Netflix is such a big company and makes so much money that it is hard to think that a lot of people actually use the account details of their friends and family and so don’t pay for their subscription. There’s no need start shifting in your chair, a lot of people do it and in fact, Netflix actually builds account sharing into its subscription plans. You can pick a Netflix account based on how many screens can view Netflix at any one time meaning you could be watching Stranger Things in your house while your nerdy brother watches Daredevil in his.
Now Netflix might be the largest streaming service but there is some serious competition on the horizon in the form of Disney+. Disney owns a lot of shows and movies including the likes of The Simpsons, the Marvel Universe, Star Wars, and yep, Disney owns all those Disney movies too.
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Read Now ►We’ve put together a full preview of Disney + here, but at $6.99 it is fair to say that a lot of people will be tempted by a Disney+ subscription. It has come to light, however, that account sharing won’t be as easy on Disney+ as it is on Netflix.
Disney is joining up with Charter to try and target users who might be using friends and family passwords
We told you last week about the new Disney +, Hulu, and ESPN + bundle that will cost $13 a month. Disney obviously thinks that the price is fair on a per person business as the Hollywood juggernaut is teaming up with the US cable giant Charter to try and protect individual subscriptions. This will make it much harder to share passwords among family and friends.
The plan, according to a joint press release, involves cracking down on what both companies call piracy mitigation. The press release notes, “The two companies will work together to implement business rules and techniques to address such issues as unauthorized access and password sharing.” Yep, they called it out specifically.
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Read now ►The only silver lining that this ominous storm cloud has is that the press release doesn’t really go into much detail about how Disney and Charter plan on cracking down on password sharers. Wired has hypothesized how it could happen though, with one possibility being that Charter could, “could monitor usage of its broadband network to help Disney fight account sharing. For example, Disney could track the IP addresses of users signing into its services, and Charter could match those IP addresses to those of its broadband customers.” This is a complicated way to do things, and a VPN could sidestep it, but the serious nature of the joint press release indicates all options are on the table.
If you’re a password sharer on Netflix then and you were thinking you might do the same on Disney+, don’t expect it to be so easy. Two media giants have effectively just declared war on you.
