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If you can't share accounts, why can you create a seemingly unlimited amount of profiles?

by 4ggr0 6y ago

dahart 6y ago
They aren’t unlimited, there are 5. Profiles are defined as being in the same household. The reasons are easy to understand, if you think about it. Netflix is providing separate queues and ratings for people who have to share, and household sharing is unavoidable in some cases, such as when using shared devices like ipads or game consoles. Or, you could just visit Netflix.com, where they explain the reasons behind profiles. “Profiles allow different members of your household to have their own personalized Netflix experience. You can have up to 5 profiles on a single Netflix account.” https://help.netflix.com/en/node/10421 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/10421 Sharing accounts outside of a household is stealing. I fail to see a big difference between that and any other form of illegal downloads where one person pays and someone else copies. I got some downvotes but nobody bothered to answer the question: how is using someone’s account who doesn’t live with you different in practice from torrenting, from a legal perspective?
- betwixthewires 6y ago
  How is torrenting different from going to the library and borrowing DVD for free? Besides scale and efficiency, in principle, how is tpb different from a library?
  - jraph 6y ago
    You pay a subscription to the library (or taxes that fund the library) and the library pays the right to rent.
  - dahart 6y ago
    Well, for one the library has a legal right to lend the DVD, and it can only lend it one at a time, and the library doesn’t make it’s own copy nor do you (legally). That’s a pretty massive difference. So, not just one but two principled fundamental differences: 1- the library’s actions are legal, and 2- in the library case, no copies are being made by either party. How does the answer to this question help inform my question?
    - betwixthewires 6y ago
      These are not differences in principle. These are just practical differences that affect efficiency of distribution of information, with a little moralistic paint on it. There's no difference in principle between homosexuality in the UK in the 60s and now. But it was illegal then, not now. Something being legal or illegal is not a fundamental difference. Something being fundamentally different can be a reason something should be legal or illegal, but something being illegal cannot be used as a justification that it should be. As far as copying, looking at the fundamental principle that libraries operate on, that information should be made available to as many people as possible as best we can regardless of their socioeconomic status, the only difference I can find is that torrenting and copying are more efficient than libraries in achieving the stated goal. When libraries do it inefficiently it is regarded as a virtue, when we do it ourselves more efficiently without institutional support we are regarded as thieves. But fundamentally, are they not the exact same thing? My question addresses yours because the answer, if it is "they're not fundamentally different in principle" which is my position, negates yours entirely, and if you can show me how they're fundamentally different in principle, negates that very powerful and apt criticism of your position. The answer basically determines if you're right or I'm right.
      - dahart 6y ago
        I asked what the difference is from a legal perspective, and you’re saying there is no difference in principle when the law changes. That’s clearly a misunderstanding on your part. Your argument about efficiency is reductionism, it’s completely ignoring copyright and law. I didn’t make the law nor am I defending copyright or the law, but those are absolutely relevant, you can’t pretend they are “moralistic” details and ignore them. At least not if you want your argument to be taken seriously. > But fundamentally, are they not the exact same thing? Correct, they are not the exact same thing, not fundamentally, not in principle, and not in practice. Libraries operate on the principle of paying for copies of media in order to loan them out 1 at a time. They do not operate on the principle of making their own copies of media nor on distributing as many copies as possible. Your answer, in my view, is irrelevant to my unanswered question.
- accountofme 6y ago
  I think you should rephrase your statement. Stealing/theft requires the misappropriation of goods/services that can not be replaced. I.e. once they are gone you do not have them. A real world example of this is stealing a DVD. Copyright infringement is the unauthorized copying of something. The original good is still around, but someone has made a copy. A real world example of this is copying a dvd that you borrowed from a friend. Torrenting is copyright infringement as you never had a right to the content (unless you owned the original DVD). Streaming in my opinion different, you have been given access to a paid stream that is password and drm protected. Netflix is still getting paid. They give you n streams for $/month. Netflix's TOS says that is against their rules, but they also don't implicitly ban it... Edit: p.s. I am not a lawyer
  - dahart 6y ago
    It’s a fair point that copyright infringement might be a better term, except I’m not certain it applies here which is why I didn’t use that term. I think I’ve even used the same argument myself in the past that we shouldn’t call torrenting theft because the owner doesn’t lose it. I’m all for clarity. However, your definition of stealing is incorrect, the word is not limited to physical goods that cannot be replaced. Stealing is simply taking something you don’t have the right to take. (Look it up, I googled dozens of definitions.) Yes I might be using it as a shorthand for breaking copyright law or something else more specific. Breaking copyright law is a subset of stealing. > Netflix is still getting paid. Torrents are also commonly paid for by the first viewer, the person who ripped the DVD, so borrowing someone’s account is no different in that respect. Netflix is subtly different in that you still need an account, and because of that, a single account might not be shared as widely as a single torrent. The monetary discrepancy between a single torrent and a million shared accounts might be equal or even larger for Netflix, who knows. I wouldn’t be very surprised if Netflix believes they’re seeing larger losses than pirated movies, precisely because borrowing accounts is so widely believed to not be illegal, and because people feel like it’s no different from using profiles, so cross-household account sharing occurs more often. > they don’t implicitly ban it They don’t have to if it’s against the law already.

If you can't share accounts, why can you create a seemingly unlimited amount of profiles?

by 4ggr0 6y ago

If you can't share accounts, why can you create a seemingly unlimited amount of profiles?

They aren’t unlimited, there are 5. Profiles are defined as being in the same household. The reasons are easy to understand, if you think about it. Netflix is providing separate queues and ratings for people who have to share, and household sharing is unavoidable in some cases, such as when using shared devices like ipads or game consoles. Or, you could just visit Netflix.com, where they explain the reasons behind profiles. “Profiles allow different members of your household to have their own personalized Netflix experience. You can have up to 5 profiles on a single Netflix account.” https://help.netflix.com/en/node/10421 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/10421 Sharing accounts outside of a household is stealing. I fail to see a big difference between that and any other form of illegal downloads where one person pays and someone else copies. I got some downvotes but nobody bothered to answer the question: how is using someone’s account who doesn’t live with you different in practice from torrenting, from a legal perspective?

betwixthewires 6y ago
How is torrenting different from going to the library and borrowing DVD for free? Besides scale and efficiency, in principle, how is tpb different from a library?
- jraph 6y ago
  You pay a subscription to the library (or taxes that fund the library) and the library pays the right to rent.
- dahart 6y ago
  Well, for one the library has a legal right to lend the DVD, and it can only lend it one at a time, and the library doesn’t make it’s own copy nor do you (legally). That’s a pretty massive difference. So, not just one but two principled fundamental differences: 1- the library’s actions are legal, and 2- in the library case, no copies are being made by either party. How does the answer to this question help inform my question?
  - betwixthewires 6y ago
    These are not differences in principle. These are just practical differences that affect efficiency of distribution of information, with a little moralistic paint on it. There's no difference in principle between homosexuality in the UK in the 60s and now. But it was illegal then, not now. Something being legal or illegal is not a fundamental difference. Something being fundamentally different can be a reason something should be legal or illegal, but something being illegal cannot be used as a justification that it should be. As far as copying, looking at the fundamental principle that libraries operate on, that information should be made available to as many people as possible as best we can regardless of their socioeconomic status, the only difference I can find is that torrenting and copying are more efficient than libraries in achieving the stated goal. When libraries do it inefficiently it is regarded as a virtue, when we do it ourselves more efficiently without institutional support we are regarded as thieves. But fundamentally, are they not the exact same thing? My question addresses yours because the answer, if it is "they're not fundamentally different in principle" which is my position, negates yours entirely, and if you can show me how they're fundamentally different in principle, negates that very powerful and apt criticism of your position. The answer basically determines if you're right or I'm right.
    - dahart 6y ago
      I asked what the difference is from a legal perspective, and you’re saying there is no difference in principle when the law changes. That’s clearly a misunderstanding on your part. Your argument about efficiency is reductionism, it’s completely ignoring copyright and law. I didn’t make the law nor am I defending copyright or the law, but those are absolutely relevant, you can’t pretend they are “moralistic” details and ignore them. At least not if you want your argument to be taken seriously. > But fundamentally, are they not the exact same thing? Correct, they are not the exact same thing, not fundamentally, not in principle, and not in practice. Libraries operate on the principle of paying for copies of media in order to loan them out 1 at a time. They do not operate on the principle of making their own copies of media nor on distributing as many copies as possible. Your answer, in my view, is irrelevant to my unanswered question.
accountofme 6y ago
I think you should rephrase your statement. Stealing/theft requires the misappropriation of goods/services that can not be replaced. I.e. once they are gone you do not have them. A real world example of this is stealing a DVD. Copyright infringement is the unauthorized copying of something. The original good is still around, but someone has made a copy. A real world example of this is copying a dvd that you borrowed from a friend. Torrenting is copyright infringement as you never had a right to the content (unless you owned the original DVD). Streaming in my opinion different, you have been given access to a paid stream that is password and drm protected. Netflix is still getting paid. They give you n streams for $/month. Netflix's TOS says that is against their rules, but they also don't implicitly ban it... Edit: p.s. I am not a lawyer
- dahart 6y ago
  It’s a fair point that copyright infringement might be a better term, except I’m not certain it applies here which is why I didn’t use that term. I think I’ve even used the same argument myself in the past that we shouldn’t call torrenting theft because the owner doesn’t lose it. I’m all for clarity. However, your definition of stealing is incorrect, the word is not limited to physical goods that cannot be replaced. Stealing is simply taking something you don’t have the right to take. (Look it up, I googled dozens of definitions.) Yes I might be using it as a shorthand for breaking copyright law or something else more specific. Breaking copyright law is a subset of stealing. > Netflix is still getting paid. Torrents are also commonly paid for by the first viewer, the person who ripped the DVD, so borrowing someone’s account is no different in that respect. Netflix is subtly different in that you still need an account, and because of that, a single account might not be shared as widely as a single torrent. The monetary discrepancy between a single torrent and a million shared accounts might be equal or even larger for Netflix, who knows. I wouldn’t be very surprised if Netflix believes they’re seeing larger losses than pirated movies, precisely because borrowing accounts is so widely believed to not be illegal, and because people feel like it’s no different from using profiles, so cross-household account sharing occurs more often. > they don’t implicitly ban it They don’t have to if it’s against the law already.