Using Someone Else‘s Account Is Stealing

I hope I can convince you that using someone else‘s account is stealing.

Everyone knows that if you go to Target and walk out with a liter bottle of olive oil without paying, it is stealing, right? How does Target make money? It buys the olive oil from the wholesaler and sells it to the consumer for more money. They lose money if you steal the olive oil they paid for.

How does Costco make money? Most of their revenue comes from their yearly membership. They make enough money from membership that they don’t have to make as much money selling their bottles of olive oil. That is how I can buy a two-liter bottle at Costco for the same price as Target’s one-liter bottle. When you share your Costco account with others, Costco doesn’t make as much in memberships. One of two things happens—they raise membership fees, or they raise the prices of their products. If you use someone else’s account, you are getting the services that Costco provides without paying for them. It is obvious when you steal olive oil, but less so when you steal a service. But using a service without paying is the same to a company as stealing a product.

Costco started scanning membership cards on entry a few weeks ago. I am thrilled. Get rid of the thieves. My price will go down.

Look at Spotify, one of the greatest inventions in my memory. They provide an incredible service. They link a gazillion songs to my phone. I don’t pay for each song. My wife and I have the Premium Duo membership, which I highly recommend. She gets whatever songs she wants, and I get mine. If we didn’t have a membership, and I used my son’s membership, I would be stealing the service Spotify sells. See? Simple.

Netflix, Sling, and Audible are the same. Everyone knows that stealing a book from a bookstore is stealing. Stealing an audiobook from Audible or some other source may not seem like stealing because there is no physical product. Who cares? People who buy books don’t care about the paper or pretty colors on the cover. They want the book’s content. If you take it without paying——Stealing. If someone stole the Kindle version of my book, I would be upset.

My son is a computer engineer. I know he’s good because his online color palette app, Tincto is super-cool. I use Tincto when I make greeting cards, but I didn’t understand what he was doing on the computer when I saw him writing the code. It may have been magic. Anyway, he also writes code for a company, and they pay him for it. He and other engineers provide a product to the company, which provides a service to customers. What if my son did this work for a month, and they refused to pay him? I‘m not sure that stealing is the right word for it, but it would be wrong. Same thing.

Taking a good or service without paying for it is stealing, and it hurts everyone. If ten percent of people who use Sling or YouTube TV use someone else’s account, then all the honest members will have to pay more. The same thing would happen if ten percent of people stole their olive oil from Target.