Netflix Password Sharing Is Illegal, UK Government Agency Says | Hacker News Reader

Netflix Password Sharing Is Illegal, UK Government Agency Says

pcmag.com

35 pointspseudolus33 comments

Of course it's the UK government. You got a loicense to share that password, mate?

This seems like a clear-cut example of unauthorised access, at least if Netflix chooses to clearly communicate that you aren't allowed to use someone else's account. https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/computer-misuse-act#_T...

Probably the same in most of the world.

Except that in the past, Netflix has sent tweets saying things like "Love is sharing a password" [https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712] ...

That tweet, in my not-in-any-way-legal-opinion says that Netflix allows password sharing.

As such, it is not a clear cut example of unauthorised access.

That’s not really how it works. Netflix might say that on Twitter and in the license agreed to say something else. Then they can both sue each other and both get fined. The law can be quite cold hearted and it doesn’t have to be a winner and a loser nor does it have to make sense.

Well it is actually, this tweet is advertising. Netflix is asserting that this is OK, saying the opposite somewhere else (EULA) means that this would be false advertising. Which IIRC would most likely get them in trouble with the FTC, and other bodies around the world who are there to protect consumers...

Yeah, that's my point. If the user signs the EULA the customer is on hook for it, but on the other hand, Netflix is on hook for false advertisement. They can both sue each other and win.

If Netflix changes their mind and adds a banner on the login page telling you otherwise, it suddenly becomes unauthorised access.

Great, but if it is my account and I grant them access to use it, it is not unauthorised access.. I authorised it, it is my account.

It's not illegal in the United States. It's probably against the terms of service but that is up to the company to enforce, and has nothing to do with the legal system.

As far as I understand, it probably is https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/12/take-two-ninth-circuit...

While IANAL this article doesn't seem to state that. It focuses on two court opinions which have ruled on specific credential sharing situations (wrt the CFAA) where courts have stated in their opinions that their findings don't apply in general password sharing situations, but that the language used has not been clear enough to prevent the CFAA from being used to prosecute said situations.

Yes, the article does not give a clear answer. However, simply looking at the text of the CFAA leaves little doubt that you'd be in violation if Netflix clearly communicates that you aren't allowed to log in with someone else's account.

It's hard to imagine how an account holder could authorise you to access Netflix in a situation where Netflix explicitly communicates to you that such account sharing is forbidden.

Isn't it funny that the public prosecutor lose time and tax payer money to investigate on his own this question when no one officially complained about that?

To me it looks like a lobby group like tv media, or movie studios or Netflix covertly asked them to investigate that to issue a ruling.

So that later Netflix and co can change or be forced to change their policy saying that it does not come from them but they were forced by the gov.

No. Public money is not public's money. Is just money taken from the public (i.e. taxpayers). How it is spent is not your business. Your government knows better. /s

You added /s to the end, but an added layer of irony is that this is how it ends up working most of the time lol

This is just a rewrite of https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64003237 from last week.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34081516

It looks like we're back to where we started, and no one is surprised.

Does it mean that people will get back to old "illegal" piracy anyway?

Storage media and networked storage are cheaper and easier and better than ever. There's never been a better time than to have your own copy of your favorite bits!

I recently signed up for a VPN and raised the sails after hitting the limits of frustration while trying to find a few older movies that no streaming service seemed to carry.

I had a Plex server set up around a decade ago and decided not to deal with the hassle of it when I moved to a new city.

But man, it's just crazy how much easier and better downloading your own copy of media is. And with stuff like Sonarr/Radarr out there it's easier than ever before. I need to build up some more storage to really go all in, I've just been doing everything manually thus far. The experience is worlds better than dealing with the various bullshit of streaming.

Got a VPN recommendation?

Not OP, but I personally use a combination of nordvpn and tailscale. I've signed up for nordvpn years ago though, so there might be something better around

I went with mullvad, which seems to be one of the more reputable ones.

Mullvad seems to be pretty legit

What is the modern equivalent of Napster/limewire/bittorrent today anyway, out of curiosity

Maybe it's time to let Netflix burn

I'll admit, I totally fell for the propaganda around House of Cards. I was convinced that Netflix had found a way to leverage their big data into "formulas" to produce awesome shows and would be unstoppable. When I look back at the garbage they have produced over the past few years I just don't understand how they f-ed it up so much.

At this point Netflix feels so irrelevant.

My frustration is that they used to recommend you content you’d be interest in. Once they started making more money off original content and some licensed content the recommendation algorithm morphed into being more and more biased to the content they make more money on. Other than searching for the exact content you want, all the suggestions are so bad that I frequently start browsing on Amazon first. Haven’t reached the point of cancelling but it might get to that point.

> Freeloaders have a right to be worried: It’s also been reported that Netflix will potentially block IP addresses that don’t match the IP address of the main account holder.

Couldn't someone just set up a proxy for family with a different WAN addr?

Probably beyond the abilities of the average user

tailscale networks for sharing password?

IP address block seems unlikely when people have devices that may be connecting to different networks (eg mobile and wifi) at same time.

Well lock me up, and throw away the key.

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