximise profit and minimise dead weight where possible.
Do nothing was just as bad of an option as this crack down.
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Yeah.
I really think people are looking at this wrong. The only gamble Netflix is taking here really isn't whether or not their customers will walk, it's how quickly their competitors will join them doing the same thing.
Streaming isn't *that* competitive. If Netflix, Disney, and Amazon all do this, the amount of dollars people spend on streaming won't go down. Many will move to the ad tiers while keeping the dollars the same, and the revenue will go up.
If Amazon and Disney will keep turning a blind eye in th
You can still share your netflix with OpenVPN (Score:1)
And to make your life even easier, some router come with a OpenVPN Service, setup port knocking, and then setup ban on chain scanning, if they ever go that crazy, and start illegally double port scanning your IP for the fun of it :)
Fuck these clowns.
Interesting (Score:2)