Brazilian Consumer Protection Agency question Netflix Password Sharing scheme.

[kumicota]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

I'll be curious to see what the Brazilian agency determines from this inquiry. So far, no fines or judgements have been levied, as far as I can tell. If this truly is anti-consumer, I expect the EU to rattle it's sabers.

I honestly belive that what will happen is that netflix will be forced to be more clear about it on the site/advertisings and not on the EULA only as the site/advertisings doesn't say about it anywhere, which can lead to misinterpretation according to the regulatory bodies.

 

A bit of a tangent but because brazilian consumer protection laws basically makes piracy to be ""legal"" for users, if this pratice of one household becomes mainstream, I do believe that there's a big chance of piracy began to rise up again here.

[starsmine]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

I think one aspect of this discussion is rather straight forward: "What constitutes a household?"

 

I would have thought the answer obvious - your legal primary residence is your household. So, if your kid moves out for college, and moves into his own apartment. His legal residence would become his new apartment. If he moves into a dorm room for 8 months of the year - that get's a bit more questionable, but legally the kid can probably still use his parents address as his legal residence.

Even if you move into an apartment for school, You can keep your parent's residence as your permanent one for a while (state residency law dependent)
I lived in SD for 8 years, I had health insurance in SD, my car was registered in SD (in a completely different county 2 hours away). My official legal residency never left VA (this hurt me income tax-wise as SD and VA obviously have no reciprocity agreement). I moved most years, it was just simpler to keep a stable legal residency. 

Our netflix is in my name, and my SIL logged on and switch the payment card to hers (I aint gonna stop her)

[Brooksie359]

6 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

I think one aspect of this discussion is rather straight forward: "What constitutes a household?"

 

I would have thought the answer obvious - your legal primary residence is your household. So, if your kid moves out for college, and moves into his own apartment. His legal residence would become his new apartment. If he moves into a dorm room for 8 months of the year - that get's a bit more questionable, but legally the kid can probably still use his parents address as his legal residence.

 

How it works in practice? The subscriber chooses a home location. Anyone who lives there would quality to be able to use the service. Even if those people go outside the home.

 

I can understand both sides of this argument, but I also definitely recognize Netflix's right to enforce password sharing policies. IMO it doesn't really affect me in any negative ways. Most people who will be negatively hit by this are either in very niche situations (eg: Field workers who work on site for weeks or months, truckers, etc). Your everyday average person would only be affected if they're using another household's Netflix account.

 

I'll be curious to see what the Brazilian agency determines from this inquiry. So far, no fines or judgements have been levied, as far as I can tell. If this truly is anti-consumer, I expect the EU to rattle it's sabers.

I feel like them having the policy is going to be detrimental to them staying competitive with other streaming services so I am of the mind that the free market will regulate bad decisions like this but I also think they need to make it clear in their advertising that when they say you can watch anywhere you want there are quite a few catches involved. 

[Mark Kaine]

On 5/28/2023 at 10:44 AM, manikyath said:

only sharing within one household" is pretty darn easy to understand.

except thats not what they're saying? (at least until recently) 

 

i mean are you saying you expect people pay for an extra account when they're on a trip / in a hotel?

 

 

That business model is designated to fail (and is not how netflix operated until now afaik)

[starsmine]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

except thats not what they're saying? (at least until recently) 

 

i mean are you saying you expect people pay for an extra account when they're on a trip / in a hotel?

Literally netflix is not expecting or asking for that. 
You are entirely able to travel, this does not limit that. Its when you log into a different household with a device, and that device never ever seems to ever go back to the home base household. aka, its not part of the household. 

That is why I said this (in netflix's mind) is ONLY an issue for households who have more then one house that you log into with a TV/set top box that doesn't move with you. (you are able to move the home base, There is a cooldown to that action)

[Mark Kaine]

20 minutes ago, starsmine said:

You are entirely able to travel, this does not limit that. Its when you log into a different household with a device, and that device never ever seems to ever go back to the home base household. aka, its not part of the household. 

But that is the tricky part isnt it, the smart TV in a hotel room will never be at the "home base" so how does Netflix determine that? I think that question is at least part of this investigation. 

[manikyath]

6 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

i mean are you saying you expect people pay for an extra account when they're on a trip / in a hotel?

you can use the account (with a device that's tied to the household) for something like a month before it needs to check in at the household address again.

 

5 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

But that is the tricky part isnt it, the smart TV in a hotel room will never be at the "home base" so how does Netflix determine that? I think that question is at least part of this investigation. 

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/25814/us

netflix has got you - that's a specific feature of the service. how difficult was this to find? one google search away.

[Brooksie359]

5 hours ago, starsmine said:

Literally netflix is not expecting or asking for that. 
You are entirely able to travel, this does not limit that. Its when you log into a different household with a device, and that device never ever seems to ever go back to the home base household. aka, its not part of the household. 

That is why I said this (in netflix's mind) is ONLY an issue for households who have more then one house that you log into with a TV/set top box that doesn't move with you. (you are able to move the home base, There is a cooldown to that action)

But that is the issue. They don't reflect that in their advertising. Based on what they say in their advertising it sounds like you would be able to simply sign into anywhere you go with their watch wherever you want to advertising but clearly you can't. This is misleading advertising and can easily lead to false advertising claims. I mean a reasonable person would see the watch anywhere you want advertising and assume you could watch on the TV at your friends house once you login but nope you can't do that. You have to use a mobile device and go through a bunch of hoops to get it to work. Also another thing to note is that false advertising often doesn't care about technicalities. Even if what they advertise is technically correct based on what they say if it is misleading you can still get hit with false advertising. 

[Mark Kaine]

31 minutes ago, manikyath said:

netflix has got you - that's a specific feature of the service. how difficult was this to find? one google search away.

that doesn't actually adress the question at all...

So you sign in into a tv at a "selected hotel" ‐- what about your family at home? (yea, you'd think they can still watch , it isn't really mentioned though) 

And the bigger elephant is what about none "selected" hotels.... tough luck?  

You see how regulatory bodies (around the world) may have issues and questions about such practices?  Because i sure do!

[dalekphalm]

9 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

that doesn't actually adress the question at all...

So you sign in into a tv at a "selected hotel" ‐- what about your family at home? (yea, you'd think they can still watch , it isn't really mentioned though) 

And the bigger elephant is what about none "selected" hotels.... tough luck?  

While I do think Netflix needs to clarify their policy to avoid further confusion, it seems to me that you're overthinking this.

 

The way it will work, so far as described, will be if you travel away from home, you can still use Netflix for a period of time (I've heard both 7 days and 30 days) before you need to check back in via your home internet (set as your home base). You can still use Netflix outside of the home base, but only for a certain amount of time before you need to check back in.

 

A hotel, in theory, will be covered by this.

9 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

You see how regulatory bodies (around the world) may have issues and questions about such practices?  Because i sure do!

If the system works as described, I don't think any reasonable regulatory body would have an issue with it, assuming Netflix updates relevant advertising to be clear and transparent about it.

[starsmine]

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

But that is the issue. They don't reflect that in their advertising. Based on what they say in their advertising it sounds like you would be able to simply sign into anywhere you go with their watch wherever you want to advertising but clearly you can't. This is misleading advertising and can easily lead to false advertising claims. I mean a reasonable person would see the watch anywhere you want advertising and assume you could watch on the TV at your friends house once you login but nope you can't do that. You have to use a mobile device and go through a bunch of hoops to get it to work. Also another thing to note is that false advertising often doesn't care about technicalities. Even if what they advertise is technically correct based on what they say if it is misleading you can still get hit with false advertising. 

You can literally "sign in anywhere you go"

Like I said, the only one confused is you. 

[Brooksie359]

36 minutes ago, starsmine said:

You can literally "sign in anywhere you go"

Like I said, the only one confused is you. 

No you can't. You can't sign into devices that haven't been to your "homebase" other than a few exceptions. You are clearly not understanding the issue here. Try and paint me as not understanding when clearly there are already consumer protection agencies that see the issue. It's you who clearly don't understand and it's a waste of my time to try and convince you when it's obviously an issue otherwise regulatory bodies wouldn't be looking into it. 

[starsmine]

3 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

No you can't. You can't sign into devices that haven't been to your "homebase" other than a few exceptions. You are clearly not understanding the issue here. Try and paint me as not understanding when clearly there are already consumer protection agencies that see the issue. It's you who clearly don't understand and it's a waste of my time to try and convince you when it's obviously an issue otherwise regulatory bodies wouldn't be looking into it. 

You can sign into devices that have not been to your home base.

You can not STAY signed on to those devices.

[Brooksie359]

6 minutes ago, starsmine said:

You can sign into devices that have not been to your home base.

You can not STAY signed on to those devices.

Oh because that is somehow different? The amount of mind gymnastics people do is crazy. Either you can watch anywhere or you can't. Based on their restrictions you can't so they can't advertise that you can. 

[dalekphalm]

Just now, Brooksie359 said:

Oh because that is somehow different? The amount of mind gymnastics people do is crazy. Either you can watch anywhere or you can't. Based on their restrictions you can't so they can't advertise that you can. 

Based on what I can see, you can sign into a new device, and that device does not need to connect to your "home base" for a set number of days (as noted, I've heard conflicting 7 days and 30 days).

 

If this is a hotel TV, unless you're taking a very extended vacation, that should be enough time to use Netflix at the hotel and then never use that device again and it's just not a problem.

 

I could see some incredibly niche edge cases where this might be somewhat problematic, but not for the vast majority of people.

[Brooksie359]

2 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Based on what I can see, you can sign into a new device, and that device does not need to connect to your "home base" for a set number of days (as noted, I've heard conflicting 7 days and 30 days).

 

If this is a hotel TV, unless you're taking a very extended vacation, that should be enough time to use Netflix at the hotel and then never use that device again and it's just not a problem.

 

I could see some incredibly niche edge cases where this might be somewhat problematic, but not for the vast majority of people.

That fine and all but for those edge cases they can't watch anywhere they want because of an artificial limitation that netflix made making their marketing misleading and therfore considered false advertising in many places. You can't make an advertisement saying you can watch anywhere you want while simultaneously putting in artificial barriers to allowing people to watch wherever they want. Again I am not saying that netflix shouldn't be able to have such policies I am just saying that they can't advertise like they don't. If they simply changed the advertisement then none of this would be an issue. 

[dalekphalm]

6 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

That fine and all but for those edge cases they can't watch anywhere they want because of an artificial limitation that netflix made making their marketing misleading and therfore considered false advertising in many places. You can't make an advertisement saying you can watch anywhere you want while simultaneously putting in artificial barriers to allowing people to watch wherever they want. Again I am not saying that netflix shouldn't be able to have such policies I am just saying that they can't advertise like they don't. If they simply changed the advertisement then none of this would be an issue. 

So your argument is simply that Netflix needs to update it's advertising? I don't disagree with you there. But I also don't think the "Watch anywhere" is as misleading as you're making it out to be.

 

I would be totally fine with the outcome if regulators forced Netflix to update their advertising and marketing.

[manikyath]

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

that doesn't actually adress the question at all...

So you sign in into a tv at a "selected hotel" ‐- what about your family at home? (yea, you'd think they can still watch , it isn't really mentioned though) 

And the bigger elephant is what about none "selected" hotels.... tough luck?  

You see how regulatory bodies (around the world) may have issues and questions about such practices?  Because i sure do!

you're seeing problems where they dont exist.. you are the reason why we have 2000 poage eula's..

[Mark Kaine]

7 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

So your argument is simply that Netflix needs to update it's advertising? I don't disagree with you there. But I also don't think the "Watch anywhere" is as misleading as you're making it out to be.

 

I would be totally fine with the outcome if regulators forced Netflix to update their advertising and marketing.

I think they need to update it, but they are also guilty of false advertising already, they cant just be "oops" after the fact...

 

Imo if Im the responsible regulator just shut it all down (in respective countries) but in reality they'll probably just have to pay laughable "peanut fines"...

 

 

7 hours ago, manikyath said:

you're seeing problems where they dont exist.. you are the reason why we have 2000 poage eula's..

maybe tell this the authorities that are investigating,  im only telling you WHY they're investigating, not sure why you're getting so involved,  shareholder maybe?

 

[manikyath]

15 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

shareholder maybe?

perhaps i'm just well versed enough to understand what a dick move it is to a business that people start finding holes in their wording, and twist their own mind to believe the unlikely so it becomes a matter of false advertising....

without the need for any involvement into netflix at all. in fact, i'm not even a netflix subscriber.

 

and for the one family member that is a netflix subscriber (and the 3 other households squatting on the same account) it's likely this change just means that subscription is gonna find it's end, because none of them really watch netflix anymore.

 

but that doesnt mean this has anything to do with false advertising as to the location where from you can watch.

in fact - my local radio station did a 5-minute piece on the change, and they managed to outline all the details within 5 minutes of Q&A. if it's that easy, i dont understand why this has to be such a spectacle.

 

as for:

15 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

maybe tell this the authorities that are investigating,  im only telling you WHY they're investigating, not sure why you're getting so involved

because i, perhaps, like to promote the idea of tax money going to stuff that is actually helpful, not trolling a business with legal action because everyone was casually making use of a loophole that is now closed.

 

the way i see it happening, there's only 3 possible outcomes here:

- the brazillian authorities have to drop this to avoid #2

- netflix just stops selling to brazil (not exactly a hugely profitable market, by the way.)

- netflix has to change their branding, and along the way probably f*ck everyone over harder, or find a way to squeeze extra money out of this problem.

 

or... perhaps it's something to do with the spanish marketing, and it all just got lost in translation?

[igormp]

56 minutes ago, manikyath said:

the brazillian authorities have to drop this to avoid #2

lol the agencies here aren't exactly known to bend for a company after a lawsuit is already going on. So if it actually turns into a lawsuit, netflix would either just leave or fix their shit (if there's anything to be fixed, which is the entire point of the investigation to begin with).

52 minutes ago, manikyath said:

not exactly a hugely profitable market, by the way.

Brazil is their second biggest market, both in subscription numbers and revenue, so I don't think netflix is willing to let go of that.

58 minutes ago, manikyath said:

or... perhaps it's something to do with the spanish marketing, and it all just got lost in translation?

Are you from the US? You do sound like an american.

[manikyath]

10 minutes ago, igormp said:

Are you from the US? You do sound like an american.

that must mean my english is very good.

[dalekphalm]

2 hours ago, manikyath said:

that must mean my english is very good.

I think what he was really getting at is that Brazil speaks Portuguese, not Spanish...  (Easy enough mistake to make for someone not familiar with South American cultural differences).

 

2 hours ago, igormp said:

lol the agencies here aren't exactly known to bend for a company after a lawsuit is already going on. So if it actually turns into a lawsuit, netflix would either just leave or fix their shit (if there's anything to be fixed, which is the entire point of the investigation to begin with).

I just think it's important that people don't just jump on the Netflix Hate Bandwagon - a consumer protection agency investigating a company does not inherently mean they're guilty. Maybe they are - let's wait for the investigation to release it's findings?

2 hours ago, igormp said:

Brazil is their second biggest market, both in subscription numbers and revenue, so I don't think netflix is willing to let go of that.

Do you have any source to back this up?

 

This source here:

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/netflix-statistics/

 

Indicates that Latin America (which includes Brazil) is certainly a large market, but it's not their largest. US/Canada and Europe both blow Latin America away in terms of total revenue and revenue per user.

 

US/Canada actually has slightly less subscribers than Europe - both of which are about double Latin America.

 

Now, I'm not saying Brazil isn't an important market, because we're still talking billions of dollars, but from what I can find, it's neither the second biggest market in terms or subscription, nor revenue.

[manikyath]

5 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

I think what he was really getting at is that Brazil speaks Portuguese, not Spanish...  (Easy enough mistake to make for someone not familiar with South American cultural differences).

i considered googling it, i considered using a broader term, but i concluded that it would be the same difference, and if that'd tick them off that's their problem.

 

also - i'm european, that's even more problematic for me to keep track of, because it's sort of 8 timezones away.. no idea how the pin landed on american then.. other than apparently americans get blamed for our mistakes too. 

[dalekphalm]

18 minutes ago, manikyath said:

i considered googling it, i considered using a broader term, but i concluded that it would be the same difference, and if that'd tick them off that's their problem.

 

also - i'm european, that's even more problematic for me to keep track of, because it's sort of 8 timezones away.. no idea how the pin landed on american then.. other than apparently americans get blamed for our mistakes too. 

Haha Americans get blamed for basically everything - they make themselves easy targets  I wouldn't worry about it. Hell, I'm Canadian, so half of everyone thinks I'm American.