Disney+ launched in North America on Tuesday, and the streaming service has already hit 10 million subscribers. However, judging by how many people share passwords around for their Netflix and HBO Now accounts, there's likely a lot more people using the service than that number would indicate. Thankfully, the company has pretty much expected this to happen, and as a result password sharing is cool with Disney for the time being.
"Password sharing is definitely something we think about," Disney Streaming Services president Michael Paull said last week at a media preview event, The Vergereports. "We believe that consumers will see that value, and they’re going to act accordingly. They’re going to use those accounts for their family, for their household. That being said, we do recognize password sharing exists and will continue to exist."
This could all change further down the line, though. "We have created some technology that’s in the backend that we will use to understand behavior," Paull added. "And when we see behavior that doesn’t make sense, we have mechanisms that we’ve put in place that will deal with it." There aren't any measures in place to stop customers from doing so right now—not that it would stop anyone from trying even if there was.
Disney has access to the number of devices used on Disney+ accounts, meaning that some measures could be implemented if the company notices any suspicious behavior. CEO Bob Iger said in an interview, "We're setting up a service that is very family-friendly, we expect families to be able to consume it—four live streams at a time, for instance. We'll watch it carefully with various tools, technology tools, that we have available to us to monitor it. But it's obviously something we have to watch."