Netflix to Crack Down On Freeloaders to Build up Paying Audience

There is no doubt that the online video streaming service industry has heated up with stiff competition lately. Till the recent past, Netflix seems to have dominated the industry with a huge subscription base with Amazon Prime Video ruling the space to some extent offering the services only to Prime members. However, with the advent of Apple TV Plus and Disney Plus recently, things have changed.

But competition is not the only concern for video streaming service providers here. There is another bigger issue – Piracy, which deals with illegitimate password sharing of streaming accounts by subscribers with friends, relatives, or neighbors who gets free access to the video streaming account.

The issue of password sharing has become bigger now and the increasing competition certainly has to do something with it. Previously, players such as Netflix didn’t bother that much about password sharing given their massive subscriber base. The Netflix CEO once even said that password sharing is “something you have to get used to”. But with stronger competition, cheaper rates offered by Apple TV Plus and Disney Plus, longer free trials (Apple TV Plus), the revenue loss due to password sharing is now pinching the major players such as Netflix.

As a result, major players in the industry including Netflix are finding ways to crack down on freeloaders and stop password sharing. The problem is that you cannot bump into individuals for illegitimately sharing passwords with others. Hence, you have to find technological solutions to prevent users from sharing passwords. Major studios such as Warner Bros., Disney, Netflix, Sony, and Paramount along with Amazon and Comcast have formed an Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) to curb practices of unauthorized access to streaming contents by password sharing.

As far as Netflix is concerned, subscribers can access the streaming content from up to four devices at one time from any location making passwords sharing an obvious method. But Netflix has recently revealed that it is continuously monitoring the password sharing issue. With the formation of ACE, we are quite sure that the company might announce something in the future to shave off freeloaders in order to build up its paying audience.

Once the solutions are implemented, there is a high probability that you won’t be able to watch Netflix videos on more than one device or more than one location at the same time. Something could also be implemented in the line of music-streaming service Spotify’s new policy that requires each family member under the single plan to verify that he/she is residing at the same address.