Many Danes share their passwords for content services with people outside their household. Are you allowed to do that?
Recently, there has been a lot of focus on this from the media. The Danish Rights Alliance has received several inquiries from the Danish media about the problem based on our expertise in the protection of rights.
An analysis that Wilke has made on behalf of the Danish Rights Alliance shows that every third Dane shares their passwords for content services with others outside the household.
It is a problem for the members of the Danish Rights Alliance who produce, distribute, and create content that can be consumed on these services. In addition, content services such as Netflix and TV2 have expressed in the media that they see it as a challenge that passwords are largely shared with people outside the household.
It is not permitted to share one’s password with people outside the subscriber’s own household, nor is it permitted to use someone else’s password to stream content from a content service. Neither according to copyright law nor the user terms of the content services.
There is a great deal of ignorance among Danes about what to do with your password. That is why we provide information in the area, so that we ensure a greater awareness of what is allowed and what is not allowed. We believe that the technical solutions that we hear are being worked on at the services, in combination with information, will be able to make a difference.
The Danish Rights Alliance does not advocate that people who share passwords should be prosecuted either by the police or by us. We are in favor of the police dealing with organized crime, such as password hacking. In addition to the sharing of passwords, we see a development within hacking of users’ passwords for the same content services, which the Danish Rights Alliance works intensively with and has already reported several cases to the police at NSK – the Section for Rights Protection.