Netflix Password sharing crackdown

Factual Questions
41

The good news with that is that many of them have already been digitized. If they’re not on streaming, then you can find the DVD or Blu-ray in less than legal places.

Now there are older films so far from the mainstream that they were never digitized, even by fans. But you really couldn’t get your hands on those pre-Nerflix, either. I guess there are some that were released to the home market only on VHS or other analog formats, but hopefully at least someone created a digital copy for their own use and then made it available, and there are enough people sharing it (or it hasn’t been removed from the site).

42

The thing is that the Blockbuster model is only possible because of the “first-sale doctrine” which means that anyone who buys a title on CD/DVD/BluRay can rent it to anyone else. That’s not the case with streaming content, where rights to each title need to be negotiated.

43

Yes, this is what pretty much everyone wants. Netflix was able to do it with DVDs because old rules for libraries, developed in a more populist age, prevented the content creators from stopping them. Netflix won the suits.

It’s unlikely to happen again.

44

I’m curious by how many people are frustrated that Netflix charges for “four screens” if you want high res. I’m a little annoyed i have to pay for high res to get a second screen. We have the cheap, one screen service.

45

I don’t understand the difference and I believe it’s basic to the problem. Streaming has some jewels that appeal to everyone for a while. But, the streaming formula gets old fast. The same gag played over and over, anything to make it last. Like Reacher knocks out six rural bad guys, then six bikers, then six cons, then six teen delinquents. What’s next, clowns?

I’d like access to classic movies like on CD, but with the convenience of streaming.

46

I have the opposite problem. I want hi res but only need one screen. I’d be happy to pay less for fewer screens. That said, $20/month isn’t going to break me.

47

Yeah, you seem to be in the majority here

We only have one TV, but i want to be able to stream on my laptop while my husband watches TV. We don’t watch much where higher resolution matters.

48

When Netflix was a strictly DVD service, they had a much larger selection than any video store (Blockbuster included). And part of the reason was because they could buy just a few copies of not-popular movies and send them to customers anywhere in the US, where my local video store might not be able to rent that movie more than once a year and would therefore not buy it to begin with.

But digital is different from buying a digital copy - if the video store buys a video tape or a DVD , they own it and can rent it out or sell it when the movie is no longer popular and they no longer need 20 copies of last years hit movie. Same for libraries and printed books. But with streaming and ebooks, they get licenses for a specified time period - and when that time period is up, the license may be more expensive or unavailable, such as when Disney starts its own streaming service and will no longer license their content to Netflix.Happens with libraries ,too - I’ve been on a waitlist and then notified that the book is no longer available .

49

I’m going to disagree. There’s no reason a content provider could not grant a license to multiple streaming services. The question then becomes - is exclusive lucrative enough to prevent that?

I would argue - maybe today, yes, but in the long run, no. The current bidding war is an attempt to use debt to buy market share. As the old saying goes, “If things can’t go on this way… they won’t”. Again, I’ll point to the music industry. They were forced into the multiple-sources model by default by iTunes - i.e. “let’s license to others since we are screwed by the licensing terms with iTunes”.

Right now, the Netflix wannabees are fighting over the exclusive rights because they think it will give them enough markets share to dominate. (It won’t). But the owners of long tail content (those who don’t own a streaming service) will sooner or later recognize that the “license to everyone” model makes more sense financially. Nobody will switch to a streaming service because they have Dragnet or Beverly Hillbillies or This Old House but if it’s on every service, maybe enough people will watch it every so often anyway to provide a moderate revenue stream - multiplied by the number of TV shows and movies made since the dawn of the movie camera.

The key here, to me, is the separation between content providers and streamers. The US government years ago made it mandatory that the studios not own movie theatres or have exclusive contracts, so as to ensure no community was locked exclusively into one studio’s product. The US also mandated licensing for all music on radio stations, to avoid the same exclusivity walls. Perhaps this latest service will finally adjust itself.

(Or maybe another analogy is bookstores and Amazon - you can buy the same book anywhere, Amazon just happens to have dominated the online market because it carries almost everything and was there first. Few booksellers find it advantageous to sign exclusive deals with other sellers.)

Netflix and its competitors make some good content, but months of labour and tens of millions of dollars (or more) becomes something I consume in one evening. Considering not everyone has the same tastes and I have 365 evenings in a year, it’s going to be hard to fill all that by themselves. Not every streaming service will survive.

Finally, to my mind it’s like VHS vs Beta, or the mor recent 4K HD battle. It’s not worth having multiple sources, people don’t want to have to figure out where to find stuff if they don’t have to.

50

That’s wishful thinking. I mean, like I said, everybody wants what you want, but that is absolutely not the direction the industry is going in nor is it for the foreseeable future.

Now that doesn’t mean a consumer backlash isn’t brewing or that a streamer like Pluto TV (which is a different linear beast) can’t carve out a good niche.

But Apple, Disney, et al aren’t spending billions and billions of dollars on original content or swallowing whole studios just to become middlemen.

51

This is asking for a slide back to the cable TV model, which is what we’re deep into the process of running away from. “Everything” is on cable TV (or was 15 years ago), and even if you don’t care about sports you still pay for a bunch of sports channels, or if you don’t care about news you still pay for a bunch of 24 news channels, etc. I think a $100/month streaming service that has everything will not be popular.

Right now the aggregation of everything into one place is happening at the end user point. If I turn on my Roku and ask it to show me Star Trek Discovery it goes to Paramount+, if I ask for Reacher it goes to Amazon, etc. The problem is things like Apple TV. If I ask a friend’s Apple TV for the Black Widow movie, it suggests I rent it from Apple instead of taking me to Disney+ (or maybe it offers both choices, but why offer the choice to rent it and the choice to watch it for free?).

The free/subscription software Plex has also just released updates which allow finding things across multiple streaming platforms.

If smart TV’s were really smart, they’d handle all of this stuff for you. I can imagine a future where the device also manages your subscriptions.

“You’ve asked to watch season 12 episode 1 of Mandalorian, that will require re-activating your Disney subscription for $18.99/month. Subscribe YES/NO?”

“Informational Notice: You’ve not watched anything on Hulu for two weeks, shall I cancel your subscription, effective on the 31st? It can be reactivated at any time. Unsubscribe YES/NO?”

“Stop asking questions and just subscribe and unsubscribe according to the default rules? YES/NO?”

52

The cable TV market only worked because the providers basically had a monopoly on content in different places, allowing them to charge as much as they wanted. The issue was not having so much of the content in one place. It was always the price that was the issue, and the way content you weren’t interested in subsidized the content you were. The costs became ridiculous, like over $100 a month.

I don’t see that happening again as long as there is at least some competition between services, and no local monopolies. I do suspect there will be some consolidation, because a bunch of smaller services are harder to sustain.

Plus costs are limited by the fact that every streaming service is competing with not only piracy, but perfectly legal free content. The latter included YouTube, TikTok, Facebook video, etc. These tend to work on a pay-what-you-want model, up to including just watching ads rather than joining their Patreon. Sure, the polish and talent of more professional video is worth more, but not so much more. You can just spend more time on YouTube or even non-video websites.

The problem I see with Netflix is that they’re trying all negative things to deal with this, and hitting them all at once. I personally hope this is more about shareholder and convincing them they are doing something, and not the panic it seems to be.

The things they need to do are things that engender people to the platform, not create hostility.

53

Twelve seasons of The Mandalorian?

Disney+ raising its price to $18.99?

54

A standard premise in a number of cyberpunk dystopias. E.g., Cash Crash Jubilee:

Every time he blinked, jumped, sang, downloaded music, played hopscotch, ate a waffle, or did anything by choice, the network of sensors and chips implanted invisibly under his skin detected the
corresponding muscle movement and nerve signals. This embodied computer system—his BodyBank—then transferred the action-data to GATA, which checked who owned the rights to the action property at that moment and gave them permission to withdraw the money instantly from his account.

55

Yes, I switched cable companies when it hit almost $300/mo for TV, phone and internet.

The point is - the cable model assumed you watched it all. The current model can, because computers have the capability, to allocate the revenue based on use. Consumers have shown with their wallets they prefer subscription to pay-as-you-go (mainly, unfortunately, because nobody offers reasonable pay-per-view prices.) I don’t see why a studio could not license its back catalog to multiple services, once it realizes this could be more lucrative. It’s exactly what music publishers do to music services. There is no obstacle to this other that streaming company executives. As I point out, for “long tail” content, it’s exactly the right strategy. Nobody’s doing a bidding war for rights to Petticoat Junction or The Patty Duke Show but it certainly would attract the occasional view among 300 million potential viewers. Then as the more obscure shows demonstrate a small amount of value (even if just for nostalgia) that licensing model will probably work its way up the food chain.

(Can you even get more popular shows like The Prisoner or Twilight Zone or the original Dallas on streaming nowadays? there are literally thousands of movies from 10 or more years ago that were sold on DVD at one point - so Blockbuster/Netflix DVD options - but aren’t on streaming.)

56

Here is an interesting article suggesting that Netflix’s problems are much more than just password sharing. The article mostly is quoting a different tech journalist, Carmi Levy, but I didn’t see a link to a single original article from Levy.

The TL;DR (which I’ll still make too long)

The root of Netflix’s problems is with the way they manage original content:

  • They release an entire show at once, so people don’t talk about it much to avoid spoilers for people who haven’t watched the whole thing yet. The traditional weekly release cycle encourages people to talk about the latest episode.
  • Netflix is constantly trying to get the next Squid Game or Stranger Things, so if a show isn’t a smash hit right away, it is unlikely to get renewed, and even if it is renewed it, is rarely for more than two or three seasons. This discourages people from investing time in new shows that will likely vanish before the story is complete.
  • The original model (post DVDs) was to bring people in to watch Netflix only shows like Orange is the New Black and House of Cards, and then people would stay to stream the long tail of licensed content. That worked when Netflix was the only streaming option, but there are too many other choices for it to be viable now.

This argument resonates well with me, because it absolutely reflects how I personally consume streaming media. Squid Game, for example. By the time I got around to watching it, the discussions were long over. Nobody wants to hear my ideas about a mid-season episode 4 months after it came out.

I’ll also avoid a show if I know the ending doesn’t even bother to resolve the main plot points, or is a cliff hanger. Maybe if it runs another few seasons and they manage to finish the story, I’ll watch it. By then of course the show is a few years old, and I’m likely to forget about it, or have lost all interest.

57

Beyond three seasons, the starts can demand very large new contracts which makes things cost prohibitive.

58

Yeah, that’s mentioned in the linked article, but as a viewer, why do I care? If the show is only going to run three seasons, then write it as a three season arc (or three one-season arcs, or whatever). If it’s a five season arc and it ends after three, I’m not compelled to even start.

I remember reading about one Netflix show recently, where the creators said they purposely wrote it as a big cliff hanger, hoping the fans would make enough noise that Netflix would renew it. I appreciated the warning, and then promptly completely forgot watching the show to the point I don’t even know which show it was.

59

I’ll agree with that point - too often I’ve binged a season in a few days, only to return almost a year later saying to myself “who was that anyway?” and “what happed?” OTOH, the one release a week was truly annoying too. (I still haven’t watched Squid Games or Stranger Things because from what little I know of those, they don’t appeal to me. Killer game show? Surprise to the contestants that it is? Ho hum… Orange is the New Black got annoying after a few episodes because the protagonist simply couldn’t figure out the obvious - as a prisoner, you have no rights and nobody in charge cares about your complaints or what happens to you. I imagine most real prisoners figure that out within a day. It just made her seem really stupid. )

60

Netflix has like 200m subscribers, while the stock market reaction to them losing 200,000 is significant, the actual reality of that impact on their operations as a going concern is probably quite small. Note that many traditional cable networks like ESPN are under 80m subscribers now. I think at one point ESPN had like 95m subscribers (for a cable network like ESPN, a subscriber means a cable company subscriber who has ESPN as part of their “package”, the cable companies pay ESPN a “carriage fee” per subscriber–even if that subscriber never turns to ESPN ever, if it is offered to that customer they are considered an ESPN subscriber), I believe ESPN is down to maybe 75ish million subscribers.

ESPN has ESPN+ which is a premium streaming service with a subscription model that has around 8.5 million subscribers, which has helped them make up some of the lost revenue. But that being said, 200m subscribers in the world of streaming is really fucking strong, there may actually be an argument Netflix is reaching market saturation for a service like that which it is offering. There’s only so many people in the world who have the disposable income needed to be viable customers of Netflix and who are interested in the type of content Netflix produces.

That being said, as someone who had a Netfflix 4k subscription which came with 4 screens of use, and only ever used 1 screen, that never bothered me because my assumption was I wasn’t really paying “extra” for the 4 screens. I assumed the price point of the 4k plan was pretty close to what Netflix wanted to charge for offering 4k (there is a higher cost to Netflix for delivering 4k content, but of course they operate at a big profit margin over that), and the 4 screen thing was just kind of thrown in. I am guessing they have market research on hand showing the number of users who would want to pay for 4 screens but who wasn’t interested in 4k, was small, and the price of that package is probably about what they “want” to charge for both 4k and for 4 screens, so they just make it one package.

Anyway, I’m a golden boy customer of subscription services–I am awful about leaving subscriptions running for months and sometimes years after I have stopped using them (I think I still had a cable box for upwards of 10 years of almost 0 use before pulling the plug), but even I have started to force myself to have “streaming service discipline” and I regularly prune my services out every 3-5 months as I get bored with them. I’ve found that in its current form Netflix has 3-4 months’ worth of content for me out of a year, and I just unsub once I find that I can’t easily find anything interesting on it. I’ll then resub maybe the next year and consume the newer content that comes out that appeals to me, rinse repeat.

I have a few streaming services that I new regularly sub then unsub to as I get bored with them: HBO Max, Netflix, Hulu+, Paramount+, Apple TV+ and a few of the old premium networks like Showtime, Starz etc.

The only streaming service I seem to keep full time is Amazon Prime–but that’s because I primarily have that for the non-streaming related benefits, so even when I’m bored of their video offerings I still want the other benefits Prime offers.