It Just Became A Felony To Share Your Netflix Password

That’s right, in a country where Hillary Clinton got a free pass for sharing classified information, you can now be charged with a felony sharing your Netflix password. America, “land of the free”, a country that already leads the entire world in prison population and arrests per capita just keeps piling it on.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a federal court, ruled last week that sharing your Netflix password violates anti-piracy laws and could be prosecuted as a crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. In addition to effecting Netflix user accounts, the ruling also covers HBO and Time Warner accounts as well.

Despite federal judges ruling on behalf of these major corporations, HBO and Netflix did not have a comment on the matter, saying that they “didn’t have enough information on the case to make a comment.” Apparently they were not following the case, just as the companies aren’t tracking the number of times passwords for their services are being shared. Netflix maintains its policy regarding password sharing has not changed, it is prohibited, but they have never attempted to actually track peoples password usage because it “is too difficult.”

Neflix has always allowed customers to have multiple profiles for each account, for family purposes and says despite the new federal ruling, they wont pursue charges against friends, families or significant others for sharing account passwords. A spokesperson for Netflix went on to add “We love people sharing Netflix whether they’re two people on a couch or 10 people on a couch. That’s a positive thing, not a negative thing. As kids move on in their life, they like to have control of their life, and as they have an income, we see them separately subscribe. It really hasn’t been a problem.”

The case itself centered around former employee David Nosal who stole another employees password to access Netflix corporate and customer records. His actions were deemed to be an illegal hack, violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Since it involved the stealing the password to another persons account, this is why we have the new ruling making it a felony to use/share/steal other users passwords.

So yes, while this case has opened the door new regulations on password sharing, no law has actually been passed stating that password sharing is a felony.  Theoretically the precedent has now been set in federal court to charge someone with a crime, but it is a matter of common sense. Sharing a password is not the same as hacking someones account, like David Nosal did, and even the dissent from the federal judges acknowledges this. To avoid a customer service meltdown, Netflix has even acknowledged it will not prosecute customers for sharing their accounts.

So while you technically can be charges with a crime for sharing your password, it is highly unlikely.

Sources: Free Though Project, Market Watch, Snopes

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