To further explain, the concept is the same, isn’t it? Watching IRL you can have 2, 3, 10 people around one screen. Online, you can do the same thing by sharing your screen through Discord and similar apps, but in that case it is illegal, you can get accounts banned, warned, etc. and is seemingly considered to be piracy. What is the actual difference between the two?
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There’s an inherent difference in scalability. If you are sharing your screen, you could be letting thousands or even millions of people watch the content. Even if you promise not to do that, even if you aren’t even trying to do that (someone watching your stream may rebroadcast it), Netflix isn’t going to trust you. On the other hand, you can only fit so many people in your living room. And for what it’s worth, organizing a moderately-sized in-person screening of a movie (i.e. in some space bigger than your living room) does technically require you to pay licensing fees.
There’s also a difference in detectability. It’s relatively easy to search the big online broadcasting platforms for evidence that someone is restreaming your content. It’s much harder to go door to door on a Friday night taking a headcount. Even if Netflix really would like to charge you for that Stranger Things viewing party, it can’t.
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