Plex will be blocking access from at least one VPS provider

Briongloid@aussie.zone to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 283 points –
imgur.com

Appears to be Hetzner for now, wouldn't be surprised if all VPS get affected eventually.

163

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

Im very curious about what was the actual violation

It's about the server access sellers, but to block a whole major VPS instead of accounts that commit the violation is kinda absurd.

It looks like another step towards further restricting what users can do with their servers, local or virtual.

Yeah I got sick of feeling like it wasn't my plex server even though I have plex lifetime pass. Have stopped using it in favour of jellyfin

I tried out Plex when I was first setting up my media server and having to do a bunch of stuff through Plex servers was one of the main reasons I jumped ship immediately. The hardware is in my house, the files are in my house, I never want it to leave my house, I kept thinking why the hell do I need to mess around with Plex accounts and online connections??

HEY WANNA WATCH LIVE TV?

No thanks I have my offline files

LIVE TV LET'S GOOOOO

There's nothing good to watch these days. I'll just stick with the collection of old TV shows I've got stashed on my server.

I stopped using it for about 5 years because there was this truly cursed period where it wouldn't remember manual connections if you weren't logged in and wouldn't work without an active internet connection if you were logged in. Even after they fixed both of those there was still a 50/50 shot it would treat logged-in local devices as remote devices and stream out via your internet connection and then back in to the client device. In fact I still don't log my devices in if I don't have to.

You know it's kind of funny and damn near every piece of surprise him software is getting into controversies like this but you've never heard of a free and open source software ever having these problems

No they just have the problem of someone wanting to ad something and then forking it. And then that fork getting unmaintained. Or the main project loosing steam and dropping off also. Seems to be happing to jellyfin, they are stuck at just good enough.

So these are people that sell access to (presumably media-filled) existing Plex installations?

That does seem like a problematic thing to do and I understand why Plex wants to shut that down.

But surely their tons of online-integrations and user-account-requirements gives them other tools at their disposal than outright blocking a major VPS provider, that seems insane.

If the vast majority of people on they host were selling access it makes sense. Users don’t want to hear it but Plex has to shield themselves from lawsuits. If you willfully let people break the law with your product as a feature you have no argument in court. Same goes for why they add all these features they core users don’t want. They need a reason to argue that they don’t just make money on piracy. FOSS doesn’t usually get sued though, but nothing is preventing it. Everyone needs to be careful and if your going to illegally download movies don’t be greedy and sell access to it.

That's a big if. Hetzner isn't some tiny piracy haven. it's a well known and very popular German hosting company.

Even if it's popular with those resellers, it's certainly also popular with others.

And Plex has ways to identify the problematic hosts. why don't they just shut those down?

I’m just speculating, but maybe the vast majority of people running on VPS are doing these things. Idk if it’s even allowed in their terms of service.

So they should block only those accounts, not everyone.

Easy to see, no? A filter like "VPS+tons of users+tons of media+tons of concurrent visits from all over the world "

Sever access sellers are kinda shitty and not what Plex should be about. IMO.

I’m not saying this action is good.