Netflix's diminishing subscribers and its response

sherbz

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This topic involves discussing piracy. But not in how to pirate. If its against the forum rules I apologise and mods can close it. But its an interesting topic, so....

Netflix have lost subscribers. Quite a lot, especially in the UK. Their response has been to promise a crackdown on password sharing and a few other measures on top. I dont know about others, but I'm reminded of the debates on copyright in videogames around 20 years ago. Ironically, the "solution" in videogames was digital marketplaces and clients like steam. Much like Netflix in many regards. And in videogames, password sharing has never really entered the debate. Yet this is what Netflix seem to be focussing on. And IMO its the wrong approach. I feel they will just alienate their customers unless they make it easier to watch on multiple devices in a single household. And likely just lose even more subscribers by going ahead.

My gut feeling is that the Netflix experience will mirror gamings in some respects. They will come down hard on everyone, lose even more subscribers, and then have to settle for a less restrictive model. People still pirate in gaming. And share accounts. But its probably better now than it ever was. Especially with pro consumer models like gamepads.

Capitalism being capitalism though. No company seems content with their annual profits and always want more. More growth more money. Will they succeed? I'm not sure they will.
 
There is not enough hours in the day to watch all the streaming content.

At least Netflix isn't CNN+ which spent $250 million.
 
I assume the password sharing talk is mostly marketing lip service to investors.

Password and account sharing is bad in general - it’s not an appropriate way to handle shared access to resources that have restricted access, so I’m in favour of Netflix discouraging this, but I don’t expect that password sharing is really having much of an impact, so I don’t expect that its elimination would do much either.
 
I don't use Netflix, and I don't understand this.

Simple logic suggest the service provider sells the service
with a only one log-on per account at a time for the price.
 
From a technical standpoint, is it at all realistic to expect any method to stop pirates who actually know what they are doing with code? Since the media has to be in a digital form which can work on the web, it may be literally impossible.
@Samson

Steam is a good example of that. If the user doesn't care about the "rewards" system (which afaik is rather nominal in most games; I never got anything from playing Among US on steam), they may even prefer pirated versions which don't require you to stay online etc.
 
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Netflix have lost subscribers. Quite a lot, especially in the UK. Their response has been to promise a crackdown on password sharing and a few other measures on top. I dont know about others, but I'm reminded of the debates on copyright in videogames around 20 years ago. Ironically, the "solution" in videogames was digital marketplaces and clients like steam. Much like Netflix in many regards. And in videogames, password sharing has never really entered the debate. Yet this is what Netflix seem to be focussing on.
They must be in denial if they think they need to focus on password sharing as opposed the ever-increasing subscription prices matched with the poor quality of their in-house content. I mean "Netflix adaptation" has become synonymous with "cheap and lazy". They were in trouble once they started losing licenses to pre-existing quality content (i.e. Disney, Warner Bros., etc.) and had to start relying on their own.

Not to mention they got a bump in subscribers when everyone was locked down and now that people are out and about again, a lot of people don't need Netflix anymore. Again, especially with the increasing prices
 
Well, it's hard to compete when we're so interested in subsidizing Amazon's retail dominance and Disney's copyright dominance, I'll grant.

I don't get the whole crackdown on password sharing. I'm paying for two simultaneous streams or I am not paying for two simulataneous streams. Pick one and charge the correct price.
 
The problem is all about stock price. Investors are upset about subscriber data and have responded by selling shares. To "fix" the stock price, Reed Hastings has to mess with his so far successful business model. I'm pretty sure if the stock price issue was not on the table, the company would respond differently.
 
From a technical standpoint, is it at all realistic to expect any method to stop pirates who actually know what their doing with code? Since the media has to be in a digital form which can work on the web, it may be literally impossible.
There are things they can do. They can enforce DRM all the way to the display equipment, and add effects that make "point a video camera at the screen" produce a poor copy. The thing about this is that it would make the legitimate users have to buy expensive crippled hardware, which would drive people to piracy. The other thing they can do is watermarks, so you can distribute it but the copy can always be tied to person who legitimately paid for it. It does not seem to work very well though.
 
There are things they can do. They can enforce DRM all the way to the display equipment, and add effects that make "point a video camera at the screen" produce a poor copy. The thing about this is that it would make the legitimate users have to buy expensive crippled hardware, which would drive people to piracy. The other thing they can do is watermarks, so you can distribute it but the copy can always be tied to person who legitimately paid for it. It does not seem to work very well though.

I got incredibly pissed off recently when I realized that Netflix actually makes it impossible to take screenshots of their streams, which I find utterly ridiculous. Taking a screenshot of a show to use it to make a meme is textbook fair use.
 
I got incredibly pissed off recently when I realized that Netflix actually makes it impossible to take screenshots of their streams, which I find utterly ridiculous. Taking a screenshot of a show to use it to make a meme is textbook fair use.
There is the world of difference between what is fair use and what is allowable technical controls. I might say that if you use an operating system that allows the programs to turn off screenshots you can hardly complain at the program for using the feature.
 
I got incredibly pissed off recently when I realized that Netflix actually makes it impossible to take screenshots of their streams, which I find utterly ridiculous. Taking a screenshot of a show to use it to make a meme is textbook fair use.

You probably have heard this, in the rightwing echo-chambers

"You will own nothing, and be happy"

Exhibit A is your complaint! Too few people care, they're happy to own nothing.
 
There is the world of difference between what is fair use and what is allowable technical controls. I might say that if you use an operating system that allows the programs to turn off screenshots you can hardly complain at the program for using the feature.

I'm not sure it's a Windows problem. Windows takes the screenshot just fine, the problem is that whatever is on the Netflix screen, so to speak, shows up in the screenshot as a blank black field.

At any rate, it's just another argument for piracy. I can take screenshots of pirated shows, use them for memes, and then get dopamine from the reactions. Actually, I'm pretty sure Hulu also allows you to take screenshots.
 
I don't get the whole crackdown on password sharing. I'm paying for two simultaneous streams or I am not paying for two simulataneous streams. Pick one and charge the correct price.

A per-stream rate doesn’t line up very with differences in usage. There’s a pretty clear difference between having one account on two TVs in my house able to stream at the same time, and one account on two TVs in different households that are able to stream at the same time.

The problem for Netflix is that the inelegance of account sharing doesn’t deter a lot of people, unlike, say, shared Amazon Prime accounts, where sharing your streaming password gives everyone you’ve shared the password with access to purchase anything they want on Amazon using your credit card. (Similar with Apple.)

Password sharing should never be encouraged, or a supported use case - the appropriate design is separate user accounts / plans. e.g. We both have user accounts with Netflix with our own passwords, I can purchase a streaming plan and add you as an authorized user to that plan.

Probably instead of “simultaneous streams” they could do a limit on “authorized devices”, with no limit on simultaneous streams. There’s enough friction in the process of securely authorizing and de-authorizing devices that it’s not very convenient to split accounts up between a bunch of people. (i.e. if you want to authorize a device, you need your username/password as well as your separate 2FA device, and to de-authorize, if not done from the already-authorized device, you need to log on to web portal with username/password/2FA.)
 
There are things they can do. They can enforce DRM all the way to the display equipment, and add effects that make "point a video camera at the screen" produce a poor copy. The thing about this is that it would make the legitimate users have to buy expensive crippled hardware, which would drive people to piracy. The other thing they can do is watermarks, so you can distribute it but the copy can always be tied to person who legitimately paid for it. It does not seem to work very well though.

The important thing to remember is that only one good copy is required. So any attempt at DRM is a bet that no one will bother enough to make that one copy.
 
Part of me wonders if the increased competition of paid streaming services will lead to a piracy renaissance. Granted anti-piracy measures are stricter than in the 2000s, but if media producers start spreading shows over various platforms instead of one big one like Netflix, people are going to say "nah, I ain't payin' for five different subscriptions."
 
Yeah, we should have Teddy Roosevelt'd Jeff Bezos' Empire of S*** already.
 
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