Ars TechnicaNetflix crackdown on account sharing hits US with $8 fee for each extra user
"Your Netflix account is for you and the people you live with," email tells users.
Brennan Stehling@arstechnica Oh no, wait, I cancelled my Netflix account when this news was out several weeks ago. I was not sharing it but also was not using it. This new policy was a good nudge to finally cut it loose.
Chad Geidel@arstechnica Hey friends. I will ABSOLUTELY pay you $8 a month for a Netflix sub (if you have the 4k version)
Marius@arstechnica
When this hits Norway, I'm cancelling instantly. The ONLY thing keeping me subscribed is the fact that my brother and parents are using it (We don't live together anymore). And I don't think they're using it enough to bother paying for it on a monthly basis.
Thank you Netflix, for giving me the perfect excuse to cancel my decade long subscription!
Shadow Heart@arstechnica and so piracy begins to surge.
Wiredfire 
@Sh4d0w_H34rt @arstechnica That surge has been well under way the last few years with the increasing fragmentation of streaming. This is going to give it’s sails a good strong headwind though for sure.
@arstechnica welcome to the beginning of the end of Netflix.
Fragmentation in streaming services is already making them a difficult to use and expensive proposition. When other services like Amazon Prime and Disney+ make no such limitation on account “sharing” this just gives Netflix even less of an edge in the game.
It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for them.
Dan S. Camper 🇺🇸@arstechnica I’m interested to see if I get one of these letters.
My wife and I are slowly moving to a new house. We spend weeks in one house, then weeks in the other. Will #netflix notice that I access their services from only one location at a time?
Thomas H Jones II@dancamper @arstechnica It'll be interesting to see how this impacts their subscribership amongst those who VPN to get access to different regions' content.
@ferricoxide @arstechnica Netflix already deals with users who use VPNs, so they likely have ways of detecting VPN usage with a certain degree of accuracy (well-known VPN providers’ exit IP addresses, for example). But otherwise, I would think it would be a similar problem: A single account that appears to jump around, geographically.
The press release indicates that they will be using IP addresses plus “account activity” to determine if an account is being shared. Let’s hope they can identify “slight abnormal non-sharing activity” correctly!
Yeah, previously, indications had been that any given device marked as a "home" device would have to reconnect to the service through its home location every 30 days.
If you travel for a living (like I used to) you're presumably fine with your phone so long as your travel-schedule brings you home at least once a month (not always the case when I was traveling to Europe). Presumably, if you're a VPN-user, you would need to VPN-lessly connect monthly, too, to re-home.
Does beg the question, if this password-sharing thing is part of a cost-reduction, if they'll (try to) kill VPN usage (whether publicly or no).
@arstechnica Until they unbundle 4k content from. 4-stream plans, the moment I have to pay an extra $8 to give one of my streams to my out-of-household family members is the day I cancel my membership.
Archonet@arstechnica friendly reminder that Plex media server enables the Netflix experience without paying a dime, and offers a lifetime premium option if you want extra features like opening/end credits skipping.