10 ms·

I believe Amazon knew about all the sharing that was going on but waited until there was enough users hooked to pull the trigger. An example of another company

I believe Amazon knew about all the sharing that was going on but waited until there was enough users hooked to pull the trigger. An example of another company where people share accounts is Netflix which I think will do something similar to Amazon in the near future.

mikeash 11y ago
I could definitely see that. It can be really effective to sell something at a steep discount to get people hooked, then jack up the price. The problem is that people get upset when you jack up the price. By hiding the discount like this, you can avoid that. People taking advantage of it now will feel like they've just been caught doing something naughty and so will probably be less inclined to complain about it.
Navarr 11y ago
You pay an increase rate for simultaneous streams already. I don't think they'll crack down any more on it.
- jlgaddis 11y ago
  How many simultaneous streams are included "free" now? We only watch Netflix on our Roku at home but I think my mother has my Netflix credentials and occasionally watches something. We've never ran into an issue because of simultaneous streaming, AFAIK.
  - 67726e 11y ago
    I think the default is 2. I ran into this problem during college since I gave a couple friends my password. One day I was watching and it wouldn't play the next episode since there were 3 streams going at the same time, so I had to upgrade to the $11/4 streams plan. This policy goes back to 2012 IIRC.
  - c0wb0yc0d3r 11y ago
    2 are included. +2 for another 2 or 3 bucks.
toomuchtodo 11y ago
Reed Hastings mentioned recently they don't view Netflix account sharing as a big enough problem worth addressing: http://www.businessinsider.com/password-sharing-isnt-a-problem-for-netflix-2015-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/password-sharing-isnt-a-probl...
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  He has incentives to downplay the problem in public, though. He doesn't want the studios who license their content to Netflix to ask too many questions.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    As a studio, you need to ask yourself: Do you want people paying Netflix and possibly sharing accounts? Or would you rather they just pirate it and digital content continues its swan dive to zero value? Looking forward to see what happens when microSD cards can carry entire studio libraries.
    - tracker1 11y ago
      doubtful, I think that if anything the 4K push will really take hold because the media companies want to end sharing as much as possible. A typical high quality movie at 1080p will be 8-15gb in size, and 4x that for 4K... given that HDDs are still looking in the 6-10tb range, I wouldn't expect to ever see that on a microSD card... We're getting to where there are physical limits to go much smaller as it is in memory, I don't think we'll really see a 10x improvement or more in portable memory to be honest.
      - _up 11y ago
        Intel says otherwise: http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2015/07/28/intel-and-micron-produce-breakthrough-memory-technology http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2015...

mikeash 11y ago

I could definitely see that. It can be really effective to sell something at a steep discount to get people hooked, then jack up the price. The problem is that people get upset when you jack up the price. By hiding the discount like this, you can avoid that. People taking advantage of it now will feel like they've just been caught doing something naughty and so will probably be less inclined to complain about it.

Navarr 11y ago

You pay an increase rate for simultaneous streams already. I don't think they'll crack down any more on it.

jlgaddis 11y ago
How many simultaneous streams are included "free" now? We only watch Netflix on our Roku at home but I think my mother has my Netflix credentials and occasionally watches something. We've never ran into an issue because of simultaneous streaming, AFAIK.
- 67726e 11y ago
  I think the default is 2. I ran into this problem during college since I gave a couple friends my password. One day I was watching and it wouldn't play the next episode since there were 3 streams going at the same time, so I had to upgrade to the $11/4 streams plan. This policy goes back to 2012 IIRC.
- c0wb0yc0d3r 11y ago
  2 are included. +2 for another 2 or 3 bucks.

toomuchtodo 11y ago

Reed Hastings mentioned recently they don't view Netflix account sharing as a big enough problem worth addressing: http://www.businessinsider.com/password-sharing-isnt-a-problem-for-netflix-2015-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/password-sharing-isnt-a-probl...

CamperBob2 11y ago
He has incentives to downplay the problem in public, though. He doesn't want the studios who license their content to Netflix to ask too many questions.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  As a studio, you need to ask yourself: Do you want people paying Netflix and possibly sharing accounts? Or would you rather they just pirate it and digital content continues its swan dive to zero value? Looking forward to see what happens when microSD cards can carry entire studio libraries.
  - tracker1 11y ago
    doubtful, I think that if anything the 4K push will really take hold because the media companies want to end sharing as much as possible. A typical high quality movie at 1080p will be 8-15gb in size, and 4x that for 4K... given that HDDs are still looking in the 6-10tb range, I wouldn't expect to ever see that on a microSD card... We're getting to where there are physical limits to go much smaller as it is in memory, I don't think we'll really see a 10x improvement or more in portable memory to be honest.
    - _up 11y ago
      Intel says otherwise: http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2015/07/28/intel-and-micron-produce-breakthrough-memory-technology http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2015...