ACE welcomes French court’s Spliiit ruling
June 1, 2026

By Colin Mann



Anti-piracy coalition the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has welcomed the verdict from the Paris Judicial Court, which it says clearly confirms that the company Spliiit has violated the law with respect to ACE members Apple, Disney, and Netflix, notably by engaging in acts of complicity in violating the terms of service, unfair competition, and trademark infringement.

The court validates ACE members’ claim that Spliiit is engaging in the practice of illicit password selling. This is the practice by which commercial operators illegally sell or facilitate, without authorisation, the sale of existing consumers’ streaming service login credentials to multiple other users, while charging those users a commission for these unauthorised transactions. The practice is not about sharing passwords with family members, notes ACE. It is about the violation of the individual terms of service put forth by each content owner and streaming service. The Court held in this regard that “the sharing of subscriptions to services offered by Apple, Netflix, and Disney with third parties, engaged exclusively for the purpose of such sharing, constitutes a violation by the holders of these subscriptions of the terms and conditions of the contracts binding them.”


“We thank the Paris Judicial Court and our enforcement and industry partners for this important ruling,” said Larissa Knapp, Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer for the Motion Picture Association. “Services that turn subscription credentials into a marketplace exploit creators, consumers, and legitimate platforms. This ruling reinforces that unauthorised access and credential abuse have real consequences, and it strengthens the fair, secure digital marketplace that lawful services depend on.”

ACE remains fully committed to protecting consumers from illicit password sellers who seek to mislead the public about the legality of their services. The Court finds in this regard that by contributing to the creation of an illicit market for its own profit by stating that the service “‘does not infringe copyright and does not violate the platforms’ terms of service,’ Spliiit provided consumers with general information that is inaccurate, particularly regarding the services offered by Apple, Netflix, and Disney”. The Court considers that Spliiit has therefore substantially altered consumers’ economic behaviour with respect to said services by encouraging them to use its platform for connecting individuals for the purpose of sharing subscriptions.

ACE members have initiated this legal action as part of an approach to support the growth of the legal marketplace for creative content, reduce unauthorised access to creative works, protect the hard work and livelihoods of the millions of people who work in the creative economy, and to serve content to consumers in a safe environment without malware.