Disney's Password-Sharing Crackdown Has Begun (theverge.com) 34
Starting on November 1st, Disney Plus will begin restricting password sharing in Canada. The Verge reports: Disney has not provided many details on how it plans to enforce this policy -- its email merely states that "we're implementing restrictions on your ability to share your account or login credentials outside of your household." The announcement reads more like a strong finger wag than anything else. "You may not share your subscription outside of your household," reads the company's updated Help Center.
A new "account sharing" section in the Canadian subscriber agreement also notes that the company may "analyze the use of your account" and that failing to comply with the agreement could lead to account limits or termination. After Netflix started cracking down on password sharing in the U.S., it resulted in the "four single largest days of U.S. user sign-ups since January 2019," according to Variety. The streaming giant later went on to add 2.6 million U.S. subscribers in July.
A new "account sharing" section in the Canadian subscriber agreement also notes that the company may "analyze the use of your account" and that failing to comply with the agreement could lead to account limits or termination. After Netflix started cracking down on password sharing in the U.S., it resulted in the "four single largest days of U.S. user sign-ups since January 2019," according to Variety. The streaming giant later went on to add 2.6 million U.S. subscribers in July.
Yoda (Score:4, Funny)
Begun the password crackdown has
/yoda
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Begun enshittification has.
For you, there, fixed that.
Re: Yoda (Score:2)
Ah, another merch opportunity to squeeze our IP! /management
This doesn't bother me (Score:4, Informative)
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Oh, fuck that noise. I'd agree with you wholeheartedly but for the fact these services implicitly and even (Netflix) explicitly encouraged password sharing, right up until they didn't. This is Drug Dealer Marketing, except, drug dealers have better customer service than this late stage capitalist enshittified nonsense.
Keep tightening the screws industry, piracy is accessible to the masses now, and ironically easier than flipping through ten different streaming services looking for the one that has your m
Netflix doesn't enforce it (Score:3)
They're looking at your usage patterns and trying to decide if you're likely to cancel. I'm sure Disney will do the same thing.
Re:This doesn't bother me (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd agree with you wholeheartedly but for the fact these services implicitly and even (Netflix) explicitly encouraged password sharing, right up until they didn't.
The past is never a good defence for rejecting change. Think about it, you once spent your day shitting in a diaper and were encouraged to do so too. Just because a business strategy was something at some point doesn't mean it needs to stay so.
Actually quite the opposite. Companies that don't evolve or adapt to change are the ones that usually end up going bust. There's a reason your Netflix account is no longer a system for sending you DVDs in red envelopes.
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The past is never a good defence for rejecting change.
Homie, this isn't someone pushing back against changing a process because "We've always done it that way"
This is consumers being justifiably upset that perks are being taken away from them, perks that attracted them to these services in the first place. There is no positive spin to put on this unless you're a shareholder in one of these companies.
Re:This doesn't bother me (Score:4, Interesting)
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To me the trouble with this argument is that the services are selling per screen. Why does it matter if they're in the same location or not? Its just another way single folks are subsidizing families.
Only Netflix is doing that - and they're doing it to hide the true price. I've got the 4 screen subscription, and that's certainly not because my wife and I would watch 4 screens at the same time. Disney - the subject of this discussion - is not doing that. At least here, there are only one subscription level.
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it's only a matter of time before the streaming services end up just as bad a cable.
That's not a foregone conclusion. There is an important difference between cable and streaming services: Cable is a natural monopoly, but a streaming service isn't. The problem that people have with there being 10 different streaming services isn't that there is so much competition. It's the exclusivity deals. But those aren't natural monopolies and easier to break up.
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Whoa whoa WHOA. Cable is *NOT* a natural monopoly. City and County goverments have colluded with cable companies to create cable monopolies in a brazen attempt to increase tax revenue.
The Federal Communications Act of 1984 gave local government the authority to impose "franchise fees" on cable companies, which are a % of gross revenue. Basicly paying for the priviledge
of doing business on their "turf". It didn't take long for local goverment to figure out that competition reduced cable rates, and theref
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Whoa whoa WHOA. Cable is *NOT* a natural monopoly. City and County goverments have colluded with cable companies to create cable monopolies in a brazen attempt to increase tax revenue. The Federal Communications Act of 1984 gave local government the authority to impose "franchise fees" on cable companies, which are a % of gross revenue. Basicly paying for the priviledge of doing business on their "turf". It didn't take long for local goverment to figure out that competition reduced cable rates, and therefor *fees*. So local governments happily colluded to encourage monopolies. Try, just try to set up your own "cable company" (or ISP) and see how swiftly your normally can't-be-bothered-to-do-anything local goverment will slap you down.
Cable is a natural monopoly in that you're not going have multiple cable TV cables running into your home (not counting modern options over the Internet). Sure, you could decoupled the physical cables and the TV services, but even if that was done having two providers on the same cable would have been hard back in the 80s that you refer to. Everything was broadcast realtime and the frequency spectrum was limited.
Was planning on dropping anyway (Score:2)
My annual sub to Disney+ runs out in a few months. I had already decided that I wasn't going to renew for a full year again anyway, just switch over to re-subbing a month at a time once or twice a year. When I got the email about the updated terms of service the other day the result was simply me advising my brother that he and his family only had until the end of October to binge through whatever they wanted on my account instead of mid-January like I'd previously told him.
I had previously voted with my wa
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Just pirate it. Not even joking. I get the "sub for a month and binge" concept but the industry's next step on the enshittification train will be to mandate an annual commitment just like cable. :(
I don't even feel bad after WGA/SAG strike peeled the onion and revealed the actual workers get spit for streaming views. At this point I'd rather sign up for cable, at least they get residuals for views, and they can't stop you from ad skipping on a DVR.
Re: Was planning on dropping anyway (Score:1)
Disney is looking for a distraction (Score:2)
Polk County school coach, Disney employees among 200 arrested in human trafficking-focused operation, deputies say [wfla.com]
There goes our chance of crushing illegal download (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, we almost had it. We almost did it. We had people back signing up for legal and hassle-free content consumption. And why not, it was what people wanted. No more searching various torrent sites for a link, then downloading it and waiting another couple hours 'til your shows are here, hoping that it wasn't some goofball mislabeling the whole deal or some shitty rip that made you wonder what the hell you're watching right now, and you didn't have to make sure that your player was at the very, very, VERY latest version to ensure you're not going to be sniped with a 0day exploiting some code-execution bug in your player.
It was comfortable. Hassle-free. 10 bucks or maybe 15 a month and you had your shows, all shows, every show you wanted. And let's face it, 10 bucks a month or 15, yeah, people pay that for their entertainment.
But we can't have that, can we? Because greed. If people pay 15 bucks for Netflix, they will SURELY pay that much for our own streaming service where we offer our show. Because OUR show is exactly why people went to Netflix in the first place. We just dump a load of filler onto the service and everyone will switch from Netflix to us!
This was what a dozen or so studios thought. And you now have the same segregation shit that you had back in cable land. One show on the network you want, with a load of filler and crap in between nobody gives half a fuck about. 200 channels and nothing on, because everyone insists that their only show worth watching has to run opposite their opponent's only show worth watching. Well, at least that problem is solved now.
Instead you have another problem, because every single one of that dozen streaming services would like 15 bucks for their one show worth watching from you. Are you gonna pay? Probably not.
But it doesn't even end there. Because one of the key reasons people were fed up with cable and switched to streaming was the god-damn ads. Now the ads come to streaming services! We have come full circle, we're back to the shitty cable experience.
And people will return to torrenting their shows. So instead of getting 15 bucks from them, you'll again get jack shit from them. Your greed drove your customers away. Good job.
*golfclap*
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You know, we almost had it. We almost did it. We had people back signing up for legal and hassle-free content consumption. And why not, it was what people wanted. No more searching various torrent sites for a link, then downloading it and waiting another couple hours 'til your shows are here, hoping that it wasn't some goofball mislabeling the whole deal or some shitty rip that made you wonder what the hell you're watching right now, and you didn't have to make sure that your player was at the very, very, VERY latest version to ensure you're not going to be sniped with a 0day exploiting some code-execution bug in your player.
It was comfortable. Hassle-free. 10 bucks or maybe 15 a month and you had your shows, all shows, every show you wanted. And let's face it, 10 bucks a month or 15, yeah, people pay that for their entertainment.
But we can't have that, can we? Because greed. If people pay 15 bucks for Netflix, they will SURELY pay that much for our own streaming service where we offer our show. Because OUR show is exactly why people went to Netflix in the first place. We just dump a load of filler onto the service and everyone will switch from Netflix to us!
This was what a dozen or so studios thought. And you now have the same segregation shit that you had back in cable land. One show on the network you want, with a load of filler and crap in between nobody gives half a fuck about. 200 channels and nothing on, because everyone insists that their only show worth watching has to run opposite their opponent's only show worth watching. Well, at least that problem is solved now.
Instead you have another problem, because every single one of that dozen streaming services would like 15 bucks for their one show worth watching from you. Are you gonna pay? Probably not.
But it doesn't even end there. Because one of the key reasons people were fed up with cable and switched to streaming was the god-damn ads. Now the ads come to streaming services! We have come full circle, we're back to the shitty cable experience.
And people will return to torrenting their shows. So instead of getting 15 bucks from them, you'll again get jack shit from them. Your greed drove your customers away. Good job.
*golfclap*
GoldblumThereItIs.gif
A VPN is a lot cheaper than half a dozen streaming services, but just like Linux use, most normies simply are not technical enough for torrenting.
They want to click a remote, and watch stuff.
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but just like Linux use, most normies simply are not technical enough for torrenting.
They want to click a remote, and watch stuff.
You're absolutely right...but I don't think that technical difficulty is the reason.
Only one 'smart nephew' needs to be able to set up a torrent client and a Plex server. From there, with an amusing irony, it's just a matter of installing the app and sharing the password to the half dozen people he chooses to share it with.
One family member of mine had a friend who gave them a 'jailbroken fire stick', i.e. a streaming device that used Exodus, and they could stream basically-whatever. Another friend got some
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Only one 'smart nephew' needs to be able to set up a torrent client and a Plex server.
This is the difference between now and the last golden age of piracy.
The really sad thing is Plex is easier. I have a buddy who hosts a frankly ridiculous Plex server, thousands of movies and current/previous TV shows, his rig consumes close to 1,200 watts 24/7, helped him put it together as a technical exercise (junior colleague I was mentoring)....
When we decide we want to watch [some movie], we can go to Google and try to figure out which of the ten different services we subscribe to (for now) has it,
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They want to click a remote, and watch stuff.
Frankly? So do I. 15 bucks is something I'd immediately pay to get hassle-free and problem-free streaming of my shows. Why? Because fiddling even for 10 minutes to get it going via torrent costs me more than those 15 bucks. I could make more money working those 10 minutes and paying those 15 bucks than fiddling for 10 minutes to get the shit ready.
Just because I can do something instead of paying for it doesn't mean it's sensible to do so. I can change the tires on my car. It's just financially more sensibl
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Hassle-free. 10 bucks or maybe 15 a month and you had your shows, all shows, every show you wanted
Amazingly, this is what we have for streaming music. Almost every song ever recorded for $15 a month. And (almost) everybody's happy.
Let's hope the video streaming services don't give them any ideas...
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Let's rather hope the video services learn a thing there.
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Hassle-free. 10 bucks or maybe 15 a month and you had your shows, all shows, every show you wanted
Amazingly, this is what we have for streaming music. Almost every song ever recorded for $15 a month. And (almost) everybody's happy. Let's hope the video streaming services don't give them any ideas...
This is because the price of producing new music makes this possible. The production costs of movies, series, and other content would not be covered with just one subscription of 10 bucks a month.
Define "Household" (Score:1)
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Simple, every individual should have a personal subscription and a unique means to prove they're the only one watching it. Maybe every TV should be fitted with a camera and do a retinal scan every 15 seconds. Hell, if they can do that, why subscribe at all? If your biometric ID is detected watching a stream then you get billed for it to your global credit account.
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Or they could simply sell a number of screens and you need to activate them, nothing really new. Have all of your devices activated and want to watch in another one? Then just deactivate one.