Live data from Hacker News

Netflix loses 1M users in Spain over password policing

bloomberg.com

711–720 of 966 posts

Re: Netflix loses 1M users in Spain over password policing

#711

Netflix: ”You get two parallel streams with your family. Family means trust and password sharing.“ Customers: “Farewell pirating. We pay a fair flat and it is automatically shared between Netflix and artists. Great!“ Netflix: “We increase the flat permanently. And we have now competitors and doesn’t over anymore all relevant content (e.g. Star Trek Picard, Expanse, Disney). How about ruining it and blocking family me…

> I wouldn’t be surprised if artists (filmmakers, musicians…) create a common fair streaming platform. Let us name it “United Artists“ ;)

That falls under

> And we have now competitors and doesn’t over anymore all relevant content

The core problem is basically owners of IP all wanting to build walled gardens to distribute them (and get all of the cut), instead of just going "pay us X per view, regardless of who you are" which would allow every platform to potentially have everything at cost of having to actually compete on service, not exclusives.

Re: Netflix loses 1M users in Spain over password policing

#712

Netflix: ”You get two parallel streams with your family. Family means trust and password sharing.“ Customers: “Farewell pirating. We pay a fair flat and it is automatically shared between Netflix and artists. Great!“ Netflix: “We increase the flat permanently. And we have now competitors and doesn’t over anymore all relevant content (e.g. Star Trek Picard, Expanse, Disney). How about ruining it and blocking family me…

TBH, I know of a lot of people sharing beyond their family...

I believe thats what "family means trust and password sharing" meant.

Everybody knew this was not "legal-base family", it was advantageous for everyone to pay lip service to "family" while meaning "anyone you trust".

Re: Netflix loses 1M users in Spain over password policing

#713
post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got two houses across two states where any one us (four) can be at any time. If they start blocking based on IP geo-location, I'll drop them immediately.

I don’t have a static ip-address. I am curious to see how they will deal with that.

I'd imagine they stick some kind of device fingerprint and only start bothering user if there is too many of new devices that never share same network.

Or maybe ping lan for other netflix app. Or remember the MAC address of router or something.

Re: Netflix loses 1M users in Spain over password policing

#714
post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more savvy people use full automation with Usenet and torrents as backups.

What does "full automation" mean in the context of media acquisition?

You can Frankenstein a few services together: https://jasondale.me/posts/roll-your-own-streaming-service/

Re: Netflix loses 1M users in Spain over password policing

#715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use plex as an interface and it organizes my content in an easy to find and watch manner. It’s the fewest clicks to see new content. Comically I subscribe to many online services (Hulu, Netflix, apple+) and will end up discovering and watching new shows through plex and my rss feeds than the actual apps. So pirating still gives me the best user interface. Especially with combining content from multiple services. Al…

So piracy gives you the best UI. Sure. But why do you believe your need for the best UI is enough to clear the bar for ethics when it comes to violating other people's IP rights? Stealing food from the store is way more convenient than going through the line. Best UI there is for grocery shopping.

The grand parent didn't say anything about selling or returning the DVD for a refund, so how is shifting formats to something more durable piracy?

If it's just a backup I can't see any ethical reason why you shouldn't be able to do this.

We went through all this in the courts when we got the rights to timeshift recorded TV programmes.

Comparing it to stealing food is ridiculous. No body has been deprived of anything, it's just copyright violation.

Re: Netflix loses 1M users in Spain over password policing

#716

Netflix: ”You get two parallel streams with your family. Family means trust and password sharing.“ Customers: “Farewell pirating. We pay a fair flat and it is automatically shared between Netflix and artists. Great!“ Netflix: “We increase the flat permanently. And we have now competitors and doesn’t over anymore all relevant content (e.g. Star Trek Picard, Expanse, Disney). How about ruining it and blocking family me…

Users need to accept that Netflix was never going to be profitable that way. We had a taste of that amount of content at that price, but it simply can't be economically done.

They were perfectly profitable till greed didn't breed more walled gardens

Re: Netflix loses 1M users in Spain over password policing

#717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Netflix sees 3 people sharing 1 account and thinks that 2 of the 3 would maybe pay for accounts if they block sharing. But in reality they end up losing the 1 account instead because none of the 3 people are willing to pay full price individually. They were all willing to pay 1/3 of the price when sharing.

According to Netflix, there is an initial wave of cancellations, but over the ensuing months, they end up with more paying subscribers than there were before the password-sharing crackdown. They've initialized this crackdown in a few different waves. I can't imagine they would continue to do it if it were detrimental to their bottom line.

> According to Netflix, there is an initial wave of cancellations, but over the ensuing months, they end up with more paying subscribers than there were before the password-sharing crackdown.

The question begging to be asked here is whether those are new subscribers or people that were using someone's else password, natural growth, or just a good show landed in meantime and a bunch of people subscribed

Re: Netflix loses 1M users in Spain over password policing

#718

The question no one is asking, how much money are they saving by kicking out the moochers? I'm not surprised if a significant number of Netflix users are sharing their accounts with others. If this move ends up saving them money, then... sucks, but it's understandable. The big problem here is they've trained users they can get away with this until recently, hence all the complaints.

I don't think this is primarily about saving money on licensing or bandwidth or whatever. It's more about what percentage of the accounts that are sharing will pay for an extra user, or will have one or more of the ejected users get their own subscription, and whether that added revenue comes out to more than the loss from people just dropping the platform.

Re: Netflix loses 1M users in Spain over password policing

#720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my friends is a writer, and his take on the problem is that the seasoned writers Netflix used to have (a few years ago) are now all getting fairly "old". Aka around their 50's. So, they were let go, and a new generation of young, unseasoned writers has been doing the writing. But unlike previous generations though (heh), many of them are not even slightly interested in learning from the previous (seasoned) wri…

Barely on-topic, but this is sort of the plot of Reboot, and I remember watching this show seeing the dynamic between the elder writer played by Paul Reiser) and the much younger writer played by Rachel Bloom. The gist of the (relevant) bit of plot is that the younger writer wants to take an old classic series (ala Full House) but do a gritty reboot of it, but the studio brings in the original writers on to help, and…

This was a great show I can't say enough about. It really mad me laugh out loud far more than any other show in recent memory. (And in the end, if I recall, both groups of writers learned that the other was actually pretty decent at their jobs and had a lot of good ideas.) Unfortunately, it didn't do spectacularly in the ratings and was immediately canceled. I seriously hope someone else picks it up, but I don't know how likely that is.
Post reply on HN