In the digital age where pretty much everything revolves around online services, sharing data and even accounts with other people is pretty common.
For instance, friends sometimes ask for your Amazon log-in details just so that they can avail of the Amazon Prime benefits you have subscribed to.
Similarly, many people borrow a friend or family member's Netflix account details, and the company's CEO Reed Hastings, does not have any hang-ups about people doing so. Au contraire, Hastings takes the account sharing of the streaming service in his stride and feels it is a "positive thing."
During Netflix's global expansion announcement at the just concluded CES 2016, Hastings told reporters that multiple people perusing the same Netflix account was not an issue.
"We love people sharing Netflix whether they're two people on a couch or 10 people on a couch," said Hastings. "That's a positive thing, not a negative thing."
So why is Hastings tolerant of multiple people sharing a single Netflix account (and sees it as a positive sign) you wonder? The answer is that he thinks that eventually, in the long run, these users will sign up for their own subscription to the service.
The Netflix CEO is of the belief that primarily those sharing a single Netflix account are the children of the subscriber. He feels that over time as the children grow up and are financially independent, they will end up loving Netflix so much that they will purchase their own subscriptions.
Hastings elaborated on his theory and elucidated that once children grow up they prefer to have control over their lives. A natural transition is subscribing to things on their own steam – a coming-of-age milestone, if you please – when they have a steady income at their disposal.
"As kids move on in their life, they like to have control of their life, and as they have an income, we see them separately subscribe. It really hasn't been a problem," revealed the Netflix CEO.
However, Hastings was actually referring to sharing of accounts between members of a single household who share the password to a Netflix account. He did not mean friends who stay separately and still share a Netflix account.
It's interesting that the CEO is alright with account sharing as a substitute for upgraded accounts, specially considering the fact that the online video streaming service offers support for family accounts which enables a member to create their own profile. The upgraded accounts allow users to sign in through multiple devices simultaneously.
A December 2014 survey from Consumer Reports shares an interesting statistic. Nearly 46 percent of adults in the United States who have subscribed to a streaming service share their account with people outside their household, that is, non-family members. The report stated that the numbers would continue to grow in the future as the popularity of these services grows.
While that happens, a major worry for most video streaming services that offer paid digital content will be that password sharing is in violation of terms of service. Such sharing may also be illegal.
To what extent sharing of accounts is considered within the boundaries or beyond is debatable. While Hastings may see the sharing of accounts as a positive thing because it cultivates loyalists, the same could lead to potential misuse specially at a time when Netflix is looking to expand its operations.
