Netflix and Disney Plus are cracking down on password sharing, and families are feeling the pinch

What you need to know

Disney, now fully easing its crackdown on paid sharing, is offering a paid sharing option for additional members.
Disney Plus services are now limited to users in one household per account, but subscribers can add an additional user who does not live in their primary residence for an additional fee.
In the US, Canada, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Europe and Asia Pacific, Basic plan subscribers can add an additional member for $6.99.
Premium subscribers must pay $9.99 and the Disney Plus package (with Hulu and ESPN Plus) does not support adding an additional member.

Disney has been preparing users worldwide for a password-sharing crackdown on streaming service Disney Plus, and it's now officially underway. In a blog post last week, the company explained its plans to entice account sharers to pay for the service themselves. These efforts also include clarifying that Disney Plus, like Netflix, is only intended to operate in one household.

“Your Disney+ subscription is for use in your household. “This is a collection of devices tied to your primary residence and used by the people who live there,” Disney’s post said.

People outside of your household “will need to sign up and pay for their own subscription or be added as an additional member to your account for an additional monthly fee to continue enjoying Disney+.”

Many of the policies Disney is putting in place now were tested in select markets around the world this summer. They aim to increase Disney's streaming revenue by either forcing password sharers to purchase their own plan or pushing account holders to add an additional paid member. Disney's streaming division has lost money for years but was profitable for the first time in the third quarter of 2024, when an earnings report showed the company had $47 million in revenue from Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus.

Disney wants to keep this momentum going with the new Extra Member plans available for the Basic and Premium tiers of Disney Plus. Subscribers can add a person outside of their household to their plan for an additional charge of $6.99 for Basic plans or $9.99 for Premium plans. Currently, you can only add one additional member to a plan and additional members are not supported for the package, which includes Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus.

The options are rolling out widely to subscribers in the US, Canada, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Europe and Asia Pacific. If users do not want to add an additional member, they can port a user profile to a new Disney Plus account as long as it is not a Minor account or a Junior Mode account.

Luckily, there are options for traveling or moving. If you get an alert that Disney Plus detects you're not in your household, you can tap “I'm Not Home” or “Update Household” to continue watching. This will send a one-time password to the account holder's email address for verification. It's unclear whether long-term restrictions will be put in place to prevent password sharing on Disney Plus, such as Netflix's requirements that require a monthly connection to a home Wi-Fi network.

Disney Plus and Hulu icons next to each other on a phone screen

(Image credit: Jay Bonggolto / Android Central)

Disney and Netflix's crackdown on password sharing represents a departure from the way the service industry typically treats family plans. Most subscription services, like Apple iCloud Plus or Google One Premium, give you a set number of accounts with which to share purchases or benefits. Steam Families, which lets you share games and media purchased on Steam, works the same way.

Apple, Google and Valve let you share content with a set number of accounts, regardless of where they are located. Streaming services are now throwing this conventional idea of family sharing overboard. Disney and Netflix refer to their plans as “household,” but in reality they refer to the property or residence. Families and households have different shapes and the members do not always live in the same place.

Netflix and Disney don't care. In fact, they would prefer if multiple family members had to pay for their services. They have reached the peak of their income streams and want more. If most families already have a Netflix or Disney Plus subscription, how can these companies continue to grow? The answer is: try to break up these families.

Take me for example. I live in Arizona and the rest of my family lives on the East Coast of the USA. Most of my family lives together most of the time, but some of my siblings are in college. I was in school not long ago. For myself (especially when I was a full-time student), my siblings, and my parents, it seemed crazy to all have separate subscriptions. I'm just talking about my immediate family.

But that's exactly what Disney and Netflix want. As a consumer, my first response to these guidelines is simple: Who are Disney and Netflix to tell me where and how I can use the subscription I'm paying for? Especially when prices continue to rise year after year.

It makes me and many others want to give up streamers altogether. I only subscribe to one streaming service, Paramount Plus. I love it, but the others have completely disenfranchised me. In some ways, Disney and Netflix's approach worked; I no longer share accounts for their services, but now I don't use them at all.

These steps only do one thing: they push people back towards piracy

Netflix TV

(Image credit: Source: Android Central)

The elephant in the room here is piracy. Yes, piracy is illegal and you really shouldn't do it. But piracy was widespread in the 1990s and early 2000s, before the advent of digital music stores like iTunes. Websites like Napster were ubiquitous for sharing pirated content. Piracy seemed to stop when it became easier to purchase media, whether through individual online purchases or comprehensive subscriptions.

If it's easy to legally pay for media, consumers have proven over decades that they certainly will. However, the market has also learned the hard way that when companies and studios make it difficult to obtain licenses and stream content legally, users absolutely pirate content.

As we enter the late stages of the streaming wars, where account sharing is banned, digital rights battles remove content from services every month, and price hikes occur every year, I fear the media industry is making things difficult could make enough for consumers to resort to other ways to get content.

On October 8, 2024 By John Fenwick

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Netflix and Disney Plus are cracking down on password sharing, and families are feeling the pinch

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