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Charter Communications is contemplating tying piracy mitigation to renewed contracts with movie studios, cable networks, and other programmers in an effort to enforce a new authentication standard to stop password sharing on streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and CBS All Access.
The cable company is trying to build an alliance that will enforce authentication principles on subscribers that share passwords to streaming services. Walt Disney is the only programmer to sign on thus far, agreeing to Charter’s piracy mitigation strategies for its Disney+ service in return for a renewed contract to distribute Disney programming on Spectrum cable systems.
Thomas Rutledge, Charter’s CEO, has spoken frequently about revenue erosion caused when consumers share their streaming accounts with friends and extended family members. Spectrum enforces geofencing on its subscribers, prohibiting access to certain streamed content outside of the home. Rutledge has not been specific about exactly what types of limitations would be imposed under the new strategy, but examples could include geofencing, periodic location checks, and limits on the number of devices authorized to view content.
“Ultimately our goal is that we can get an alliance of a large enough group of programmers and operators to protect the value of the content that people produce and the content that we distribute and we pay for,” Chris Winfrey, Charter’s chief financial officer, said last week at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2019 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference in Beverly Hills.
Winfrey severely criticized programmers that turn a blind eye to the practice of password sharing, claiming such practices are “insane.”
“To think that it doesn’t impact the way we get paid, it does,” Winfrey said. “And it conditions the entire marketplace to think that content should be devalued, it should be free, and that’s the way it is and I shouldn’t have to pay for it. It’s our firm belief that we’d be growing and growing significantly [if it wasn’t for password sharing].”
Yikes. All of those “strategies” sound like they would interfere with legitimate users all the time.
Only watch stuff at home?!? Gigantic numbers of people watch stuff all over the place, not just at home, and fewer but still large numbers of people travel, and obviously want to watch their service anywhere.
And limited number of devices? At a time, sure, but most of us have piles of devices which change from year to year, and what, we have to dump a service because we get a new Xbox or iPad?!?
This sounds really ignorant.
I would imagine they’d tie a MAC Address to a username/password, for starters. They’d also only allow a fixed amount of MAC addresses to be tied to an account. You’d be able to delete one and replace with another if you ever reach your device cap, similar to what the Apple Store does / did. In the end, content owners don’t want to see their revenue decline, Spectrum doesn’t want to see that either, so they’ll team up to make sure that you won’t be spending less to watch content. The day of buying media is long over. Just ask… Read more »
The problem with all of these kinds of schemes is that they usually irritate legal subscribers, while pirates and password sharing alternatives flourish. If you look on eBay, you will find dozens of sellers that are brazenly marketing streaming service subscriptions for a fraction of the subscription price. When you look at the terms, they say things like, “don’t change any of the account details” and the login names you are given obviously belong to people sharing their accounts (or were hacked). More common are families sharing passwords with other family members that might be away at school or on… Read more »
Guess I won’t be subscribing to Disney+ then. Thanks Mr. Rutledge for saving me money on a subscription I might have started and forgotten to cancel. Now I don’t have to think about it at all.
I don’t password share, but I don’t keep multiple streaming accounts active at once. This CEO is an idiot and don’t understand consumer behavior. Why would I waste money on stuff I’m not watching. I watch on one platform then I cancel. I then watch a list of shows on another. I don’t mind missing the latest season for 2 years while I rotate through different services. It’s just tv shows they aren’t going anywhere. They also aren’t worth what was being charged back in the day. I suspect people will do this instead of subscribing to multiple services. Right… Read more »