Sharing your Netflix password could make you 'criminal' soon

Netflix's efforts to restrict password sharing in recent months has been on the news recently, therefore, password sharing on streaming services is nothing new. However, the British government's new piracy guidance now suggests that sharing passwords in the UK may violate copyright law and even be subject to criminal charges for fraud.

Intellectual Property Office (IPO) issues guidance against Netflix and other video streaming platforms password sharing

Official UK government body that is responsible for intellectual property rights, The IPO made a striking statement about its joint campaign with Meta—ex-Facebook— to give guidance to people to refrain from pirated and counterfeit goods online as Newsweek reported. “Piracy is a major issue for the entertainment and creative industries," it wrote on its website.

"Pasting internet images into your social media without permission, or accessing films, tv series or live sports events through Kodi boxes, hacked Fire Sticks or apps without paying a subscription is an infringement of copyright and you may be committing a crime."

This law directly applies to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ password sharing. In simpler terms, if you share your account password on Netflix, Disney+, or even Amazon Prime Video, you could be legally prosecuted for fraud or violating copyright law in UK.

However, a spokeswoman for the IPO told Newsweek that "copyright law remains unchanged," and there are "a range of provisions in criminal and civil law which may be applicable in the case of password sharing where the intent is to allow a user to access copyright protected works without payment."

"These provisions may include breach of contractual terms, fraud or secondary copyright infringement depending on the circumstances. Where these provisions are provided in civil law, it would be up to the service provider to take action through the courts if required," the IPO spokeswoman added.

This guidance may be interpreted as a precedent for other national authorities to adopt similar decisions against password sharing on streaming platforms. However, it is not clear when this guidance could turn into a policy throughout UK.