this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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My good ol 2+ year Plex server host has been banned again. I have given up on this, I do not have access to an obscure server with few customers that will avoid future bans.

What's the platform of choice moving forward? Need wife-approval factor. Emby and Jellyfin? Where can I source servers? Reddit has made these hard to find and I haven't found a good community here.

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[–] [email protected] 73 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just run your own Jellyfin

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agreed, as long as you handle the HTTPS or VPN setup, and set up any automatic media downloading ( jellyseer, sonarr and radarr and jackett) the end product is certifiably wife approved and works nicely out of the box

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How do you get it on the tv? Like is there an interface she can use?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Enemy and Jellyfin both have Android TV and Roku apps. I don't have an apple TV, but I imagine apps exist there too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I have a Chromecast Ultra connected by ethernet to my network. There's an android app with a cast functionality which we both use with our respective accounts. I also hear good things about the Android TV and roku clients (but have neither myself)

[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago

Host your own. Plex wasn't designed to be a mass distribution. It is designed for home theater/personal use in or out of network.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wait, people get on to strangers plex accounts? Like for money or something?

Bro, pirate your own movies and provide your Plex access only to your friends, friends friends, friends friends friends, coworkers, and family, as god intended.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Especially if you're friends have servers then you can cross share to have more coverage and backup

[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago

lol host your own Plex. jesus

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Host the shit yourself. The monthly costs of paying a hoster will be far greater than just getting the equipment yourself. Imagine you pay for example $50 a month for a half way decent server. That's $600 a year. That alone is a decent plex server with decent storage. Times that by 5-10 years and you are paying out the ass for the same server and the same storage vs using that same money to spend on HDD space and the plus side is it's actually YOUR equipment in the end. Now i get some guys have shit internet and those people I'm not talking about. Some will try and say they don't have space. I call BS. An intel NUC is extremely tiny and power efficient and can be hooked up to an external enclosure tucked away. I myself have the space for a rack with multiple JBODs but i know not everyone has that luxury.

I tried jellyfin but for the life of me I can't figure out why my search takes 1-2 mins to load when searching something. Multiple people have this issue but none of the fixes work for me. So sadly it's still plex for me.

[–] TSUTiger 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most people aren’t paying anywhere near $50/mo, and the headache from hosting and time $avings from letting someone else do it is worth it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

x to doubt - most services I see listed here are at least a combined amount of $30+ which over a period of 5 years, it's far cheaper to buy the hardware once, set it up once, and be done with it. Bonus, in 5 years if you really did eat up 16tb of data you can just add one more 8tb hard drive for the cost of 4 months of streaming.

I personally get really frustrated with linux and self-hosting is a pain in the ass, I enjoy it, but it's a pain. Self-hosting something like plex is completely different. Set it up once right the first time and you forget about it forever.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (17 children)

Why don't you host your own server? You need as much as NUC or Raspberry Pi even combined with a couple of harddisks or SSD'S.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Plex are banning Hetzner IPs because libraries are hosted there and shared with thousands. I see people are moving to Emby/JellyFin because Plex is trying to become the next Netflix app OS trying to clean up what they see as pirated content

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thats not being banned from Plex tho. Maybe just host your server elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah just host the server elsewhere. You don't need all the media files to reside on the actual server either, you can just mount the external data using FUSE/rClone or something and cache the most requested data.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Received an email from Plex:

“We're contacting you to let you know about an upcoming action that is likely to affect your Plex Media Server setup. You're receiving this notice because the IP address associated with a Plex Media Server on your account appears to come from a service provider that hosts a significant number of Plex Media Servers that violate our Terms of Service.”

I pay a few Euro a month for access to Plex with a lot of content. That content is hosted on Hetzner

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Sorry for this maybe very naive question, but how can you possibly use Plex with only legal content? Can you actually purchase content within Plex? I always thought its just to play the content you provide, which almost always means its illegal since ripping your own discs is mostly piracy too, legally speaking.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

depending on where you live. in some places its legal to make copies of disk for personal use or as "backups". Same with music, or do you think apple would include a "cd ripping feature" in itunes if the usage would be illegal ?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, I know thats the case, but at least in the case of Germany where you are allowed a private copy, its still illegal to break DRM to do so. So most stuff you could rip for private use is made illegal, since it comes with DRM.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But you can always use the DVR, you dont violate any DRM-Laws. As its included in many settop-boxes or even TVs. Plex even has a feature to automatically record for you based on EPG data

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thanks, you are the first person to actually provide a real argument. I did not know Plex can connect to a DVR.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

plex can be a dvr. I have my cableTV directly pluged into my server and use plex for recording, as well as watching tv

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Jellyfin can work as a DVR too. You just need some extra hardware like a TVHeadend or a TV tuner card to hook it up to your cable/satellite/antenna feed

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I don't disagree with your definitions of legality, but I do disagree fundamentally that ripping a movie should be under the same umbrella of piracy if the intent is not to distribute.

Even blurays that offer a bonus "digital copy" are redeemed through a third-party that packs it with DRM so you can't use it for your own media server. How are they even supposed to enforce this absolute assanine law that I can't watch the damn movie that I bought on my own terms?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

which almost always means its illegal since ripping your own discs is mostly piracy too, legally speaking

Is this actually the case?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hasn't been tested in this context. But if you're sharing it, that puts you in another set of legal cross hairs.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Plex got in bed with the devil when they started moving to hosting content with their free stuff. Now content creators have leverage over them.

[–] scottmeme 5 points 1 year ago

I'm assuming the blanket hetzner ban

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

You can try [email protected]

Or install Jellyfin and host your own media yourself.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Found a few options here plexshares.github.io

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Get yourself an old pc and host your own Plex/jellyfin with radarr,sonarr

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Plex has been dead for years now. They have been trying to distance themselves from "piracy" for years.... throw in some telemetry behind the scenes.. and I have no clue why people still run Plex.

https://cordcuttersnews.com/plex-is-coming-under-fire-for-piracy/

https://torrentfreak.com/courts-sentence-men-for-pirating-thousands-of-movies-tv-shows-including-via-plex-210325/

"Earlier this month the conclusion of another file-sharing case was reported by SØIK. Following a process at the Copenhagen City Court, a 35-year-old man was convicted of downloading and sharing 9,440 movies.

According to SØIK, the movies were made available “to at least 21 users via a server” and for this offense, he was sentenced to 30 days probation. TorrentFreak requested additional information from anti-piracy group Rights Alliance which has now revealed a completely different type of case.

In December 2019, Rights Alliance filed a criminal complaint against a Denmark resident after discovering he was running a Plex server containing copyrighted content.

“It was a Plex server running on a NAS-server and operated from a Mac Mini. The owner and operator of the Plex server shared the content with friends and family. They were sent a password by mail,” the group explains.

While the Plex software is entirely legal, like other media software it can be put to illegal uses. Prosecutions are extremely rare, especially when people only share their libraries with close friends and family, but in this case Rights Alliance felt a criminal case was warranted.

TF asked Rights Alliance if those who accessed the server face any action but the group would only confirm that they were users of the server. Meanwhile, the convicted operator must pay for the legal proceedings and abide by a settlement agreement with rightsholders, the terms of which remain confidential."

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