Disney Wants You to Stop Sharing Your Streaming Passwords

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Disney and Charter Communications are teaming up to prevent multiple people from sharing the same streaming account across their offerings, according to a new report. What does that mean for future Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ users? Get ready to say goodbye to using your ex’s login.

The news arrives amid a new distribution agreement announced between Disney and Charter, which is the nation’s second-biggest cable company, boasting nearly 16 million customers nationwide. In their joint announcement, Disney and Charter said they have “agreed to work together on piracy mitigation. The two companies will work together to implement business rules and techniques to address such issues as unauthorized access and password sharing.”

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How exactly they plan to put a cap on password sharing is unclear, with the companies stating “we don’t have details to share at this time.”

In addition to streaming services, the deal allows Charter to continue housing Disney-owned TV channels on its cable service, including ABC, the various Disney and ESPN channels, along with FX, National Geographic, and others.

“This agreement will allow Spectrum to continue delivering to its customers popular Disney content, makes possible future distribution by Spectrum of Disney streaming services, and will begin an important collaborative effort to address the significant issue of piracy mitigation,” Charter Executive VP Tom Montemagno said in a statement.

It was inevitable that one of the major streaming services was going to block password sharing. Hulu puts a block on how many people can stream on the platform at once, but neither HBO streaming services (which include HBO Go and HBO Now and will eventually morph into HBO Max) or Netflix have employed a similar method to manage this – even though it’s technically a violation of each streamer’s terms of use.

The kibosh on password sharing could target those who use Charter TV account logins to access Disney services. “There’s lots of extra streams, there’s lots of extra passwords, there’s lots of people who could get free service,” Charter CEO Tom Rutledge said. Charter could also track IP addresses of users accessing its service, which means more personal data is up for grabs. Think twice before you share another password with friends.

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