Many subscribers of streaming services share their passwords with friends and family. Netflix is ​​trying to fight the practice, and the UK government has come out in support of the fight.

The UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office has published new anti-piracy guidance in a joint campaign with Meta. It is designed to help people avoid piracy and counterfeit goods on the Internet. Most of the advice is common knowledge, but in the section under the heading “Piracy”, one of the actions listed as violating copyright law is “distributing passwords for streaming services”.

“There are a number of provisions in criminal and civil law that can be applied in the case of password sharing, when the purpose is to provide the user with access to works protected by copyright without payment,” the department said in a separate explanation. “These terms may address breach of contract, fraud or secondary copyright infringement, as the case may be.”

The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service states that the use of membership club services without payment and without membership (this description can be applied to sharing streaming service passwords) is an example of fraud.

We should add that the American authorities also share this opinion. In 2016, a US federal appeals court confirmed that password sharing can be a criminal offense under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

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At the same time, the rules of most streaming services prohibit the transfer of passwords to people who are not part of the subscriber’s family circle. Although until recently, companies turned a blind eye to this practice, and in 2017, the Netflix service publicly encouraged it.

However, after its first-ever decline in its subscriber base, Netflix is ​​struggling to combat password-sharing, which occurs in about a third of US households.

Source: techspot