Is sharing online accounts stealing?

[joe230577]

if i share my online account (itunes or playstation network for example) with a friend and they share theirs with me, is it considered stealing if i download items from their account? itunes and sony have limits as to how many consoles or systems can have someone’s personal account info on them (apple allows five devices, sony allows two), so i’m really confused if its a form of stealing or not. i know that i didn’t pay for the items that i downloaded from his profile but if they allow multiple devices to carry the account, are we doing something wrong? if so, i will delete the items, no problem. thanks.

(i tried submitting a similar post earlier but wasn’t sure if i did it correctly or not)

 

[Elizium23]

It depends on whether the Terms of Service of those services permit you to do what you’re doing. For example, the terms at Netflix explicitly allow me to share my account password with “household members” as long as I recognize that I am responsible for their actions while using the account. I understand that Netflix really doesn’t keep a close eye on who’s sharing their accounts to stream movies; this opens up some possibilties for abuse and piracy, which Netflix will probably have to discuss with their licensors at some point.

If you are not contractually restricted from sharing your account, then I don’t really see a problem with it, legally you are on good footing, and good legal footing here is good ethical footing is good moral footing. I would not worry about it as long as you have done due diligence to ratify your own actions.