4 ms·

Please stop calling this “cracking down on password sharing”. That’s spin that frames it as an improper act and enforcement against it, making readers think “I

Please stop calling this “cracking down on password sharing”. That’s spin that frames it as an improper act and enforcement against it, making readers think “I may not like it but I guess it’s what’s right”. The truth is these companies sold access to a certain number of simultaneously active “screens”, and now they’re changing the offering to a single household only. The true version of this headline is “Hulu limits plans to one household, just like Disney Plus and Netflix”. It’s a new limitation, not a crackdown. It’s on location, not password sharing - there are still profiles to select who you are when you log in. As it always does, stripping spin makes the rest of the story easier to spot: that this has strong parallels with cable, and that this is a gym-like business model of keeping people utilizing only some slim fraction of the capacity they think they’ve bought. (This isn’t a callout to OP, I know the guidelines require the website’s title. But, tangentially, I strongly disagree with the guidelines on this point: sticking with the website’s title doesn’t reduce editorialization, it just shifts control of it from HN users to propagandists.)

Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
I dunno, I always that one account = one household, and that profiles existed so that different members of the household would have their own set of favorite shows. But of course, enforcing a single household becomes impossible if one member travels and wants to use their streaming account at a hotel or something. So really, they should absolutely sell a number of simultaneous streams and not care where those streams come from.
acdha 3y ago
> The truth is these companies sold access to a certain number of simultaneously active “screens”, and now they’re changing the offering to a single household only. Do you have a citation for that? The terms of service for these services have used “personal” and “household” for years and made it very clear that it was non-commercial, you couldn’t resell access, etc. so your suggested wording seems more like spin than the title. https://web.archive.org/web/20181206085626/https://secure.hulu.com/terms https://web.archive.org/web/20181206085626/https://secure.hu...

Sohcahtoa82 3y ago

I dunno, I always that one account = one household, and that profiles existed so that different members of the household would have their own set of favorite shows. But of course, enforcing a single household becomes impossible if one member travels and wants to use their streaming account at a hotel or something. So really, they should absolutely sell a number of simultaneous streams and not care where those streams come from.

acdha 3y ago

> The truth is these companies sold access to a certain number of simultaneously active “screens”, and now they’re changing the offering to a single household only. Do you have a citation for that? The terms of service for these services have used “personal” and “household” for years and made it very clear that it was non-commercial, you couldn’t resell access, etc. so your suggested wording seems more like spin than the title. https://web.archive.org/web/20181206085626/https://secure.hulu.com/terms https://web.archive.org/web/20181206085626/https://secure.hu...