Netflix and Not Chill

The streaming service’s crackdown prompts piracy and questions of privacy

A movie night, cuddled into a couch with buttery popcorn and the warmest blanket engulfing you into a burrito, is an ideal destressor for most college students. Then comes the excitement of turning on your device, scrolling to your favorite streaming platform and watching the show you’ve been dying to binge. Soon though, many might give up on the popular streaming service Netflix due to upcoming policies the company recently announced.  

Netflix aims to tap into the billion-dollar market of potential customers currently mooching off of others’ accounts as early as March of this year. With the company servicing countries all around the globe (excluding only 5 countries), the streaming platform is a staple of daily life–whether one pays for an account or not. As such, the Internet was set ablaze with fiery criticism of Netflix’s plans to roll out anti-password-sharing terms, potentially causing a dramatic shift in where the public will now look to for their daily dose of entertainment. 

This new policy could make college life difficult–how many people do you know that pay for their own Netflix? 

The college student demographic lies squarely within the streaming giant’s main user base of 18-34 year-olds. While away from their primary cities, this new guideline will force users to pay a fee or get kicked off the account, leaving the many students who only go home every couple of months sans Netflix. 

What we are already seeing, and what will continue to rise as a result, is a justified uptick in piracy–the illegal reproduction and spread of copyright material such as movies and shows. The convenience and low price piracy offers is incomparable to today’s seemingly endless catalog of streaming platforms. 

Piracy is a free and ad-less alternative, and in today’s technological age, it couldn’t be easier to access a multitude of movies and shows–making it bigger than ever. Additionally, the seemingly infinite amount of content can be concentrated on one platform, as compared to the select shows split among multiple (and pricey) streaming platforms. 

The remarkable recent growth of piracy can be drawn back to to the start of the pandemic. There was a significant increase in the rate at which people were pirating during 2020, which Andy Chatterly, chief executive of the piracy analytics firm Muso, remarked was unusual. The future of streaming platforms seems even more bleak considering the ease of turnover from streaming platforms to pirating websites, exacerbated by the disconnect from movie theaters caused by COVID-19. Just as the pandemic stimulated piracy, Netflix’s new guidelines will do the same. 

However, piracy comes with its own set of issues. Viruses and data violations are a potential danger, as pirating sites can steal your information or download dangerous viruses onto your device. Similarly, though, Netflix has access to a vast amount of user data that the corporation can easily employ to enforce their new policies. 

One way Netflix could catch whether password sharing is occurring is by looking at the IP addresses and Wi-Fi network of devices using the account and comparing this information to the primary device of the account. However, that alone is not enough to decide whether the password is being shared, especially in cases where a user might be traveling for weeks on end or with college students living on campus. 

With the multitude of data present on our devices, the lengths to which Netflix could go to accomplish its own goals is a scary thought, especially with the corporation’s lack of clarity on how they will be implementing their guidelines. With no ironclad data privacy laws, the sky’s the limit, which could entail the company using and selling our user data–including internet-browsing behavior. For a company focusing on profits over user experience, the market towards piracy will only increase as trust in Netflix declines. 

Every time Netflix has made changes to its policies, complaints arise all over mainstream media. But Netflix’s user data shows that those complaints don’t seem to significantly affect the streaming giant–everyone says again and again that they’ll cancel their subscription, but only a small portion follows through with their claims. This might be partially due to a cheaper option still available for users (with ads) and significant original content that can only be watched through Netflix (even if they cancel it after season 1).

In fact, despite all these changes and the ensuing backlash, however, Netflix is still gaining and retaining yearly users, with an increase of about 7 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Netflix will continue enforcing terms and conditions that will deter consumers, but as the company continues to grow in users, blind devotion to profits will discourage it from moving toward changes customers want. As it continues to restrict its offerings for the public, it will lose far more than it will gain as the market shifts towards pirating the newest shows and movies–an option with a free and unlimited selection.