Could the good deed of sharing your Netflix streaming password land you a criminal record?

The UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO), introduced new pirate guidance that could land those without their own Netflix streaming password in some pretty big trouble.

On December 19, the guidance stated “accessing apps without paying a subscription is an infringement of copyright and you may be committing a crime.”, according to Newsweek.

However…

As @pchaxwithmax has just said…it’s been reverted back to not mentioning passwords. So what’s happening? Let’s have a look at exactly what happened.

But first, a little on Netflix…

Netflix began in 2007 with a mere 1,000 titles on the platform. Now, Netflix currently offers more than 6,600 films and TV episodes. Interestingly it has more than 223 million customers to watch them too. That’s a lot of cash, and a lot of potentials to share your password to figures well beyond this.

So naturally, from a number and business perspective, sharing passwords doesn’t help Netflix’s business grow (ahh yes…it’s always about the dough). But Netflix themselves have endorsed the act of password sharing in the past, and so the act had become normalised. 

Unfortunately for those who don’t have a password of their own, the government briefly shared an update on making this a criminal offence. This has since been removed, but we can’t ignore what consequences this could have had on those who’d obtained passwords from friends and family (with their consent).

Will sharing just my Netflix password land me a criminal offence?

The act of sharing your password with someone else to watch content on Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ was briefly regarded as a criminal offence. The IPO also alerted TorrentFreak (a publication dedicated to bringing the latest news about copyright and privacy), that the exchange of passwords could be punishable by fraud.

So yeah, that’s pretty serious, especially if this law did come into effect permanently.

Why the U-turn to begin with?

The UK Government’s IPO quietly unveiled a new campaign with Meta. Password sharing has typically been portrayed as an offence by regulation officers, particularly as it continually violates the terms of service for most streaming services. 

And although password sharing is not explicitly prohibited, Netflix and its peers no longer favour it.

You’re safe to do this for now (we think).

Netflix password sharing could be criminal

With streaming services competing against each other more than ever before, the number of subscriptions reported by Netflix has actually decreased this year.

TorrentFreak also continued to report “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.” 

“These provisions may include breach of contractual terms, fraud or secondary copyright infringement depending on the circumstances.”

So yeah, the bar is really that low for the conviction of fraud in the UK, but we can’t help but wonder how these convictions could have applied to hundreds and thousands of people who may potentially have a shared password.

Regardless, it’s not worth the risk. Think thrice before sharing your streaming subscription passwords from now on folks. This law was updated overnight twice…who’s to say it couldn’t happen again?

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