Netflix, Sky, DAZN, Disney Plus: If you want to enjoy the full streaming experience, you have to subscribe to a wide variety of services. But the film, series and sports pleasure is becoming more and more expensive. Sharing accounts with others could be a good solution – if it weren’t for the tight legal limits. A comment by Anna Schmid.
Streaming films, series and sporting events used to be clearer. More and more providers are entering the market: Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, DAZN and Sky are just the best-known examples of an offer that is becoming increasingly fragmented.
At the same time, many services are becoming more and more expensive. Some DAZN and Sky customers have had to dig deeper into their pockets since February. Cost increases for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are also foreseeable, as we recently reported.
So what to do? So that users are not forced to do without some services, it is high time to revisit an old Netflix motto: “Love is sharing a password.” In other words: account sharing.
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Legal requirements block account sharing outside of your own household
Sharing a streaming account with others saves money, that much is clear. In the Netflix universe, however, account sharing has only been permitted under certain conditions for some time. Attorney Christian Solmecke explains in an interview with CHIP:
“With Netflix, users are only allowed to share the account with people who live in the same household – i.e. with their family or the flat share (point 4.2 in the general terms and conditions). However, according to the official general terms and conditions, friends or relatives who live in other apartments are not allowed to share the same account Use Netflix account.”
If it turns out that you are illegally sharing an account with your ex-girlfriend’s brother-in-law, sanctions are imminent. “Theoretically, at least, the service could block the account and demand compensation for the lost income,” says Solmecke.
According to the lawyer, there is currently no evidence that Netflix is consistently taking action against account sharing. Last year, the streaming top dog only introduced stricter security queries.
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DAZN: “Login data may not be shared with other people”
Sharing accounts is also a thorn in the side of the provider DAZN, which doubled its prices for new and returning customers on February 1 (they now pay EUR 29.99 per month instead of EUR 14.99). According to Solmecke, the terms of use contain passages “that state that login data may not be shared with another person”.
You are allowed to use your account on up to two different devices. “On the website, however, DAZN writes how this is intended: It is not uncommon for important sporting events to overlap in time and you don’t want to miss any of them. Or simply “just” be informed via the second screen about, for example, a parallel game in the Champions League.”
The function is therefore not intended for account sharing. According to Solmecke, DAZN could theoretically “suspend or terminate the account or block certain advantages for the customer (point 8.2)” for people who do this anyway.
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Sky subscription shared: penalty of 1437 euros possible
The situation at Sky is much more complex. There are numerous terms and conditions that list the terms of use of the platform and some of them differ significantly from each other.
However, they have one thing in common: “Sky seems to stipulate in all variants that the sharing of passwords is only permitted within the household or in the case of the mobile offer Sky Go to people from the same household (e.g. point 1.1.4.1. for Sky, point 2.4 at Sky Go, point 2.3 at Sky Ticket and Sky Online)”, says Solmecke.
Anyone who violates this rule must expect various sanctions. The lawyer gives a few examples: “Sky Ticket’s terms and conditions say something about a temporary withdrawal of viewing rights, and Sky’s terms and conditions even mention termination (after a warning).”
According to Solmecke, the general terms and conditions of Sky Go and Sky Ticket state that “Sky can demand a contractual penalty of twice the annual subscription fee of the Sky subscription concerned, but a maximum of 1437 euros”. He warns that the company could crack down if someone were caught sharing accounts.
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It is not unlikely that customers will cancel
So streaming is becoming more and more expensive, while at the same time sharing accounts is prohibited in most cases. Solmecke says: “From the consumer’s point of view, it would of course be desirable if this rule were relaxed – but not from the point of view of the provider.”
After all, Netflix, Sky and DAZN are all about income that would collapse in the short term. In the long term, however, even more people might opt for a subscription if account sharing were openly an option.
In the end, the pricing tactics of the streaming providers are associated with a certain risk. Because it is not at all unlikely that passionate streamers will turn their backs on large platforms. This shows a survey of the voting platform FanQ among 2000 football fans in Germany.
The result: 65.3 percent of the participants stated that they wanted to cancel their DAZN subscription in view of the current price increase.