Netflix introduces password sharing household controls

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#3034827 10-Feb-2023 22:20

rugrat:

As for which city, when I use the likes of whatsmyip I’ve seen different cities show up, though it has the correct one at moment.

Mine too right now, but not always.

rugrat

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#3034837 10-Feb-2023 22:29

I’m thinking it’s probably the IP address that matters, but they probably ask if someone is in a certain city as not everyone is going to know what an IP address is.

As an IP can show as a different city to what someone is in that will create its own confusion though.

vexxxboy

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#3034841 10-Feb-2023 23:08

just checked out managing devices under my account and i have 2 locations for my devices , my ipv6 address is for Gisborne which is one Smart tv and my PC , while my streaming stick on a normal TV 2 feet away from the PC has a IPv4 address in Otara Auckland, both nowhere near Rotorua and 2 different locations , how does this work.

Common sense is not as common as you think.

nitro

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#3034848 11-Feb-2023 00:50

tdgeek:

How does that work when "everybody" is in another suburb, another town, another island?

The Netflix household issue means that yes, anybody in the household can raid the pantry and table, viewing wise.

as long as you cap it to the 4 streams, what's your issue?

nitro

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#3034849 11-Feb-2023 00:53

tdgeek:

Agree

You are buying it. For you, your significant other, your kids, which is your household. You can choose not to buy it again, so cancel. A poster here said he/she will buy and binge then cancel, thats fine. April, do it again, also fine. Whats not fine is you allow freeloaders. I allow freeloaders, as I can. Now I cant, so i wont. Its not my product, its a product i purchase, nothing more

i paid for 4 streams, and use less than that, still...

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#3034850 11-Feb-2023 00:57

networkn:

What's kind of gross though is the people who are acting like it's justification to steal that content instead as if they are entitled to it.

i never said, i'd quit my sub, or even resort to piracy. note that i never said i've never done that either. i'm not justifying a shift back to them old days, at all.

you obviously see it from netflix's point of view. and that's really fine by me.

but the flip side is... if i buy 4 burgers from mc donald's, it doesn't matter if i eat them all myself, 'share' some with family living in my house, or give 2 of them to the homeless person, who i can't even say i love, sitting on the kerb just outside the outlet's door.

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#3034852 11-Feb-2023 01:06

nitro:
i never said, i'd quit my sub, or even resort to piracy. note that i never said i've never done that either. i'm not justifying a shift back to them old days, at all.

Funnily enough no one said that, just that it would happen as it’s become more convenient to pirate rather than stream.

I guess it’s hard to read from the top of a high horse.

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#3034858 11-Feb-2023 07:50

Our home IP varies (CG-NAT) and following the prompts when watching Netflix on the TV yesterday, our primary location has been set to "Near Christchurch, Canterbury (This location may not be exact.)"

I don't know how that is determined, but I know that some location-detection methods appear to incorrectly detect our connection as being rather nomadic. For example, as of today opening google maps on a clean browser profile zooms in on Nelson, whereas whatismyip.com claims Lake Tekapo. Some days from now, they will be different locations.

Everyone who watches on our account lives at home, so I hope there will be no lockouts or erroneous accusations of password sharing.

networkn

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#3034871 11-Feb-2023 09:09

Handle9:

I guess it’s hard to read from the top of a high horse.

The irony of you of all people saying that, made me actually LOL.Thanks.

It hasn't become (significantly) more difficult to use, Netflix is asking that people limit their sharing to a single household and others can pay an addon fee for the same level of convenience.

I guess at the end of the day, since the people who have chosen to interpret the "sharing" rules to their financial benefit aren't actually paying for the content anyway, how they 'access' it, without payment doesn't really matter.

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#3034880 11-Feb-2023 09:33

nitro:

i never said, i'd quit my sub, or even resort to piracy. note that i never said i've never done that either. i'm not justifying a shift back to them old days, at all.

you obviously see it from netflix's point of view. and that's really fine by me.

but the flip side is... if i buy 4 burgers from mc donald's, it doesn't matter if i eat them all myself, 'share' some with family living in my house, or give 2 of them to the homeless person, who i can't even say i love, sitting on the kerb just outside the outlet's door.

If my comments don't apply to you, that's great. Your comments seem reasoned and calm even if I don't entirely agree with the final destination of them.

I don't think your analogy quite tracks because you are still comparing buying with renting. When you buy a burger, if you share it, everyone gets a little bit. With streaming, everyone can consume the whole burger. Secondly, I guess it's what the terms of sale are. If McDonalds said that food sold at their establishment was only allowed to be eaten by you and the people who live in your household, then you could choose to abide by the rules, shop elsewhere, but I hope you wouldn't break in and steal the burgers.

At the end of the day, most places that sell something, will know a small percentage of customers are stretching the rules to gain additional financial advantage. Generally, those places will balance the cost of preventing it against the cost of allowing it to continue. Supermarkets are a good example of this. They know their self-service checkouts result in people leaving without paying for items either unintentionally or intentionally. But the cost of staffing a checkout is much higher overall, so it's 'cheaper' to let that continue. If the percentages significantly altered, the way I suspect Netfllixes have over the past 3-4 years) then they may implement additional security or enforcement.

I have no issue with people finding this a PITA, and deciding on principle or because it no longer applies the same value proposition to cancel. It's all the other stuff that is poor in my opinion.

networkn

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#3034883 11-Feb-2023 09:46

nitro:

as long as you cap it to the 4 streams, what's your issue?

Because potentially that means that Netflix loses 3 potential revenue streams.

Whether you intepret it as a change or clarification, Netflix is saying you can *still* have 4 streams, but they want it limited to the people who live in the same household.

I don't consider that an unreasonable limitation.

If they had been clear about this from the outset, I seriously doubt anyone would have blinked an eye.

People have chosen to interpret their prior stance in a way that benefited them financially, which Netflix have previously allowed, but they are now treating it an entitlement rather than a freebie they have benefited from for 16 years.

What is kind of funny about all this agnst, is that if someone contacted NF and said, "look my 80 year old granny who lives down the road, and uses NF 3 times a month for a couple of hours is using our account", NF would likely just whitelist that connection and allow you to carry on without an additional charge.

If you tried to justify your uncles ex girlfriends brothers flatmate who lives halfway across the world from you, doing so, then they would quite reasonable ask they pay for their own account or at least stump up $8 a month for an entire library of content.

This isn't an unreasonable change for them to make. People have benefited from a free ride for a very long time, and should be happy with that, not feeling butthurt over the fact their free ride is over.

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#3034885 11-Feb-2023 09:51

nitro:

i never said, i'd quit my sub, or even resort to piracy. note that i never said i've never done that either. i'm not justifying a shift back to them old days, at all.

handle9

Funnily enough no one said that.

handle9: I have the same situation. Fortunately my Plex server doesn't suffer from this restriction.

Paul1977

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#3034930 11-Feb-2023 11:30

networkn:

What is kind of funny about all this agnst, is that if someone contacted NF and said, "look my 80 year old granny who lives down the road, and uses NF 3 times a month for a couple of hours is using our account", NF would likely just whitelist that connection and allow you to carry on without an additional charge.

There is zero reason to think that. I’d personally be extremely surprised if, after they’ve implemented these measures, they would allow their staff the flexibility to do that. It would undermine the entire thing.

Based on their (admittedly vague) explanation of how things will work, infrequent use at another location (as described above) probably wouldn’t even trigger anything.

cbrpilot

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#3034938 11-Feb-2023 11:57

tdgeek:

vexxxboy:

i got an email and it wants to confirm my location as near Otara Auckland, which i presume is Sky HQ. So since i am in Rotorua do i say yes and will it cause problems later.

Not deep into the detail here, but an external IP can be generated anywhere, dependent on the RSP internal network. Hence why I assume they rely on wifi??

@cbrpilot?

I assume you're talking about the geolocation of IP addresses? That is a service that is provided by third parties and I'm sure they each have their secret sauce as to how they do that. In terms of IP address allocation this will depend on each RSP and how they are doing that. Most broadband services will get a single IPv4 address that is assigned to each broadband connection (which could be considered a household ...). Some RSPs and services do use CGNAT where you may have many broadband connections sharing the same IP address. And then you have IPv6 where each device will have a different IP addresses - even if from the same prefix, and to work out if two different connections are on the same broadband connection you'd need to know the prefix size (which is not always standard). So I'm sure they are plenty of challenges for Netflix to be able to overcome to work out if two people are actually part of the same household and I'm guessing we'll find out that no solution is going to be perfect for determining this.

My views are my own, and may not necessarily represent those of my employer.

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#3034953 11-Feb-2023 12:25

@networkn I can’t find the post now to quote you; but you’d said something about this change not making Netflix more difficult to use, therefore no justification for anyone to resort to piracy. I agree, but the comments about people going back to piracy are more about the current state of the streaming marketplace overall.

Assuming you’re happy to subscribe to all the streaming services available in NZ; it’s fragmented, difficult to keep track of, and (in NZ) you still can’t get all the content you may want. On top of that, the content you can get is often in lower quality than it was produced in - Neon is max 1080p and stereo sound, TVNZ+ is also 1080p max, and most other services only offer their own original content in 4K HDR (the rest is, you guessed it, 1080p).

Without condoning piracy, the fact is (for those who know how) it’s easier to pirate content (very often in better quality) than it is to stream - even if they’re perfectly willing to pay for all the subscriptions.

I wouldn’t blink at $150+ a month if it gave me all the content that’s available on all streaming services in one place in the highest quality available. But no such paid service exits. Amazon Prime in the US is probably the closest, where you can add additional services - but even they don’t have deals with everyone.

There is a real problem with the streaming market when you can take subscription costs completely out of the equation and it’s still easier and better quality to pirate content. It’s like having desirable products in an unlocked showroom, and then making it either difficult or impossible to purchase them legitimately (or only selling inferior versions of the floor models). The inescapable consequence of this is that people will just steal them instead. It may not be right, but there it is.

In relation to Netflix, whether you consider it a new rule or simply enforcement of an existing rule, no one is saying Netflix doesn’t have the right to do this. What they are saying is they think it’s an unfair rule considering how their pricing model is set up.

I think people would be far more accepting of the change if Netflix were honest and just said “In the past we were fine with password sharing (and even encouraged it), but we are needing to change this policy to remain viable in a rapidly changing market”. But instead they spin it as if people were “confused” about the rules and they need it explained to them, or that people have been wilfully breaking the rules; but that’s not the truth. The truth is Netflix encouraged it and used it as a selling point, and have now decided they can’t afford to do that anymore. Just own it.

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