Disney+ will begin restricting password sharing in Canada on November 1. Subscribers in the region have received an email stating that they will soon be prohibited from sharing accounts with people outside their ‘household’. Household in this case refers to the devices associated with a primary personal address and used by people living in the same home. The announcement isn’t entirely clear, so the impression I get is that as long as outsiders log into the main account holder’s home, they can qualify as members of the ‘household’? There are no details on how Disney plans to enforce this policy, but it promises to always monitor account activity to see if people are adhering to it.
If Disney+ realizes or believes its users are violating the rules, access to the streaming platform may be limited or terminated entirely. “You are responsible for all use of your account by your household, including compliance with this section,” the new agreement reads (via MobileSyrup). During Disney’s third-quarter 2023 earnings call last month, Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed that his team was aware that a “significant” number of users had shared passwords with friends and family, and that the company had the “technical capacity ‘ has to monitor it. registrations. At the time, he hinted that the crackdown plans could start sometime in 2024, but now it looks like Disney+ has gone a bit too far.
Interestingly, a phrase in the agreement – “Unless otherwise permitted by your Service Level” – suggests that certain Disney+ tiers will still allow you to share passwords. This would of course be the more expensive tier, which I suspect will work similarly to Netflix’s new policy, which allows users to add additional members to their accounts for a higher monthly subscription fee. The latter was one of the first major streaming platforms to start tackling account sharing by tracking IP addresses and asking for verification codes every 31 days. For now, it’s unclear whether Disney+ will follow the same methods and what new subscriptions it might introduce. However, Iger’s main concern is that once people are removed from someone else’s Disney+ account, how many people are willing to become new subscribers and increase revenue for the company?
Despite the initial backlash, the password sharing approach appears to have worked strongly in favor of Netflix, which reported an increase of 6 million new subscriptions in July, for a total of 238 million subscribers. Meanwhile, Disney+ has struggled to keep its numbers up – especially the Disney+ Hotstar segment, which lost a whopping 12.5 million subscribers from April to June, dropping from 52.9 million to 40.4 million subscribers. The decline was largely due to the platform losing the rights to livestream IPL (Indian Premier League) cricket to Viacom18 until 2027. Another contributing factor is the removal of all HBO content from Disney+ Hotstar, which left many on the internet (including me) wondering if the subscription was still worth it.