UK Govt: Netflix Password Sharing Is Illegal and Potentially Criminal Fraud (torrentfreak.com) 70
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The UK Government's Intellectual Property Office published new piracy guidance today, and it contains a small, easily missed detail. People who share their Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Disney+ passwords are violators of copyright law. And it gets worse. The IPO informs TorrentFreak that password sharing could also mean criminal liability for fraud. [...] In a low-key announcement today, the UK Government's Intellectual Property Office announced a new campaign in partnership with Meta, aiming to help people avoid piracy and counterfeit goods online. Other than in the headline, there is zero mention of Meta in the accompanying advice, and almost no advice that hasn't been issued before. But then this appears: "Piracy is a major issue for the entertainment and creative industries. Pasting internet images into your social media, password sharing on streaming services and accessing the latest films, tv series or live sports events through kodi boxes, fire sticks or Apps without paying a subscription all break copyright laws. Not only are you breaking the law but stopping someone earning a living from their hard work."
TorrentFreak immediately contacted the Intellectual Property Office for clarification on the legal side, particularly since password sharing sits under a piracy heading. The IPO's response was uncompromising, to put it mildly. "There are a range of provisions in criminal and civil law which may be applicable in the case of password sharing where the intent is to allow a user to access copyright protected works without payment," the IPO informs TorrentFreak. "These provisions may include breach of contractual terms, fraud or secondary copyright infringement depending on the circumstances." Given that using the "services of a members' club without paying and without being a member" is cited as an example of fraud in the UK, the bar for criminality is set very low, unless the Crown Prosecution Service decides otherwise, of course.
TorrentFreak immediately contacted the Intellectual Property Office for clarification on the legal side, particularly since password sharing sits under a piracy heading. The IPO's response was uncompromising, to put it mildly. "There are a range of provisions in criminal and civil law which may be applicable in the case of password sharing where the intent is to allow a user to access copyright protected works without payment," the IPO informs TorrentFreak. "These provisions may include breach of contractual terms, fraud or secondary copyright infringement depending on the circumstances." Given that using the "services of a members' club without paying and without being a member" is cited as an example of fraud in the UK, the bar for criminality is set very low, unless the Crown Prosecution Service decides otherwise, of course.
breach of contractual terms = jail is very bad (Score:4, Insightful)
breach of contractual terms = jail is very bad and let's them do any thing with an EULA
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This tells you who exactly controls the government and it isn't the people. The UK is not alone here.
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you both have to do time and no joint trail so he get's to use the big legal team and you are stuck with the over worked PD
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Thank god (Score:4, Funny)
The UK government solved the financial crisis along with the soaring grocery and energy prices! Now onto the real drain on society, streaming password sharing.
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Re:Thank god (Score:5, Interesting)
forget netflix, what about this statement: "Pasting internet images into your social media,..."
I'd like a group of journalists to scour all of the IPO (and CPS) staff's personal pages and when the find copyrighed images that have been pasted into social media that they have them arrested.
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It's not even true. At most of would be civil copyright infringement, if the owner could be bothered to sue you.
Some law enforcement work for copyright holders in the UK. There is only so much they can legally do, but they like to lean on people, and put out myths like this to scare them.
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Yo ho... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Yo ho... (Score:1)
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$6 a month for a torrent proxy and I watch whatever I want.
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More than that, piracy only gets you copyright infringement, actually paying for Netflix but sharing your password gets you fraud as well, which is much more serious and will in many cases lose you your job.
So the clear message is that piracy is relatively safe legally, but paying for a service is very dangerous since you might break the EULA and get done for fraud.
Stop Starving Executives! (Score:3)
I feel for Michael Eisner and Tom Cruise. Have you ever seen them without their morning $15 latte? Horror show all day long.
--
I grew up Jewish. I am Jewish. I went to an Episcopal high school. I went to a Baptist college. I've taken every comparative-religion course that was available. God? I have no idea. - Michael Eisner
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The counter argument is that not only are you depriving Tom Cruise and Michael Eisner of income you are depriving the lowly workers as well (i.e. camera people, grips, catering, costumers, etc.).
The counter-counter argument is that you are only depriving these people of income if you assume that those people "pirating" and doing password sharing would actually pay for their own copy/subscription if they weren't "pirating" or password sharing. This is a very bad assumption. There may be a fraction of those p
Disillusioned (Score:3)
The Internet's just fine (Score:2)
We need to learn to watch out for politicians that push our buttons instead of winning with policy and stop voting for them.
Re: The Internet's just fine (Score:2)
Is there any politician in the UK with a snowballs chance of being elected that has a policy other than full support for the copyright cartels?
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You raise a valid point.
To make an analogy, it's like having a full crate of rotten apples to pick from, and someone comes and says "you should not have picked the rotten apple".
Re: The Internet's just fine (Score:2)
I believe that the control of the political systems of many countries by big corporations and vested interests is one of the biggest problems facing our planet right now.
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How many politicians campaign on their copyright stance? There is no way to say if they could be elected by opposing (mildly or fully) copyright since there hasn't been any that have tried to get elected and openly opposing the "copyright cartels" (at least none to my knowledge).
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Definitely an indicator of a recession... (Score:1)
When we get all these "OMG, piracy!" stuff happening with governments stating stuff, we know the economy is on a downturn. Same thing happened around 2008 when the economy tanked... we had the RIAA whining and begging for more DMCA laws to be passed.
As for a Netflix password/sub, oh well. A VPN connection is only a few Euro/month, and throwing that in a virtual machine and rolling back after the movies are downloaded (to stymie the tracking and phoning home done by the OS and Bittorrent program), and one
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I wouldn't be too worried about this if I lived in the UK.
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Re: Definitely an indicator of a recession... (Score:2)
Not really, he pointed out Liz was a moron, and he is not a habitual liar like Boris.
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Recognizing that Liz's policy proposals were asinine and not being as much of a liar as Boris is a very, very low bar.
A decade ago Sunak would've been some junior treasury minister at this stage in his career. The fact that he's now PM shows just how thoroughly the Conservatives have bled themselves dry of talent and experience.
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Election Results (Score:2)
Pwned pawns (Score:2)
Nadine Dorries (Score:4, Informative)
The UK's then serving culture secretary, part of the actual government of the UK, admitted sharing her Netflix account passwords in questioning by other MPs on the privatisation of one of the state owned broadcasters.
You couldn't make this shit up:
https://www.theguardian.com/po... [theguardian.com]
Of course, that was two Prime Ministers, and three Chancellors of the Exchequer, ago, in May 2022.
Yikes (Score:2)
Constitutional monarchy with Chinese characteristics.
Sharing with my mum (Score:2)
Everyone needs an account! (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesn't this mean someone without an account watching is also in violation?
So if you have an account, and invite someone over to watch something on Netflix, wouldn't they need an account too, or be in breach of copyright violation as well?
Better close the drapes if you're watching Netflix, someone from outside might see as well!
A family of four needs 4 accounts, damn dirty pirates.
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So if you have an account, and invite someone over to watch something on Netflix, wouldn't they need an account too, or be in breach of copyright violation as well?
Let's make it a bit more interesting. Say there's a PPV event that costs $50 to watch. So you invite 9 of your buddies and charge them each $5 to watch the fights on your nice projector screen at home. Should that be legal?
Let's say you have a portable screen and a projector and you set up the fight on your front lawn and don't charge anybody anything. Should that be legal?
Let's say you still have a VHS player/recorder and you taped the fights. Your neighbor asked if he could borrow the tape to watch i
Re: Everyone needs an account! (Score:3)
The projector on your front lawn is definitely illegal, that's a public performance. Charging your friends is also illegal, but if they just bring the drinks over then it's fine. However in the UK you can only get actual damages so nobody is going to sue because it's simply not worth it.
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The projector on your front lawn is definitely illegal, that's a public performance. Charging your friends is also illegal, but if they just bring the drinks over then it's fine. However in the UK you can only get actual damages so nobody is going to sue because it's simply not worth it.
You took the "is", I'll take the "should" from my POV:
charging friends scenario: should be illegal (if the "charge" is a chip into a common pool for snacks, then legal)
front lawn scenario: should be legal (in contrast to a set up in a public park, that should be IMO illegal).
taped fights borrowed : should be legal.
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front lawn scenario: should be legal (in contrast to a set up in a public park, that should be IMO illegal).
Why should your lawn be any less illegal than a public park?
I guess if your lawn is in the middle of nowhere and the only people that can see the screen are you and your guests then it isn't really any different than showing the event on your TV in the house.
If your front lawn is in the middle of town where anyone and everyone can just stroll up and watch what you have on the screen than it really isn't any less public than a public park.
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> If your front lawn is in the middle of town where anyone and everyone can just stroll up
Yes, but random strollers-up are less likely to happen on a lawn than on a known public park.
So if someone with an exposed lawn becomes well-known for projecting movies, then you can start discussing his criminality level (ie the level to which this was a "public projection"). Not the poor schmuck with an ill-situated lawn having an outside movie night with friends.
> Why should your lawn be any less illegal than
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No one needs to enter the private property to watch an outdoor movie night. The light waves bouncing off the screen don't magically stop at the property limits. If the person doesn't have a backyard that they can use for an outdoor movie night then maybe they just shouldn't have an outdoor movie night. Even if they do have a backyard they it could be considered a public performance but at least it would be less accessible to the public than a front yard would.*
If you think it is should be fine to use your f
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>If you think it is should be fine to use your front lawn for outdoor movie night do you hold the same conviction for nudists that want to sit out on their front yard in all their glory?
yep...
Also because the definition of "decency" is a cultural thing. But that's a whole other matter.
The main point I'm going for though is *intent* : public projection vs having friends over, same as you mentioned in the asterisk adendum.
V for Vendetta much, GB? (Score:3)
It's like you're having a competition with the USA for most authoritarian.
The IT Crowd - Series 2 - Episode 3: Piracy warning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Access without payment. (Score:2)
There are a range of provisions in criminal and civil law which may be applicable in the case of password sharing where the intent is to allow a user to access copyright protected works without payment
So, if I invite a friend over to watch a movie on Netflix, I'm subject to arrest, since I'm allowing them to access copyright protected works without them paying.
Got it.
Re:Access without payment. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Access without payment. (Score:4, Funny)
they're on the way (Score:3)
It's time to come up with some netflix password sharing detecting vans to roam around the neighbors to detect who's being naughty
They could just get their own accounts, I guess... (Score:2)
Illegal? (Score:2)
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But it's not *the same* legal risks, it's much, much worse. They're saying you can be done for fraud, a serious criminal offence which will lose you your job in many cases, if you share your password; but if you just pirate everything, you probably just get civil copyright infringement.
The clear message is * do not* pay for a streaming service, it's a legal minefield.
LOL No (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry but this amounts to little more than an op-ed from a government agency. There's nothing specifically in laws that would extend to password sharing, something that is a breach of the terms of service. Attempts to frame something as such would amount to a huge legal hurdle likely through multiple levels of court.
Government agencies should be barred from giving legal advice. They should write laws and be done with it. It's literally not their job to interpret laws.
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The law must be interpreted while writing it.
Of course. But since we're not talking about a law being written, and not talking about a government agency tasked with writing laws I'm not sure why you think that is relevant.
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What the hell are they smoking over there? (Score:1)
where the intent is to allow a user to access copyright protected works without payment
But... there has been payment. The accounts aren't free, and if they were there would be no violation by sharing them since anyone could obtain one freely.
Doesn't a service like Netflix restrict use to a certain number of devices at once? Isn't that the limit?
If it's violating a law, then fine. But if it's just a terms of service violation it's up to the company to sue for that violation not the government to find a crime to fit it.
Conflation... (Score:2)
Breaking Copyright is a civil matter and will not result in jail time .... but it would be near impossible to prove ...
Breaking the terms of a contract is also a civil matter and will not result in jail time
Fraud, if it could be proven is a criminal offence and could result in jail time
Oh the irony... (Score:1)
burglaries (Score:1)
Good. (Score:2)
Good. I had lost track.
We started with "Brexit" for "you couldn't get a government to do something stupider" and the US said "Hold my beer" with the 2016 elections . . .
Since then, there's been so much worldwide asshattery, I had lost track of who's turn it was. CLEARLY it was Britton's.
Well played. It's down to the wire for 2022 United States . . . but we have **3** branches of government on their top stupidity game. I wouldn't put Florida out of the running yet. There's also Texas, which has been a da
Netflix told me to share it (Score:2)