New terms of use: Disney+ prohibits account sharing

Disney is currently sending its subscribers an email to inform them about upcoming changes to its terms of use. It contains a small passage: "We're clarifying how you can share your account with other people." What at first sounds inconspicuous actually has a much greater significance:

After Netflix, the House of Mouse also wants to take active action against account sharing.

The fight against account sharing

We remember: Disney will be dissolving the current plan and introducing a new one in a few days - as of 1 November. The new feature is the ad-financed plan: It is cheaper than the previous standard plan, but content will be interrupted by ad breaks. How exactly is not yet known. The "new" standard plan is the same price as the old one, but no longer offers the highest picture and sound quality. This is now only available with the more expensive premium subscription. Existing customers will automatically be upgraded to this and will pay more than they do now. Unless they actively switch to one of the two cheaper models on the cut-off date.

To coincide with the introduction of this new plan structure, Disney will also be updating its terms of use. These must be read and accepted before the streaming experience can continue. In doing so, Disney not only wants to create the legal basis for actively taking action against account sharing at a later date. If you read carefully, you can already recognise the first indications of an upcoming paid account sharing model, as Netflix has already introduced.

This is how it reads under point 1c of the new licence agreement: "Unless otherwise permitted by your plan, you may not share your Disney+ account with anyone outside your household. [...] If we detect unauthorised account sharing, we may take reasonable technical measures to prevent the use of the Disney+ Account outside your household (unless otherwise permitted by your plan options)."

Disney is not just talking about blocking accounts that are used for account sharing. Disney explicitly adds "unless otherwise permitted by your plan options" to the passage - twice. This can only mean paid account sharing. In other words, authorised account sharing with people outside of your own household, but for an additional charge.

Like Netflix: The "terms of use" weapon

This is probably all part of Disney's plan to finally make its streaming division profitable by the end of 2024. According to the Los Angeles Times, the megacorporation promised this to its investors last May.

The situation is indeed serious: in the second quarter of this year alone, Disney's streaming division lost a whopping 659 million US dollars. This is a small improvement on the 887 million US dollars of the same quarter a year ago. But still a long way from a profitable business like that of Netflix.

The Californians from Los Gatos, of all places, could now become Disney's new role model. After all, if Netflix has been successful in suppressing account sharing and enforcing paid account sharing then why shouldn't other streaming services follow suit? This is precisely why Disney+ is now updating its terms of use - and "officially" banning account sharing. So that the initial "lip service" can later become a fact - as was once the case with Netflix.