Netflix steps up its effort to get paid for account sharing

By DEE-ANN DURBIN
AP Business Writer

Netflix has a plan to deal with rampant account sharing: a program that lets subscribers pay extra to share their account with people outside their household. The streaming giant introduced paid sharing in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain on Wednesday. It was previously rolled out in Latin America, and some version of the plan is expected to be introduced in the U.S. in the next few weeks. Netflix estimates that 100 million households are currently sharing their accounts with people outside their household. The company says that hurts its ability to invest in new programming.