#Disney+ crackdown

[headlinehorizon]

Disney+ to Crack Down on Password-Sharing in Canada: Latest News

https://headlinehorizon.com/Business/Markets/744

According to a new report, The Walt Disney Company's streaming service, Disney+, is set to implement restrictions on account sharing in Canada beginning November 1. This move comes as part of their efforts to combat password-sharing and ensure fair usage of the service. Catch up on the headline horizon with the latest news on Disney+'s crackdown.

[mhalachai]

some of you may have seen a notice today from a tumblr-popular youtube show, saying they're putting all their content behind a subscriber paywall. This post isn't about them per say, only bouncing off what that has brought up into the following:

When is a digital subscription something i'm willing to pay for? Rubric edition

Disclaimer - my first news job was in the early aughts at a digital stock news company, so I've been keeping an eye on this subject for over 25 years.

So you want to access an entertainment or news service that has content behind a subscriber paywall. What steps should you go through, to figure out if it's something that you should pay for?

This post will go off the caveat that artists/authors/reporters (I'm not calling them content creators, that term is garbage) should be properly compensated for the works they produce, and the current business model in our late-stage capitalist society means we all have to deal with the worst possible way of engaging with art - the subscription-model paywall. It's a terrible garbage system but there we are.

Step Zero: Do you care enough about the content to consider paying for it?

It might not be important enough to you to want to pay for, and that's okay. On the other hand, you may want to continue watching/reading/listening, either because of the content itself or because you want to support its creation.

(I'm separating the above as they are two different reasons - personally, i'm in favour of paying an annual subscriber fee to my small local news room to keep them in producing the content because I think it's important they exist.)

Step 1: Can you literally afford it?

Everything costs more and salaries aren't rising. If the answer to the question is no, can you split the cost with someone? Is it something that can be accessed through your local library (in terms of audiobooks or magazine/newspapers)? Otherwise, moving to:

Step 2: Is the cost of the subscription in line with what you're willing to pay for the content?

I still subscribe to the newspaper i used to work for - I can read all the news and get all the quotes I'm interested in, and I know i'm supporting local news. I'm willing to pay money for that.

On the other hand, back last year when Disney Plus announced it was raising its prices, I decided that I wasn't interested in paying that amount for what I was getting, so I cancelled that one. Do I miss it? Yes, somedays. Would I go back to them if the cost went down? Honestly I don't know.

Step 3: Did the company/channel do something to lose your trust?

Sometimes, all the above have been met with the affirmative, but something about how the company is doing things sets your teeth on edge. Maybe it's how their business model is evolving, or how they treat their customers (Netflix and their password sharing crackdown was that tipping point for me - i no longer wanted to support a company that sees its customer base like that). Maybe it's how they decided to move to subscriber-only. Maybe it's their take on geopolitical or social issues. Whatever it might be, you get to make that call for you.

Summation: Don't feel pressed by FOMO to pay for something when you're not comfortable doing so.

Whatever the situation is, you get to decide where you spend your money. The corollary of that is that you may not get to see the new stuff created by companies/channels that you like, but honestly? That trade-off might be better for you in the long run (and I'm saying this with too many years of regret behind me) nothing poisons the enjoyment of art more than feeling like you were forced to pay/pay more for it than you were OK with.

The tl;dr: Take a step back and see if you're really comfortable with paying for all your electronic subscription fees for news or entertainment. Don't feel pressured into paying for something you don't really want to see, or what to support. Consider where you want your money to go.

It's hard economic times - do what you need to, and spend your money where you want to.

(And check into what your local library has on offer - they may have streaming services or digital content you weren't aware of - might be enough to tide you over for a while).

[probablyasocialecologist]

From Apple to Disney, Gucci to Shell, many of the largest companies in the world have used carbon credits for their sustainability efforts from the unregulated voluntary market, which grew to $2bn (£1.6bn) in size in 2021 and saw prices for many carbon credits rise above $20 per offset. The credits are often generated on the basis they are contributing to climate change, mitigation such as stopping tropical deforestation, tree planting and creating renewable energy projects in developing countries. Proponents say they need to massively increase in size and scale to help meet the Paris agreement to limit global heating. But repeated scandals about their true impact and a crackdown from regulators on claims of “carbon neutrality” have meant that demand and prices for offsetting have slumped, with signs that some carbon credit traders are writing off investments that would have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars as recently as last year.

[...]

A new study in the journal Science has found that millions of forest carbon credits approved by Verra, the world’s leading certifier, are largely worthless and could make global heating worse if used for offsetting. The research by scientists and economists at the University of Cambridge and VU Amsterdam was one of the three studies used in a January investigation into rainforest offsets by the Guardian, Die Zeit and Source Material. The Science study was used in a pre-print form while awaiting peer review, which it has since passed. The analysis, published on Thursday, found that 18 big forest offsetting projects had produced millions of carbon credits based on calculations that greatly inflated their conservation impact. The schemes, which generate credits by avoiding hypothetical deforestation, were found not to reduce forest loss or to reduce it by only small amounts, far less than the huge areas they were claiming to protect, rendering the credits largely hot air. The findings follow a 2020 study of 12 projects in the Brazilian Amazon by the same group, which found they had a negligible impact on stopping deforestation despite generating credits on the basis they were preventing large areas from being destroyed. A 2022 study of 40 Verra-approved projects led by University of Cambridge researchers found that while some projects did stop deforestation, most stopped none or small amounts.

[duckyfruitbat]

YoHoHo, It's a New Era of Pirating

I'm sure a lot of us have been ruminating on this lately, but first I want to draw some parallels.

Picture it, the year is 2005 and you are watching a movie you picked out with your grandma at blockbuster during your weekend visit to give your parents a god damned break from your bullshit. Relatable so far yes? You pop that disk in and sit down as grandma makes the popcorn and an odd little PSA comes up between the previews. It's the infamous pirating PSA that compares downloading films to car jacking. So what do you do? You download copious amounts of pirated music onto the computer under your fathers supervision of course, still pretty relatable right?

You have entered the world of media piracy my friend, an old tradition with a rich culture and history. The early 2000's were some wild times, piracy was at its peak, the internet was a lawless land, and the 2008 housing bubble was just around the corner, truly a glorious time.

Now needless to say, publishing companies hated piracy and were desperately trying to curb it but only through legislation through a government that didn't really care. It was already hard enough to catch one pirate so why waste resources to crack down on it. There was an attempted crackdown by the publishers but that completely failed, one infamous case was a grandma who didn't even have a computer.

This age of piracy was only stopped when Itunes and Netflix made their way online. That was only because everything was on these two websites and later also Hulu. The only people who continued to pirate were kids who didn't have money and anime fans. There were two specialized websites just for them.

Everything was going smoothly, until we get to today, now every studio has at least one streaming service and even then there is no guarantee that their own shows would even be up and they're all owned by the same five corporations. Discovery got in trouble not too long ago for deleting their own shows from their own streaming service. Disney still has a backlog to upload onto Disney+, and there are many exclusives between each site. It's very similar to what cable and satellite television was, gotta pay over a hundred dollars and you don't even watch half the channels. These streaming services are getting too specialized, sure it makes business sense especially when you already have a large library or you're just Disney, but when there are obscure TV channels trying to get their own service, you know something's wrong.

Somehow the music industry didn't go the same path, yes Spotify has its problems, especially for musicians, but it is far better than purchasing entire albums or the old piracy methods that always put your computer at risk.

The obvious consequence of all this is that piracy is once again going up once again. Why? Because it is far easier to pirate than it is to figure out which steaming service that Disney owned show you want to watch is on. The only reason Itunes and Netflix originally won was because it was more convenient to actually pay for the things you wanted to see and not have to worry about malware. That's a lesson that these corporations could benefit from again, but they are if anything stubborn.

Now because of the stubbornness of these corporations I will have a lot to talk about, specifically with all sorts of pirating methods, and some fun stories. I already talked about Tengen and their massive swinging balls of steel as they walked into the patent office to steal from Nintendo, but there is so much more. So plenty of legally dubious fun to be had!

[fandom-shitposter]

Corporate entities hate fanmade works and would love nothing more than to get them shut down entirely

They hate that there are people out there using their characters and their settings and having fun with them without having to pay them for the priviledge

But as long as fans aren't making money out of their IP they can currently get away with it. But we've recently seen a crackdown on people selling t-shirt designs, stickers, etc which violate this

So what can they do to try to firm up the laws on this, to get them to fall more in their favour?

Would writing their own fanfic and turning it into a show that they're making lots of money from be enough to do that, for them to sell merchandise and profit from someone else's IP without asking or paying for the use of it?

For it to maybe go to court for a very public fight over who can do what with a property they're a fan of?

Because that could well be what Disney is currently up to with their Star Wars shows

Not just making a few references to other movies or tv shows, but taking entire plotlines, blurring the edges of them, and dropping them right into their own shows

Want an example even if it risks containing show spoilers? of course you do!

Back in Season 7 of The Clone Wars (On the Wings of Keeradaks) we have a scene where Tech uses a recording of the flying lizards they encounted earlier to call them to their position and fly them out of danger

Just like Gandalf summons the eagles to come and rescue his party from the attack from Azog and his team of orcs and wargs, right down to the way some party members are left dangling over a huge drop off the mountainside

Later, in The Bad Batch (Reunion, S1), Hunter has been shot in the chest and Tech gets him up, gets him to safety, and (offscreen) medical aid is provided

Which is extremely close to that same rescue scene in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, only the part of it where Gandalf gets Thorin up and out of danger, with the assistance of the eagles, after he's been severly mauled by a warg, and then rendering medical assistance to him

Tech goes on to have a big fall (Plan 99, Bad Batch, S2), right off the end of a great big crumbling bridge. Sound familiar to any LotR fans?

And in a different episode (The Crossing, Bad Batch, S2) Tech is seen falling and landing in a similarly super familiar looking cave

Which repeats parts of the two separate scenes of Gandalf falling and 'dying' ('The Fellowship of the Ring' for the fall, and 'The Two Towers' for the cave scene) which all the characters get really sad about - until he gets better and comes back. Which has yet to be seen in Tech's case. (How Tech will be able to come back from his fall despite not being a wizard is explained via his character specific movie source they've made repeated use of, but since that's still hugely spoilery I'm not getting into that here)

And this is only a couple of examples of one tiny instance where this is happening, the show is filled with them and it applies to all the main characters not just Techdalf

'Entombed' (The Bad Batch, S2) hits The Hobbit up HARD for it's plot and not only gives us the Arkenstone but oblong, which it directly names as The Heart of the Mountain, which is found and then lost again, but dredges up a fire breathing dragon equivalent. Add in some additional Alien themeing and a lizardy creature that can be shot in the chest with a laser arrow before being tossed out of a window in full on 'OMG it's Ripley with the airlock' style and they're really cramming it in there. They end with a reference to an opportunity to find a golden chalice, which is what Bilbo took from Samug's hoarde as proof that he'd found it But people have been easily sidelined from thinking about any of this too hard by them throwing in a handful of surface references to Indiana Jones, the potential of a love interest being developed, and the 'dragon' being a creature previously seen in the Jedi: Fallen Order video game

And don't even get me started on how Senator Avi Singh appears to live in Dale (Common Ground, Bad Batch, S1), Roland and Isa Durand apparently live in Rohan (Paths Unknown, Bad Batch, S3) or Dr Hemlock and his former base at Dol Guldur (Paths Unknown, The Bad Batch, S3) and what that implies for the remainder of the show

They've blended together a lot of canon prequel & clone wars era Star Wars content with a range of supplementary non-canon SW content such a comic books, video games, Legends novels, etc which maintains the idea that this show is nothing more than Star Wars and keeps a lot of long term fans happy and distracted by seeing non-canon things finally appearing in a canon setting, even if they have changed some of the details

But so many concepts and images have been lifted barely altered from their original sources, not just from Tolkein's works, and just slapped down like we're not supposed to notice how much of it there actually is because they've made the animation and lighting so very very pretty

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

#20yrsago Vintage Disney hotel logos as vector art https://web.archive.org/web/20041001004222/http://gs.designbymk.com/archives/2004/09/retro_disney_re.html

#20yrsago Free iPod for Air France business class passengers https://web.archive.org/web/20041011112010/http://www.macworld.com/news/2004/09/28/airfrance/index.php/?lsrc=mcrss-0904

#20yrsago Catalog of the Kleptones’ samples https://waxy.org/2004/09/kleptones_night/

#15yrsago Here come the airport rectal exams! https://memex.craphound.com/2009/09/28/here-come-the-airport-rectal-exams/

#10yrsago Vicious crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy students and Occupy movement https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hong-kong-democracy-protest_n_5892862

#10yrsago Catalan president defies Madrid, decrees independence referendum https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29390774

#5yrsago Every word Ajit Pai says about Net Neutrality is a lie, including “and” and “the” https://www.vice.com/en/article/study-proves-the-fccs-core-justification-for-killing-net-neutrality-was-false/

#1yrago Yanis Varoufakis's "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism?" https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

Donald Trump’s flailing performance at Tuesday night’s debate triggered a multiday right-wing freakout at the ABC News moderators, punctuated by calls from the former president and his allies to target the network and its parent company with a regulatory crackdown, congressional investigation, and even prosecutions. It’s a dark preview of the authoritarian tactics they could use if Trump returns to the White House and carries out his stated desire to retaliate against news outlets whose coverage displeases him. Trump used Tuesday’s opportunity to address a massive national audience at the debate to spew nonsense incomprehensible to people who aren’t familiar with the deep lore of the right-wing fever swamps and repeatedly take the bait offered by Vice President Kamala Harris. The result was such a disaster for Trump’s campaign that he quickly called off future debates.

Trump’s right-wing media allies reacted to his disastrous performance in real time by lashing out at ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis, who fact-checked the former president on a handful of occasions. While debate moderators typically come in for criticism from pundits who take issue with how they handled the high-profile job, it is difficult to blame Muir or Davis for a candidate picking up a racist and false fourthhand internet rumor about Haitian immigrants in Ohio and declaring, “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” Moreover, the right’s discussion quickly blew past mere critiques of ABC’s performance to far-reaching conspiracy theories about its purportedly corrupt behavior and calls for government retribution against the network. “Remove ABC’s broadcast license and criminally charge the moderators and executives for campaign finance fraud,” Sean Davis, CEO of the right-wing digital outlet The Federalist, declared on X the night of the debate. Trump himself began calling for the stripping of ABC’s broadcast license the following morning.

“ABC took a big hit last night,” he said in an interview on Fox News’ Fox & Friends. “I mean, to be honest, they're a news organization. They have to be licensed to do it. They ought to take away their license for the way they did that.” Trump’s remarks drew cheers from MAGA figures like Laura Loomer, who posted that “ABC News deserves to be INVESTIGATED.”

[...] Trump’s call for retribution has support from some Republican legislators. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) said he would demand from ABC News and the Harris campaign “all correspondence, records, and potential coordination between the two parties ahead of Tuesday’s presidential debate,” while Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) is threatening to “re-examine the laws” he claims allow “the left’s near-complete domination of broadcast TV”. Meanwhile, Trumpists like Eric Metaxas and Hugh Hewitt are floating boycotts of ABC parent company Disney, and Mark Penn wants an independent review of ABC’s internal communications to assess whether the network was “rigging the outcome of this debate.”

The credibility of Trump’s call to strip ABC’s license is unclear. The Federal Communications Commission does not license broadcast networks — but it does license individual broadcast stations, including the eight owned and operated directly by ABC and the hundreds of additional affiliates. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, a Biden appointee, responded to Trump’s call by suggesting it runs afoul of the First Amendment, and Ajit Pai, her Trump-appointed predecessor, offered a similar response when Trump called for retaliation against NBC as president. That said, one of the goals of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is to ensure future Trump appointees are willing to prioritize his personal whims. Moreover, Trump’s eagerness to use such tactics to halt critical coverage — and the right’s support for them — is a dire sign for the future, even if the specific deployment of retaliatory FCC licensing decisions doesn’t work out.

The right-wing whining about ABC's moderating of the debate on Tuesday is part of their authoritarian war on the freedom of the press, especially if Donald Trump gets back in office.

[princehendir]

It's definitely interesting how like corporate crackdowns on fanart are usually responded to in fanart communities as "well that fucking sucks. Screw Disney/Marvel/whoever". Whereas the vague idea of a copyright strike in fanfic comms is treated with a kind of, apocalyptic doomer vibe. Like no one's been told to take anything down in a while but omg what if they did? It would be so over.

[secretstalks]

Disney CEO crackdown on password sharing, September 2024

Disney is ramping up its efforts to combat password sharing across its streaming services, including Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, starting in September. This move was announced by CEO Bob Iger during an earnings call and marks a significant step in the company's strategy to tackle this issue.

“We began our password-sharing initiative in June, and it will be fully implemented starting in September,” Iger said.

He also noted that the initial notifications and measures to address password sharing have not faced any backlash so far. Disney has been gradually enforcing restrictions to curb password sharing, and these upcoming changes will likely involve stricter account limitations. The company aims to convert password-sharing households into paying subscribers to boost revenue and profitability.

While specific details about the new measures, such as potential additional fees for extra users or account access limitations, have not been disclosed, industry experts speculate that Disney may adopt a model similar to Netflix's paid sharing tiers.

This initiative aligns with Disney's broader strategy of increasing subscription prices for its streaming services, a move that has raised concerns about potential subscriber losses. The company will be monitoring the impact of these price hikes on consumer behavior and revenue closely.

Iger expressed optimism about the benefits of the price increases, attributing it to the addition of new content, including ABC News Live and curated playlists, which he believes provides Disney with "pricing leverage."

Starting in October, Disney+ with ads will increase from $7.99 to $9.99 per month, while the ad-free version will rise from $13.99 to $15.99. ESPN+ and Hulu will also see price adjustments in line with these changes.

READ MORE

[tuulikki]

(“Last week” refers to March 2022)

@/mattxiv on instagram

I would like to add that disney was fully aware and involved in the Uyghur genocide. Look it up.

Cancel any and all disney subscriptions.

[allieinarden]

Bob Iger: Our legal investigation revealed that you mooched off your friend’s Disney+ account for over a year, so as part of our new password-sharing crackdown we’re putting your whole family in debtor’s prison.

Me: Oh my gosh so technically my mom is a Disney Princess

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Donald Trump was so furious at Jimmy Kimmel’s mockery of him, he wanted to censor the late night show host after just one year into his presidency, according to a report.

The former president directed his White House staff to call one of Disney’s top executives to pressure Kimmel to dial back on anti-Tump humour in 2018, two former Trump administration officials told the Rolling Stones.

The “severity of Mr. Trump’s fury” was conveyed in at least two separate phone calls to executives of Disney, owner of ABC which airs Jimmy Kimmel Live!, it said.

A former Trump official said Mr. Trump felt the talk show host had been “very dishonest and doing things that [Trump] would have once sued over” in his jokes about him.

“I do not know to who[m], but it happened. Nobody thought it was going to change anything but DJT was focused on it so we had to do something…It was doing something, mostly, to say to [Trump], ‘Hey, we did this,’” another official said.

The Trump White House staff reached out to former Disney top lobbyist Richard Bates, who passed away in December 2020.

Mr. Trump who was impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress has announced his campaign for a second presidential term in 2024. Despite his impeachment, a string of lawsuits and investigations, Mr. Trump has said “he is entitled to a revenge tour” if he wins but he would not do that.

It was not the first time it has emerged that Mr. Trump ordered a crackdown on those criticising him. In 2018, Ajit Pai, former chair of the Federal Communications Commission, said the agency was investigating a joke made about Mr. Trump and Vladimir Putin’s relations by Late Show host Stephen Colbert. The FCC eventually declined to move forward with the case.

[scotianostra]

On January 14th 1872 Edinburgh’s world famous dog, Greyfriars Bobby died.

On 15th February 1858, in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, a local man named John Gray died of tuberculosis. Gray was better known as “Auld Jock”, and on his death he was buried in old Greyfriars Churchyard. Bobby, a wee Skye Terrier, belonged to John, who worked for the Edinburgh City Police as a night watchman, and the two of them had been virtually inseparable.

Legend has it Bobby led his master’s funeral procession to the grave at Greyfriars Cemetery, and later, when he tried to stay at the graveside, he was sent away by the caretaker.

But the little dog returned and refused to leave, whatever the weather conditions. Despite the combined efforts of the keeper of the Kirkyard, Auld Jock’s family and some of the local people, Bobby refused to be enticed away from the grave for any length of time, and he touched the hearts of the local residents.

Although dogs were not allowed in the graveyard, the people rallied round and built a shelter for Bobby and there he stayed, guarding Auld Jock.

As the firing of the one o’clock gun sounded from the castle  each day, he would leave his post, and run to the eating house which he had frequented with Auld Jock, and then he would return to Jock’s grave. The news of Bobby’s loyalty soon spread, and people would travel from far and wide to see him. Crowds would gather for the firing of the gun, to see him run for his midday meal. After the town council ordrered a crackdown on unlicensed dogs in  1867, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh presented Bobby with a new collar, which is now on display. The collar has a brass plate inscribed with the words….

“Greyfriars Bobby – from the lord Provost, 1867, licensed”

Bobby was well cared for by the people of Edinburgh, but he still remained loyal to his master, and he continued to stay faithfully guarding Auld Jock’s grave for all those years, until he died on January 14th 1872, aged about 16 years.Bobby was also buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard, just seventy five yards away from his masters grave. He has his very own red granite headstone in 1981. The inscription on it reads………

“Greyfriars Bobby – died 14th January 1872 – aged 16 years.  Let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all”

Over the years films and videos have been made about this remarkable story, including a Disney movie, and an Edinburgh toy company came up with the popular Greyfriars Bobby toy. Guided tours of the kirkyard are given by a number of groups, including the Greyfriars Bobby Walking Theatre and the Greyfriars Kirkyard Trust.

The statue of Bobby, beside the pub named “Bobby’s Bar”, is a well known tourist attraction, with visitors from all over the world coming to Greyfriars to learn his story and have their pictures taken beside him. (Some people rub his nose for good luck, but are now being asked to do it gently, as it has had to be restored twice).

There is now a second statue of Bobby inside the Kirkyard, it marks 150n years of his passing.

[bennuhne]

Streaming services are getting so fucking ridiculous. Piracy is on the rise more than ever because of shit like cracking down on password sharing (which disney is now beginning as well, like netflix did), rising prices, and ads.

Like

I also think it's incredibly laughable when news articles cry about piracy being "bad actually". Because it's to the point that I don't give a shit anymore, and obviously, a lot of other people are feeling the same way.

If you think piracy is morally wrong or reprehensible, touch grass. Because people are literally proving that they don't want to keep shelling out money for increasing prices. No one wants to deal with ads when they ARE ALREADY PAYING for a streaming service. And now you can add on crackdowns for password sharing.

Streaming services was supposed to be the better to cable. It was thought that streaming services would end piracy once and for all. But it's becoming increasingly obvious that for the big streaming services, it's becoming about greed.

Fuck streaming services. Sail the seas and enjoy your time.

[fiveholesinthefence]

kinda funny how they’re doing this eras tour movie drop the day after disney plus’ password sharing crackdown begins