Court Rules That Sharing Your Netflix Password Is A Federal Crime

Fortune- On July 5th , the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an opinion which found, in part, that sharing passwords is a crime prosecutable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The decision, according to a dissenting opinion on the case, makes millions of people who share passwords for services like Netflix and HBOGo into “unwitting federal criminals.” The decision came in the case of David Nosal, an employee at the executive search (or headhunter) firm Korn/Ferry International. Nosal left the firm in 2004 after being denied a promotion. Though he stayed on for a year as a contractor, he was simultaneously preparing to launch a competing search firm, along with several co-conspirators. Though all of their computer access was revoked, they continued to access a Korn/Ferry candidate database, known as Searcher, using the login credentials of Nosal’s former assistant, who was still with the firm.

I’m not a lawyer but that can’t be true. It just can’t be. If that ruling were true, and sharing Netflix passwords was a federal crime, they’d have to build new prisons. New prisons that have the capacity to fit 7 billion people in them because everybody on this damn planet shares Netflix passwords. Literally everybody. If you pay for Netflix, you’re an absolute sucker. Anybody and everybody is willing to hand out their Netflix password so you can catch up on House of Cards. In a world where everybody hates everybody and everybody shoots everybody, Netflix passwords are the one exception where we all have just agreed to be cool about it. I guarantee you could walk down the street with a sign that read “I need a Netflix password” and you’d be out there for a total of three minutes before somebody gave one to you. This federal crime law sounds a lot like the law about pirating music. Sure, they can come after you if they really want to, but they won’t. We still downloaded terabytes of music we’d never listen to. Come and get meeeeeeeeeeeee.