UK says sharing Netflix passwords could be illegal
The UK government has decided to warn that giving someone your Netflix password could be illegal, though it isn't sure and won't do anything unless the police tell it to.
Netflix logo
You would think that the UK government has enough to do with its economy tanking, families struggling to eat or to stay warm, and Brexit costing the nation $48 billion in lost tax revenue annually, but no. The UK government and whoever is Prime Minister this week, is very hot on preventing lawbreakers, despite itself regularly threatening to break international law.
According to BBC News, the UK government's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has announced that Netflix password sharing was both a criminal and a civil law matter.
"There are a range of provisions in criminal and civil law which may be applicable in the case of password sharing where the intent is to allow a user to access copyright-protected works without payment," the IPO said. "These provisions may include breach of contractual terms, fraud or secondary copyright infringement, depending on the circumstances."
BBC News asked specifically whether this means the UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) not only could, but would charge password sharers with an offence.
"Any decision to charge someone for sharing passwords for streaming services would be looked at on a case-by-case basis," an IPO spokesperson replied. "As with all cases, if they are referred to the CPS by an investigator for a charging decision, our duty is to bring prosecutions where there is sufficient evidence to do so and when a prosecution is required in the public interest."
So if Netflix chose to involve the police, it could go to court and it could be a criminal case. The IPO qualifies every statement with "may" and "if," though, and anyway Netflix told BBC News it wasn't going to press charges on anyone.
Instead, as previously reported, Netflix said that it intends to "make it easy" for people to set up their own accounts, and in early 2023 it will roll out "sub-accounts" for people to pay extra for family and friends.
Consequently, the UK's controversial ex-Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries can relax. "I have Netflix but there are four other people who can use my Netflix account in different parts of the country," she told the UK's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, earlier in 2022.
Read on AppleInsider
Netflix logo
You would think that the UK government has enough to do with its economy tanking, families struggling to eat or to stay warm, and Brexit costing the nation $48 billion in lost tax revenue annually, but no. The UK government and whoever is Prime Minister this week, is very hot on preventing lawbreakers, despite itself regularly threatening to break international law.
According to BBC News, the UK government's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has announced that Netflix password sharing was both a criminal and a civil law matter.
"There are a range of provisions in criminal and civil law which may be applicable in the case of password sharing where the intent is to allow a user to access copyright-protected works without payment," the IPO said. "These provisions may include breach of contractual terms, fraud or secondary copyright infringement, depending on the circumstances."
BBC News asked specifically whether this means the UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) not only could, but would charge password sharers with an offence.
"Any decision to charge someone for sharing passwords for streaming services would be looked at on a case-by-case basis," an IPO spokesperson replied. "As with all cases, if they are referred to the CPS by an investigator for a charging decision, our duty is to bring prosecutions where there is sufficient evidence to do so and when a prosecution is required in the public interest."
So if Netflix chose to involve the police, it could go to court and it could be a criminal case. The IPO qualifies every statement with "may" and "if," though, and anyway Netflix told BBC News it wasn't going to press charges on anyone.
Instead, as previously reported, Netflix said that it intends to "make it easy" for people to set up their own accounts, and in early 2023 it will roll out "sub-accounts" for people to pay extra for family and friends.
Consequently, the UK's controversial ex-Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries can relax. "I have Netflix but there are four other people who can use my Netflix account in different parts of the country," she told the UK's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, earlier in 2022.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
And people steal services because it’s easy. If they had to hack Netflix to get account and password info they wouldn’t would they. But the crime in this case is easy to commit and with little chance of discovery so hey, why not. Netflix is evil and they charge too much so stealing their service is justified, right?
UPDATE 3:09pm
The government appears to have updated the offending paragraph to remove any mention of password sharing.
More over-reach is exhibited by Disney, which benefitted hugely from enforcing (sorry, "lobbying for") changes to copyright law so that the duration is now much longer than most consumers would consider reasonable and which was (I think) the first company to change the wording of the contract between suppliers and purchasers of audiovisual content so that the intellectual property is licensed under increasingly consumer-unfriendly terms. Microsoft and Apple did similar things with software.
As the corporations sought to extract ever more revenue, the pool of consumers with sufficient funds to justify paying for content shrank - and they noticed the shrinkage because not all of their friends/family could pay for things they were themselves enjoying. People have an innate desire to share with those whom they like, and the perception was that (a) they had paid for certain rights with that content and (b) there was no way the corporations could prove the contract violations in a cost-effective manner, so they shared individual products that they had "purchased".
The current technological landscape allows for the modern miracle that is streaming. I don't see Netflix as engaging in any over-reach (and their response to this nonsense from a branch of the UK government is commendable), but streaming in the minds of the public is just a different way of watching TV, and (advertising-supported) TV is "free". There's a somewhat different perception depending on what country you're in (the UK has a TV license, the US has cable TV) but most people see television as a ubiquitous service that everyone has a right to. The legal implications are completely different, but until you change the perception of the populace the behaviour of the populace is unlikely to change - and in a democracy, the will of the majority of the populace tends to drive what laws get enforced. There seems to be a concerted effort on the part of businesses to treat each consumer individually, and do away with the concept of communal and societal groups of any nature; I think that is part of why people are so keen to share - fighting to keep a sense of belonging and to strengthen social bonds that are under threat.
I think Netflix is trying hard to avoid doing what many of their larger competitors would do, trusting that by maintaining a positive perception of their business they'll do all right in the long run. I hope that's true.
The rest of your rant is bootlicking nonsense.
It’s generally per premises, though there are all sorts of caveats for students away from the family home, mobile TVs, shared households with their own tenancies, etc. and is technically required if there is any equipment capable of receiving a broadcast signal (caveats apply here too: is an aerial plugged in? Can it receive live BBC iPlayer streamed programmes, etc)