Netflix and password sharing: Parliament intervenes in Portugal

In the comments on social media, someone even wrote that “on this thing state intervention would be needed”, although it would be a bit strange for a state to intervene on something like this.

Streaming and access to Netflix are certainly not primary goods or inviolable rights of humanity, and yet there is indeed a state in which it is being evaluated how to deal with the company’s campaign against abusive password sharing. How to behave from a political point of view, of course.

Netflix in Portugal, appeal to the government

This state is Portugal, where 3 socialist deputies presented a parliamentary question to the government, by means of a letter to the President of the Assembly, Augusto Santos Silva, questioning the legality And constitutionality of Netflix’s decision to prohibit the sharing of credentials between people who do not live together.

The company’s announcement was made a few days ago and the news will be effective February 22: as already explained for months, it will no longer be possible to access a person’s account if you do not live with this person or (this is new) if you do not pay a surcharge, which in Portugal is 3.99 euros per month and in Spain of 5.99 euros.

According to the signatories of the parliamentary question, this policy would raise questions regarding the Portuguese law on privacy, given that Netflix has confirmed that it will use the customers IP address to monitor account activity: Santos Silva has already announced that he will forward the question to the Minister of Infrastructure, João Galamba.

For his part, Netflix told Portuguese newspapers that the kind of information it will collect about customers is exactly the kind of information it already collects about customers to deliver the service. Which by the way they are the same information that the company has been collecting for years in Italy as well.

@capoema