One in four Australians sharing their streaming video account, survey finds

One in four Australians admit to sharing their streaming video account with others, according to a new government survey, as Netflix prepares to crack down on the practice.

The annual consumer survey on online copyright infringement found 26% of respondents had allowed someone outside their household to use their login details for at least one streaming service in the previous three months.

The report found 11% also paid a small fee to access one or many subscription services through a shared account.

Last week Netflix accidentally published a set of guidelines for an anticipated global launch of its password-sharing crackdown. As part of the plan, users will be required to open the app and stream something on every connected device on the home network at least once every 30 days.

Netflix account holders will need to pay an additional monthly fee to add up to two extra users who live outside their household to their account if they want to continue to share the account.

People surveyed reported using Netflix more than any other service at 71% for movies and 58% for TV. It was followed by YouTube (29%), Disney+ (28%), Amazon (28%) and 7Plus (27%) for TV. While for movies it was 37% for Disney, 34% for Amazon, 30% for YouTube and 24% for Stan.

Overall, the report found 39% of people said they had engaged in online copyright infringement in the past three months, up from 30% the previous year, but 4% lower than when the survey first started in 2015.

Despite the rise, the survey suggested the only increase in infringing had occurred in music, up to 26% from 21% in 2021, but the survey also included a new category to account for people who might share accounts as part of infringing activity.

Guardian Australia reported in January, in the seven years since the former Coalition government introduced piracy site-blocking laws, there have been 30 cases brought against internet providers, with more than 1,600 websites blocked and a further 330 extension orders to block mirror versions of sites previously ordered blocked.

The survey found that 17% of Australians had encountered one of these blocks, and 60% of those who encountered a block gave up trying to access it.

But 25% of respondents had used a virtual private network, up from 21% the previous year. This result was higher among those who had admitted to unlawfully accessing content (39%).