Even though the article said they backtracked, they said the policy is already in place in certain countries, and accounts there will be banned with 31 days of inactivity.
The article before the retraction shared more details:
They’ve basically pulled an Adobe, and are now on the anti-piracy train believing account sharing is just as bad as piracy.
You know what this will end up in? More piracy.
What’s more laughable is the solution for travelers was to produce 2FA backup codes that you could only use once, and if it’s like any other backup code solution, you’re limited in how many backup codes you can generate.
Yeah, as soon as this hit’s my account I’m quitting.
Edit: Darn shame too, been a Netflix subscriber since like 2007.
Widevine is already a headache, It was basically the only reason I tried Chromium on Linux. Now it’s honestly just not worth it, especially if your ISP has sketchy GeoIP.
Widevine is a proper pain in the dick, but I have no issue with Netflix charging extra for additional households.
When I left my parents place, I started paying all my own bills.
And if one can let ones kids can still watch for a fee lower than a complete subscription, then great!
But if it stops people starting a show at home, switching to a laptop/phone/tablet to carry on on cellular, then finish at work, then I am against that.
Only workable way, would be 2fa, but people sharing with non family, would just copy access codes/tokens to their contacts.
I guess this new device proximity thing, might look attractive for it, but just looks plain bad.
I presume the days of watching netflix on Linux are numbered?
This is the exact reason I have a separate 60TB pool in TrueNAS called “media”
On the flip side,I dont agree with just stealing media, because the industry is already in decline.
It seems like netflix should have tackled this loophole a decade ago.
I remember learning about people doing the whole “account sharing” thing and personally considering it unethical, but I never understood why netflix allowed this behaviour for so long.
Maybe they waited until now so they could bolster their active user count to investers? Now that they’re hurting with subscribers leaving in droves, they are starting to crack down on their policies to increase revenue.
Filled to the gills with Linux ISO’s no doubt.
Yeah agreed. I buy all my own media for that reason.
Or it could be a BigBrainTM move to tank their stock, do buy-backs at the lower rate, then reverse this horrible decision and raise the stock again.
Wouldn’t be the first time a company did something like that…
They are digging their own grave. They can easily just adapt to not scam consumers, but they are too greedy.
I will happily buy music, movies and TV shows when they actually let me own it.
Time and time again they have proven they want your money, but in return they don’t actually want you to own what you paid for.
Illegal rootkit laden physical media, unskippable anti-piracy warnings on media I’ve bought, deals being altered after I’ve given money. Its all a complete scam.
Why is it 10x easier to pirate a movie than buy it? Its backwards. For music its even worse, finding a high quality copy I can use on all my devices is almost impossible to do legally without violating their terms, yet pirating an album in FLAC can be done in 10 seconds
Fair
Also fair- the whole “buy” media on amazon (or games on steam etc) is a con dependant on the whim of provably evil/ anti consumer distributors, rights holders etc.
I guess piracy is an access issue. If media was sold at a fair price, people would buy it.
Instead, it is being rented at an enlarged value.
The old way of financing, creating, licensing, distributing and consuming media is outdated and no longer works.
But, On the whole, I rather rent temporary access at inflated streaming prices every bow and then, and I do agree with my counties stance of a personal backup of their own physical media, format shifted. (Not shared with friends like plex)
I also understand I am odd in having this stance.
The decline of media is sad, and concentration to even fewer studios bad for everyone. But, the ones making the money, didn’t pivot quick enough.
And worse, streaming sites / studios fracturing even more to hasten their own demise, thinking keeping their on media to themselves might keep them in the market.
Probably will work out for Disney, not sure about others
Also,I could well be wrong
It’s just my opinion.
I dont share my Netflix when I activate it and i don’t share my forma shifted stuff.
Nor do I use others’ media.
I mean, like to watch a movie at a cinema, which is an expensive way to rent media…
But I am a odd duck in many ways, and rather do without, if price is not at an acceptable level.
Yup.
If they were happy with making a profit, things would be fine.
But they want ALL THE PROFIT right now and if that means throwing land mines in their own path, that is a future problem for someone else.
Like Gabe Newell said, piracy is a service issue. When there are sites that track what series/movie/music is currently available where, then the service sucks and deserves to die.
Time to Rise L1 NAS - Video with Friends
I do have a really good idea for a widespread media backup service
You sign up, and it scans all your files and makes a hash, then others sign up and it does the same
Then, you match/pair with users who have the same files. This way your 40TB of ISO’s are “backed up” so to speak without uploading anything. If you delete a file by accident, you can download it from your match. We could go one step further and say “Hey, user 14498459 has 85% of the same files. Check out the other stuff he has”
That would then let you discover new content, but also reduce the number of matches required to get a complete backup in order
Of course, it will never happen
So it’s kind of like a torrent… 
It would probably use torrents as a backbone, but we need something to do all the linking up of users/systems
Maybe it could be nicely scripted based on some tracker.
L1 Torrent Tracker