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Comment by maxsilver | Hacker News Reader

> The entitlement people feel to steal is always surprising.

It's not stealing when you already paid in full.

Sharing my Netflix password with my wife and/or child is not stealing, I paid in full for that account, and have now for many many years.

My Plex server is full of DVDs and BluRays I paid full retail price for (that's $20 to $30 USD each), it's not stealing to use it, and it's not stealing to let some friends occasionally borrow films from it.

The entitlement companies feel to micromanage the lives of their paid-in-full customers is ridiculous. If you don't want people to have your product, stop selling them the product. And if you sell someone a product, don't act all surprised that they now have the product and are free to use it accordingly.

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Wife and child is one thing. But the problem the problem is that people are sharing with people who aren't relatives. Old college roommates from 15 years ago who live on the other side of the country. Coworkers. People they meet in bars. None of these are legitimate.

I get the attraction of getting content for free. I used to pirate software when I was young and broke. But I'm an adult now and I do adult things, meaning I pay for what I consume.

Amazingly, people can survive without consuming other people's content. You don't have to watch a streaming service. There are other things in life to do.

Much like I think people who don't vote forfeit the right to complain about politicians, I think people who steal content don't get to complain about the quality of the available content.

I have a premium plan with Netflix which allows me to watch content on 4 screens concurrently, on "laptop, TV, phone and tablet" [0]. It is shared with family members and each one is probably logged into several devices used wherever we may be in the world. Everything is completely within the rules [1]. That's what we pay for and that's how we want to use it.

Any limitation like annoying password resets, strict geofencing, or any move a company makes to tell me how to use the service I pay for and use entirely legally inconvenience me, the paying customer. It will not inconvenience Pirate Joe. Of course none of these inconveniences and limitations would ever come attached to a hefty price drop to make it worth the effort for me.

The entitlement companies feel to inconvenience paying customers for profit is never surprising. Also those "lost revenue" calculations are so massively and intentionally misleading by presuming that every non-paying viewer would turn to a paying one. If your point is based on misdirection it's not much of a point.

[0] https://www.netflix.com/signup/planform

[1] https://help.netflix.com/legal/termsofuse

>Old college roommates from 15 years ago who live on the other side of the country. Coworkers. People they meet in bars. None of these are legitimate.

But you can lend those people a Blu-Ray, which only deprives you of watching it while they have it.

Which is perfectly fine. Just as it's perfectly fine for you to purchase a Netflix subscription for someone else.

Wouldn't the analogy be that you lend them your service credentials and don't use it until they are done with it?

Rehosting and serving that file is costing the streaming company electricity, bandwidth, cpu etc. Your agreement with them is that you can press pay an unlimited number of times in a month, but they didnt agree to serve that file to other people in other households. It's not quite the same as lending someone a disc, because in this case you agreed to terms of service that specifically address sharing.

Going by that logic, if I watch a movie twice or more, I should be charged more? What is the difference, “electricity” and “bandwidth” wise if I watch twice, or me and my coworker watch once?

You signed an agreement for your own use, not to allow your friends to use their servers. Its about the agreement you made.

But that's moving the goalpost. You said that sharing an account has a cost. I ask you, if I watch once and my wife watches another time, how is that different from me watching once and my coworker watching at another time?

Netflix's terms of use support sharing within the same household. It even has profiles for separate users within the same household.

I don't even know what 'paid in full' means here. It's a specific service with specific terms of use that include not sharing passwords outside one's household. You are free to reject the terms of use and not subscribe to the service. It doesn't make sense to justify breaking some terms just because you don't like them but keep the rest of the service because it's convenient. Would you sign a contract and then break specific clauses just because you didn't like those clauses? The contract is the contract. You choose to give your word to abide.

If you're in the US, those DVD rips aren't actually legal. You can only format shift audio recordings. You also had to use a circumvention device to make those rips so they're DMCA violations.

Solution: Get a virtual assistant in a low CoL country without DMCA applicability to purchase, rip and upload Blu Ray movies to your server on demand.

IANAL

> Sharing my Netflix password with my wife and/or child is not stealing, I paid in full for that account, and have now for many many years.

I am inclined to agree with HBO, Netflix, et al. that this is stealing. You are using their computing resources against the terms you agreed to.

However torrenting is good and not stealing. You are using your own bandwidth.

No, Netflix actually encourages this behavior; this is not stealing.

Netflix specifically allows you to stream to multiple family members. There are no terms being violated.

  4.2. The Netflix service and any content viewed through 
  our service are for your personal and non-commercial use 
  only and may not be shared with individuals beyond your 
  household. During your Netflix membership, we grant you a 
  limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access 
  the Netflix service and view Netflix content through the 
  service. Except for the foregoing, no right, title or 
  interest shall be transferred to you. You agree not to use 
  the service for public performances.

Note it says "household" not "individual".

And frankly this is a good thing. It would be completely ridiculous for Netflix to demand a separate account for my wife and each child. The children aren't even allowed to make accounts, they would be left high and dry.

This is one area where I have a constantly annoyance with Steam. You can create multiple accounts on Steam and share the library, but you can't play more than one game at once, even if it's not the same game. It's horrible. I can understand locking you out of a specific game because someone else is playing, but locking you out of your entire library because someone else is playing is so dumb.

You're ignoring the history.

Disney for years resisted selling films on videos because they had no way of controlling how many people would be in the room watching the content. And they investigated single-use tapes (these had a latch that prevented rewinding, you'd have to send the tape back to the factory to be re-wound) and 24 hour DVDs (these would be sealed in an oxygen free case and would start oxidising on contact with air).

This short time we've had of "owning content" has been an anomaly and it's something they've wanted to stop as soon as possible.

> My Plex server is full of DVDs and BluRays I paid full retail price for (that's $20 to $30 USD each), it's not stealing to use it,

Format-shifting is not legal in all places. It's currently not legal in the UK. And if it requires circumvention of technical measures (which ripping DVDs and BluRays does) it's probably not legal because of DMCA.

If you want to change the law you're going to need a better argument than "I bought it", because you haven't bought it, you've licensed it, and they control the licences.

googling around i cannot find any info on this single-use tape story. do you have a link?

I did find the dvd one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexplay

Cartrivision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartrivision

> Cassettes of major movies such as The Bridge on the River Kwai, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Dr. Strangelove, High Noon, It Happened One Night, Divorce Italian Style, The Quiet Man, The Belles of St Trinian's, Two Rode Together and Brother Rat[4] were ordered via the initial 200-movie catalog at a retailer, delivered by parcel mail, and then returned to the retailer after viewing. These rental cassettes were red, approximately 7 inches (180 mm) high by 6.5 inches (170 mm) wide by 1.5 inches (38 mm) deep (however used the same videotape used today) and could not be rewound by a home Cartrivision recorder. Rather, they were rewound by a special machine upon their return to the retailer.[5] Other cassettes on sports, travel, art, and how-to topics were available for purchase. These cassettes were black, and could be rewound on a Cartrivision recorder. An optional monochrome camera manufactured for Cartrivision by Eumig could be bought to make home videos. A color camera was in the works but never materialized before CTI's demise.

> This short time we’ve had of “owning content” has been an anomaly

Have you ever heard of books?

> Sharing my Netflix password with my wife and/or child is not stealing

You're right, it's not. And Netflix is fine with this. However, should you be able to share your Netflix username and password with everyone on the block?

>However, should you be able to share your Netflix username and password with everyone on the block?

Presumably, your Netflix subscription has limitations on how many people can simultaneously watch it. So, yes, you should be able to share it with everyone on the block. Why not? By doing so, you're potentially preventing yourself from using it during that time, for instance if it has a maximum of 4 simultaneous streams. Why should you not be able to use the maximum number? It's no different than having 4 copies of a book or Blu-Ray and lending them out to your neighbors: if they haven't all borrowed them, you still have at least one to view, but if they're all borrowed, you're unable to view them.

The terms of service someone posted above says you "may not share with individuals beyond your household". Your neighbor is not within your household.

Interesting. My mother in law is on our family account with T-mobile. She doesn't live with us. T-mobile offers a Netflix Family Plan as part of our package. Does that mean my MIL shouldn't have access to our Netflix account?

If your mother in law is on the account and everyone on your account gets the family plan, it would make sense that each household has access.

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