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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That is because a different owner’s right is triggered. Owners of IP have specific rights over the material, meaning only they made do certain things with the IP. If someone else does that thing, then they either owe the owner money or are in violation.
One right is broadcasting the IP by telecommunication. That’s what happens on Netflix. Every time a movie is played, Netflix pays a tariff (or they might have a deal with a one-time payment, it’s all negotiable). The law does not care how many people watch on it on the other side. The law only cares if the IP is broadcast or not.
If you share your screen with someone, you are now broadcasting. You are sharing the IP via telecommunication. You are now infringing on an owner’s right.
What does difference does it make? It’s all about money. If the IP owner could charge per person watching, they absolutely would. However, there is no way to quantify that. There is no way for the IP owner or Netflix to know how many people are watching at the other end of the device. As much as they would love to charge more for more viewers, they simply cannot; the law does not allow it. However, they can find out if someone is screensharing. Regardless of how many people are watching, screensharing is an obvious act of infringing on an owner’s right. In such a case, the IP owner can absolutely claim more money.’
Just to give you an example of how people are always trying to test copyright law to get more money, there are a couple of cases where the IP owners were trying to get money from previews of IP. On iTunes for example, you can listen to a preview of the song before buying it. Music artists tried to claim that was a broadcast and that they should get a royalty for that. There was a similar argument for those small snippets that Netflix shows. They wanted a royalty for those as well. Another example is selling games online. They tried to argue that selling a game online was broadcasting the IP to the public *and* making a copy of the game (another separate owner right). They were trying to double dip royalties for a single transaction. Copyright law is all about getting the maximum amount of money wherever you can get it.
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