Disney+ Begins Password Sharing Crackdown in Canada

Last month, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced that the company is “actively exploring ways to address account sharing” for its Disney+ streaming service, promising that at least some new policies would be on the books by the end of this year.

While Iger implied at the time that enforcement might not kick in until 2024, it appears that the House of Mouse is already turning the key in at least one country, presumably on a trial basis.

Disney+ subscribers in Canada have begun receiving emails to “remind” them that sharing their Disney+ account passwords with folks outside their households is not permitted, adding that Disney will be “implementing restrictions on your ability to share your account or login credentials outside of your household.”

While Disney is taking a page out of Netflix’s playbook in rolling out the new policy, in this case, it’s merely enforcing something clearly laid out in its Terms of Use from the beginning. Technically, you’re not allowed to share your Disney+ password with anyone — even your spouse or other close family members who live with you. But by the strictest interpretation of Disney’s rules, the primary account holder must log in to each person’s device.

While Netflix had always officially said that an account was only to be used by the members of a single household, company executives had muddied the waters quite a bit over the years. In 2016, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told attendees at that year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), “We love people sharing Netflix. That’s a positive thing, not a negative thing.”

By contrast, Disney hasn’t used the word “household” before now. Along with the email to Canadian subscribers comes an update to its subscriber agreement that adds a new “Account Sharing” clause, plus a new Help Center entry, both of which bring “household” into the mix.

You may not share your subscription outside of your household. “Household” means the collection of devices associated with your primary personal residence that are used by the individuals who reside therein.

The Disney+ crackdown in Canada is expected to start on November 1, 2023, which the email notes is the same day its ad-supported membership tiers will launch in the country. Due to differences with the laws in the Province of Quebec, annual subscribers in that province won’t be impacted by the new subscriber agreement until their next billing date, “on or after November 1st, 2023.”

It stands to reason that Canada is just the first in what will undoubtedly be a much larger rollout of these policies, in much the same way Netflix experimented with this in South America before beginning the official rollout earlier this year in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, and Spain.

However, unlike Netflix, what’s still conspicuously missing from Disney’s new Canadian arrangement are options for those subscribers who might be willing to pay more to share their accounts with others outside their households.

For now, the official line is that this is not allowed. However, that’s likely not the final word on the matter. The Account Sharing section in Disney’s new Canadian subscriber agreement opens with “Unless otherwise permitted by your Service Tier,” which suggests that the company may eventually allow password sharing for a higher price, similar to what Netflix has done.

In Netflix’s case, this has come in the form of “Extra Member” slots that can be added to a Netflix Standard or Premium plan for an extra $7.99/month — billed as an add-on to the primary account holder. However, Disney could take a different approach, such as adding higher premium tiers that would allow some limited account sharing.

Disney also hasn’t explained how it plans to enforce its password-sharing policies. Other than a vague statement in the updated subscriber agreement that says it may “analyze the use of your account to determine compliance with this Agreement,” the Disney+ Help Center doesn’t provide any details on what will happen if two or more devices try to access the same Disney+ account from different locations.