Netflix is testing ways to keep people from using other people's accounts. A few users have been confronted with a prompt to verify their accounts. They are being somewhat soft about it as you can see from this screenshot. The "verify later" seems to work just fine, and lets you go about your business.
Demanding an account verification may be useful to prevent unauthorized users from accessing an account, but what about people who are using a shared password? Netflix has been famously lax about people sharing passwords, as it tends to tempt people into opening their own accounts.
The move potentially represents the beginning of a strategy shift by Netflix, which has historically not attempted to police password sharing. "Password sharing is something you have to learn to live with," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings declared in 2016, "because there's so much legitimate password sharing — like you sharing with your spouse, with your kids … so there's no bright line, and we're doing fine as is."
But THR senior editor Eriq Gardner predicted in 2019 that piracy crackdowns could be the next front in the streaming wars after the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment announced a working group to reduce unauthorized access to content.
Describing the organization as "an antipiracy spinoff of the MPAA," Gardner noted, "The economics of streaming nearly demand it. Platforms are spending billions of dollars annually on both original content and rights to old shows. To become profitable, media companies will need to grow paid subscribers rapidly. AT&T boldly predicted 50 million subs for HBO Max by 2024. As part of that push, it may prove irresistible to target the more than one-fifth of young adults who, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, say they borrow passwords from people who do not live with them."
So far, this is just a test. They may well come up with something more draconian in the future. Read more at the Hollywood Reporter.
[via Mashable]
