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Cable TV's Password-Sharing Crackdown Is Coming (bloomberg.com)
Charter Communications' CEO, Tom Rutledge, is leading an industrywide effort to crack down on password sharing. It's a growing problem that could cost pay-TV companies millions of subscribers -- and billions of dollars in revenue -- when they can least afford it. Bloomberg reports: Cable and satellite carriers in North America have lost 3 million customers this year alone. But the prevalence of password sharing suggests many of those customers, and possibly many more, are watching popular shows like "The Walking Dead" for free, robbing pay-TV providers and programmers of paying subscribers and advertising dollars. Most pay-TV companies only require users to re-enter their passwords for each device once a year. During contract negotiations this fall, Charter urged Viacom Inc., home of Comedy Central and MTV, to help limit illicit password swapping. The cable company wants programmers to restrict the number of concurrent streams on their apps and force legitimate subscribers to log in more often, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations. ESPN, meanwhile, has reduced the number of simultaneous streams that it allows on its app to five from 10 and is considering cutting that to three, Connolly said. ESPN wants to work more closely with distributors to validate subscribers when there are high volumes of streaming on its app outside the cable company's territory.
If everyone paid for their own share, those of us who are honest wouldnâ(TM)t have to pay extra to subsidize the free loaders. I canâ(TM)t wait til everything is a la carte also, so I can pay for a particular NFL game or ESPN in general without subsidizing shit like PBS or CSPAN
The way things are going at ESPN, PBS and CSPAN are going to be subsidizing ESPN.
Dunno if you caught pics of NFL stadiums lately, but lots of fans are showing up disguised as empty seats.
The networks and the NFL have an obvious vested interest in not showing that, but even in last Sundays Steelers-Patriots game (probably the two best teams in the NFL right now, that had huge playoff seeding implications), I caught one aerial view that for a few short seconds showed a shitload of empty seats. The network cut to another view pretty fast...
NFL empty seat images
Just limit it by MAC to a certain # of devices, and let the user delete devices from time to time. Apple does this already, so does Adobe CC, and Google Music. It's not that hard.
The whining is coming not from the content providers, but from the cable companies, because they're the obsolete ones getting screwed. Viacom doesn't care because the more streams there are (regardless of shared login) the more $ they get to charge advertisers on OTT.
It's simple math: a+b = cable companies just need to die already.
-SM
It seems like I'm being asked to log into my Roku apps on a monthly basis already, how much more do they want?
Netflix has been pretty awesome about this stuff for years, in fact. Prior to the current plans (i.e. back when they didn’t have profiles and only offered two screens), Netflix used to state in their terms that each account was “per household”, and then they had a generous definition for “household” that made it applicable to everyone from unrelated roommates living together to college students away at school. And they were really smart when they added multiple profiles per account, since they all share a single login, including access to billing details, which acts as a natural disincentive against sharing your account too far and wide.
* - We are between GenX and Millenial... both born in 1980. Make whatever assumption you want. It will not change the reality.
What reality? That you are illegally sharing accounts?
You may have some naive fantasy that you are "sticking it to the man" You aren't. When you share your account, it increases traffic and keeps cash flow to Netflix the same. What do you think happens? Do you think Netflix says "oh well, less profit for us!". No, they raise prices. So basically your logic is I'll steal what amounts to an entire subscription, but the associated loss will be spread over the entire subscriber base. Win for you!
If you need help deciding if your actions are moral, just ask yourself what would happen if everyone did this. Well, Netflix would go out of business, or the subscriptions prices would double or triple. It's all good as long as it's only you scamming the system though right? After all, grab what you can in life.