Password Sharing Laws with respect to OTT Subscriptions: An Overview

The sharing of passwords for over-the-top subscription services has become the norm with users willfully sharing their passwords with family and friends in order to save money in pursuance of careful economical spending. These users however, in the due process of saving money are restricting the growth of these services. The prominent reason behind this mass mentality phenomena is a preset concept of budgeting that has become a commonplace and uncoordinated action among consumers. With the share capital as well as the subscribers of the major players, namely Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar, plummeting down the trend, a significant need arises to reevaluate and reassess the situation of sharing such subscriptions. There is still significant lacuna and a grey area with respect to the legality of the said acts in the Indian Subcontinent. This paper provides an overview of the current situation of password sharing in OTT platforms.