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Comment by mandeepj | Hacker News Reader

> I refuse to pay for Netflix/Disney+/Hulu/Crunchyroll simultaneously.

It could be a great startup idea - buy proxy access to all these content services for you, and in turn, you have to maintain only one account

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Yea was thinking the same, I had an idea as to how can I "lend" my account for service A out to some stranger on the internet and in exchange, can get access to HIS/HER account for service B for say 3 months.

Obviously the privacy and payment details is an issue. I like the NetFlix "guest account feature" reminds me of the "gym membership model" of the 90's bring a friend.

That sounds...illegal.

They said buy the proxy access

Not sure that will fly. The Supreme Court was not convinced last time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo

And yet Locast is a thing: https://www.locast.org/

Locast limits access to users within the geographic broadcast range of the relevant TV stations. Apparently that falls within the same legal framework that allows cable TV operators to rebroadcast TV signals over their cable networks, which are similarly geographically limited.

That was very different.

This could be done as a power of attorney to avoid almost any TOS issue they could draft.

> Even though the United States Supreme Court held Aereo was "performing" the broadcasters copyrighted material because Aereo "looks-like-cable-TV" and was similar to community antenna television (CATV) systems, it was later held Aereo could not continue its service under a compulsory license, the way a cable provider would.

They lost the Supreme Court case because they were considered the same as cable broadcasting companies, but then were denied the same legal rights as cable broadcasting companies by a lower court?

I am not a lawyer but what the fuck happened there?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Broadcasting_Cos.,_In....

I think they're proposing that you still pay for your own Netflix account for October, then when you switch to Disney+ in November, you pay for your own Disney+ account again -- the service just handles starting and stopping the monthly contract, for a fee. Maybe this would be illegal too.

let me clarify - Let's call the startup an "Aggregator" - you only pay monthly to this middle man aka "aggregator" but you can watch any of these services during anytime i.e any time in a year as long as you are an active user. The "Aggregator" would buy pool of accounts on their users behalf. Some more breakdown -

For this discussion - let's say there are total of 10m users for these services but they all would never be online at the same time. So, the aggregator can buy 5m Netflix accounts, 1m Apple, 1m hulu, 2m HBO, and so on.

I think it's a very fragile idea. Once Netflix, and the gang would figure out about the "Aggregator", they might start blocking it. There are ways to handle that but how long are you going to play this cat and mouse game?

If a typical potential customer pays for 2 of these streaming services for the unique content and at any given time is only using one of them to its limit after having shared with family and friends then you have the entire extra subscription as surplus value to be captured. $9/mo per household across much of the developed world with minimal infrastructure costs could fund a cat and mouse game for a long time.

That word is overloaded in this context.

The "proxy" could be a network node or a person/service/entity which contractually takes the place of one side of the contract.

Seems to work for GrubHub...

very heterogeneous industry full of mam and pap shops vs biggest companies ever with lawyer armies.

Doesn't sound much worst than libraries for books... some libraries are even digital.

I'm unconvinced that libraries would be viable if the concept was developed now.

There are also mix-tapes which could be used as another example to help your case

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