Publications
Partners
Password sharing is not a victimless crime. It’s a form of content piracy that harms the businesses and creatives who develop the content. Now streaming services are working to ensure viewers pay for the content they consume, writes Frikkie Jonker, Director, Cybersecurity Anti-Piracy at Irdeto.
Password sharing has long been common among customers of streaming services, as multiple friends and family members watch a wide variety of films, series and sport using a single account.
However, the practice now threatens the streaming business model, and is starting to affect the types and quality of content that streaming services can provide.
To address this, streaming services are starting to tighten up on their security and limiting how their content may be shared.
While the practice of password sharing has become widespread, its impact is as harmful as other forms of content piracy. Ultimately, the platform sharing the content is not fairly compensated for the content it publishes. This means content owners and creators are not fairly paid.
Quantifying the impact of streaming piracy is difficult, but when four different households share one password, the streaming service – and the creators of its content – receive only 25% of the compensation they are entitled to. This fundamentally distorts the content economy.
Local productions are not commissioned, because international content is cheaper. Global sports events are not licensed, because demand does not justify it. Major reality shows are not launched because the audience numbers are not accurately measurable, and advertising and sponsorship cannot be sold to support it.
Despite the sense that someone is paying for the content, when passwords are shared, the practice still amounts to stealing content from the creators and licence holders, who are only paid a fraction of what their work deserves. Far from being fans of the content they watch, viewers pirating content are actually limiting its success and slowly killing it.
Where once platforms took a laissez faire approach, it has now become clear that streaming piracy poses a significant threat to the content industry.
A 2019 report by research firm Parks Associates found that, in 2019, companies lost about $9,1 billion to password piracy and sharing, and projected that would rise to $12,5 billion by 2024.
Several services, including DStv, as well as Netflix, with its 200 million global subscribers, are tightening up their systems and acting to address the threat.
Methods of upgrading security include limiting device numbers, VPN blocking, auto sign-outs, and the use of verification codes. Services also have investigative departments that pursue syndicates involved in large-scale content piracy. In South Africa, arrests were recently made in a case where episodes of popular Showmax series The Wife were shared to hundreds of subscribers over Whatsapp.
The streaming industry already offers customers good value for money, but more work needs to be done to ensure that the creators of content get the full benefit of their intellectual property.
Ultimately, there is no free lunch. While it may feel that streaming piracy is a victimless crime, there are people affected by the practice. The main victims are the content creators.
While there may be grumbles of discontent as streaming services tighten up their policies, it is only reasonable and fair to pay for the content we consume, and for those who own and create that content to be fairly compensated.
This post was sponsored and supplied by Irdeto.
