Streaming Provider Disney+ Joins Crackdown on Password Sharing
Internet video streaming provider Disney+ has, following earlier hints and a new subscriber agreement, finally joined Netflix by cracking down on password sharing through the introduction of a new ‘Paid Sharing‘ (Extra Member) service, which is indirectly intended to make it more difficult to share your account with people outside your household.
In the past, streaming providers often tolerated password sharing and saw it as a way of helping to drum up publicity / support for their service. But Netflix has since shown that it’s more lucrative to restrict the practice and instead offer those who do it a paid alternative to achieve the same outcome, albeit often without needing to pay full whack for a subscription.
The new ‘Paid Sharing’ features and capabilities are now said to be available in the United States, Canada, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region after launching in select markets over the summer. But at the time of writing, we couldn’t see this is active on their UK service (we have queried this), but it’s no doubt imminent given that the UK is a part of Europe and has the same terms.
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Disney+ states that a subscription to their service is “meant to be used within your Household, which is a collection of devices associated with your primary personal residence that are used by the individuals who reside there“. But if you want to add people outside of your household, then the newly sanctioned way to do that – short of having them pay for their own subscription – will be by adding an ‘Extra Member‘ to your account.
The new Extra Member service naturally attracts an additional monthly charge, which according to details on their website will cost £3.99 extra for Disney+ Standard with Ads or £4.99 extra for either Disney+ Standard or Premium. But one key point here is that the Extra Member feature is NOT available for Disney Bundle subscribers or for subscribers billed through their partners at this time (i.e. if you’ve got Disney+ billed and bundled via a broadband ISP or mobile operator plan, then you can’t yet take advantage of this).
Customers will also still be able to watch Disney+ if they’re away from home (e.g. holiday, commuting etc.). In that scenario you’ll now see the message: “This TV doesn’t seem to be part of the Household for this account”, you can then mark yourself as I’M AWAY FROM HOME, or select UPDATE HOUSEHOLD if you’ve recently moved and need to reset the Household location for your subscription. But these selections will require a one-time passcode that’s sent to the email address associated with the account.
Disney+ will also allow password sharing users from outside your “household” to sign-up for their own subscription by allowing the ability to transfer an eligible profile to a new subscription or Extra Member to keep that profile’s Disney+ watch history and settings. But certain profiles – including primary profiles (account holders), minors’ profiles, and those set to Junior Mode – cannot currently be transferred.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Disney thinks they are like Netflix having customers with Stockholm syndrome. They are not and they will be very surprised that most of the people sharing Disney will cancel subscription.
I’ll be curious to see what happens because people said Netflix’s efforts would fail but it worked for them.
My parents will likely continue their subscription and we use D+ at my house, so in this case at least it will work for Disney, whether people like it or not.
For households without keeps, I don’t see why people don’t just sign up to D+ for a month (or a free trial), watch the current content they want, and then cancel and move onto a different provider.
I expect they’ll have to start offering 6-12 month contracts to keep customers paying. It works for gyms.
/keeps/kids/
@tech3475 Exactly. I would expect this to play out the same way it did for Netflix – the freeloaders will moan and predict mass cancellations. Meanwhile, those who are already paying will continue to do so, and a few of the former freeloaders will now subscribe as well.
@Dan, Freeloaders? I share my Disney+ with a friend, and she was willing to pay a subscription, but I said she could share mine, since I was paying for it already. The same with netflix, but when Netflix done it, I just cancelled, and I don’t think my friend bothered, so they got nothing out of us.
But if it works for them, then fine.
As for Disney+, not sure what I will do, I don’t really use it that much to be honest, so I may cancel it, I watch Prime a fair bit and the odd stuff on ITVX and some stuff on YouTube.
Some streaming services may look like they are doing well, but underneath the cracks are showing, and they increase the price I think they lose even more people
Surely the people “sharing” a subscription aren’t currently subscribing and so won’t be a loss
@Nick Pollock, but what if they also lose the one that is providing the other? If /when it happens, I may just drop Disney+ anyway and if the person that was sharing my account decide not to bother then they lose.
I love the idea of streaming, otherwise I would not be doing it, but the prices increasing all the time is something that may put people off. I know it is possible to get lower price services with adverts, but if I am paying for something, I really don’t want ads. I know we get it in newspapers and magazines, but that is different.
Piracy=£0 a month.
I subscribe to Netflix via Sky and as of yet, I’ve not had to do the whole dance of setting a primary household and password sharing still works for me. I also have Disney+ via my Sky bill so it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.