New pirate guidance was just released by the UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office. It has a minor, easily overlooked feature. Copyright laws are broken by those who reveal their Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Disney+ credentials. It only gets worse. The IPO alerts TorrentFreak to the possibility of criminal punishment for fraud if password sharing occurs.
After a modest 2007 beginning with only 1,000 titles, Netflix currently offers more than 6,600 films and TV episodes. Interestingly it has more than 223 million customers to watch.
There is little doubt that Netflix password sharing helped the business develop. Moreover, by openly endorsing it, the act became entirely accepted everywhere.
The underlying message was clear: Netflix loves you, you love Netflix, and now all your friends love Netflix too. Thanks for sharing.
Netflix changed it’s statement
The scene is shifting five years after Netflix’s now-famous tweet. The subscriber of Netflix numbers fell earlier this year for the first time ever. In addition, competition from rivals Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBO, and dozens of others is tough.
Password sharing is undergoing a reverse makeover in the background and throughout the business. Nobody likes the “password piracy” of today. This is also true of the ACE anti-piracy coalition, which includes all the streaming providers above.
ACE publicly favors “unauthorized password sharing” as a descriptor due to the obvious sensitivities. Elsewhere the phrase “without permission” is frequently used. Password sharing is “not allowed” in Denmark, according to the anti-piracy organization Rights Alliance. Although this summer there was a minor but substantial improvement.
UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office quietly unveiled a new campaign with Meta
“The extent of password sharing among Danes is therefore alarmingly great and eventually on a par with other forms of illegal consumption of content,” the group said.
Password sharing has typically been portrayed as such by onlookers since it nearly continually violates the terms of service for streaming services. The overall tenor is that although password sharing is not explicitly prohibited, Netflix and its peers no longer favor it.
Today, the UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office quietly unveiled a new campaign with Meta. The campaign aims to assist individuals in avoiding online piracy and counterfeit goods.
In several notable UK pirate prosecutions over the past few years, fraud has been the main accusation. Even though the primary violations are directly related to copyright law, in the UK, fraud is a crime, and a conviction could quickly stop or even kill a career.
Nothing can be ruled out, says the IPO. “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 informs TorrentFreak.
