HBO Not Concerned With HBO Now Password Sharing

It’s a battle that other streaming services have fought. One person pays for a subscription, but he or she gives his login and password to others. All of a sudden, multiple people are sharing but the service collects only one fee. Couldn’t the same thing happen to HBO Now?

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It certainly could, and probably is, but HBO is content to just monitor things for now. Besides, HBO CEO Richard Plepler recently told CNN Money, password sharing isn’t as prevalent as many assume.

"We look at it very carefully, [but] right now password sharing is just simply not a big number.As long as it remains de minimis, we’re not going to overreact to it."

CNN Money also points out that HBO Now addresses the issue of concurrent streams, figuring that a subscription is for an entire household, so it expects that several devices might be streaming different shows at once. That’s an interesting way of looking at it, because from HBO’s perspective, there’s really no difference if me, my wife and my dad are all using HBO Now under the same roof or if two of my buddies are sharing my account and viewing from their own homes. Either way, it’s three streams, one fee.

That said, HBO is certainly going to be paying attention to the issue, and if the network sees that it’s common for accounts to average like five concurrent streams at once, you can bet it will take steps to clamp down. The lesson here is probably one of moderation and not ruining a good thing for everyone. Something to think about.

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