Plex Will Block Media Servers at Abuse Prevalent Hosting Company

Plex informed some users this week that it will no longer allow users to run servers at a hosting provider where lots of TOS violations occur. TorrentFreak: In an email to customers who run Plex servers at the large German hosting company Hetzner, Plex said that access will be blocked next month. It's not clear if Hetzner is the only hosting company this applies to, but several customers confirmed that they received the same email. Plex's notice doesn't mention Hetzner by name, nor is piracy cited as the reason. The email simply refers to violations of its Terms of Service.

"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," the Plex email reads. "Due to the large-scale violations occurring from that hosting provider, we will be taking action soon to block access and activity from Plex Media Servers hosted by that provider."

Switch to something that's free as in freedom.

[derplord]

Like https://jellyfin.org/ [jellyfin.org]

Re:

[HBI]

I'll at least be trying it. Thanks.

Plex was a nice solution for a long time, seems like something new is required.

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[e3m4n]

If you had plexpass you would probably stick with it. Its probably the best media server I have ever had in my home. The DVR aspect alone justifies its membership. The plexamp app on mobile has some of the best next-up suggestions than others I have tried. The extra content for my 480 movies is a amazing bonus as is the custom posters, tv season layout, meta data, custom extras for movies and shows, and the Direct Play/Direct Stream means the server never bogs down. I am running my plex server on a Optiplex

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[sysadminafterdark]

Jellyfin does the whole DRV thing as well: https://jellyfin.org/docs/gene... [jellyfin.org]. I cannot comment how good it is, or even if the features have a 1:1 parody, but in light of Plex seemingly phoning home, some admins may opt for a fully open source solution. It takes around 15 minutes to spin up a docker container. Might give it a try in the coming days to 1v1 it with Plex.

Re: Switch to something that's free as in freedom.

[Luke has no name]

The Plex client verifiably sucks on Nvidia shield. I know I'm not the only one who has experienced this because I've seen other comments on Reddit. And I know that it's the Plex client not the shield software or the Plex server because they were issues streaming non-transcoded 4K from my plex server to Plex client, but no problem on the same hardware playing via VLC.

I switched to jellyfin and everything worked well.

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[e3m4n]

My playback on appleTV or fireTV cube has been good. What blew my mind was encoding 1080p makemkv rips into H.265 with handbrake and playing back on fireTV cube. I encoded with just an RF of 21 yet Braveheart looked like it was 4k. The fireTV was adding its own HDR and the samsung NeoQLED was doing more enhancements. Ive heard good things about the shield. Try a lower bitrate encoding and see if the hardware gets you right back to where you wanna be. The shield is supposed to have awesome audio codec suppor

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[illaqueate]

shield 2019 pro plays everything perfectly with plex. the only issue is possibly if you have constrained bandwidth where spikes (from e.g. blu-ray remuxes) may cause an issue with frame drops etc. I've heard some other players like infuse may be slightly better (not sure if it's because they have a newer version of mpv or they just sip from buffer a bit different)

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[HBI]

The issue isn't really software quality or features, it's just the fact that Plex caved on this is indicative of a lot of caving on their part in the future. The copyright cartel has found a new scapegoat. The wise will get out posthaste.

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[karlandtanya]

I see many OSs but not freebsd.

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[karlandtanya]

Duh, nvm...
https://forums.freebsd.org/thr... [freebsd.org]

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[fabiomb]

Jellyfin is so useless i had to keep Plex, no Chromecast support (you can, but its pure pain), but i need a better version to replace it, i hate plex, but its the only giving importance to this issue

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[derplord]

https://smartdigihere.com/chro... [smartdigihere.com]

This is hard? Really? It works fine with my Sony's GoogleTV with zero issues and setup was literally as fast as my finger can swipe. https://smartdigihere.com/chro... [smartdigihere.com]

Hetzner

[Anonymous Coward]

Hetzner is known to host a lot of questionably legal content. And be extremely slow responding to takedown requests, if they even acknowledge them. Couldn't say if it's by design or not, or if they just don't care, but it's been a not-well-kept secret for a while.

Huh, what?

[kamapuaa]

The whole reason Plex exists is to support piracy, why shut down this one server and not shut down the company itself?

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[Berkyjay]

Plex exists to allow people to self-host content for personal reasons. Not to set up for profit pirate streaming services.

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[DarkRookie2]

Content that is in 99.9% of case, pirated.

Re:Huh, what?

[Shakrai]

Hosting a pirate server on your home Internet connection for the benefit of a handful of friends flies below the radar.

Hosting it in a data center and selling access to anyone who can pay is more apt to attract unwanted attention. I did not realize this was thing until TFA. The Plex people in my circle are tech hobbyists, hosting on home internet, sharing with a very small handful of people, and the First Rule of Fight Club is strictly enforced.

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[phayes]

All true, I'll just add that what El Fantasmo is certainly ignorant of is that the usage that Plex shut down wasn't people using the Free Plex distribution but Plex users that use a Plex Pass to have their Plex Server host content to others over the Internet. In this case they are explicitly using Plex's plex.tv servers to act as a go-between between the users and the server giving them connection counts and served media info. The major advantage to using plex.tv is that it just works and isolates the host

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[MikeDataLink]

Content that is in 99.9% of case, pirated.

There's a huge difference between hosting a server at your home for your family to enjoy vs hosting a server and selling access to others for a profit. Even if the content was purchased, its still far beyond the grey area when you start selling access.

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[MachineShedFred]

Saying that a streaming media server exists to support piracy is like saying that Craftsman exists to support auto theft.

Using a hammer to break a window doesn't mean that hammers should be banned. It means that people that use hammers to smash windows should be held accountable.

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[quonset]

It means that people that use hammers to smash windows should be held accountable.

So then you agree, people who "share" music, movies, and software with their 1 million "friends" should be held accountable.

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[TheReaperD]

Only if you also hold the criminal cartels called the media companies and Hollywood accountable as well. Prosecuting one and not the other is two-tiered justice.

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[Snotnose]

Isn't that like saying the only reason Ford exists is to provide getaway vehicles for bank robbers?

I use Plex to serve my music and movies. I don't allow anyone not on my local network to access it (well, not deliberately).

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[fafalone]

If I were emperor I'd slash copyright to 5 years and make non-commercial copying legal, so I'm certainly not on the media companies' side, but there's absolutely a fundamental difference between a product used 99.9% of the time for legal purses and one used 99.9% of the time for illegal purposes.

This is a good thing

[Berkyjay]

The people who abuse Plex to profit from it are ruining things for the majority of people who use it for personal reasons. People who set up paid pirate streams using Plex are scum.

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[Anonymous Coward]

People who don't pirate are fucking scum.

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[m00sh]

The people who abuse Plex to profit from it are ruining things for the majority of people who use it for personal reasons. People who set up paid pirate streams using Plex are scum.

You're saying only pirates who get paid are scum.

The pirates who don't get paid (which I assume you are one of) are OK.

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[Berkyjay]

Correct

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[Travelsonic]

The people who abuse Plex to profit from it are ruining things for the majority of people

As with a lot of "X ruins Y for Z" claims, IMO it relies on the assumption there is only one variable involved or one aim of blame, faultily.

I mean, if something happens, and a party overcorrects afecting people (when it is arguably avoidable), in general I mean, shouldn't the overcorrecting party hold part of the blame?

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[Berkyjay]

shouldn't the overcorrecting party hold part of the blame?

No

Plex Server Phone Home

[El Fantasmo]

What I get from this is a large number of users are likely illegally hosting and distributing media on a platform (Plex) that phones home and rats them out?

Or else...

Why would Plex block an entire ISP for behavior that cannot be proved comes from Plex servers using the IPS?

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[m00sh]

Don't you self host your Plex server?

I don't get it. What are they cutting off exactly?

Re: Plex Server Phone Home

[killmenow]

I run a plex media server in my house for all of my media. It works great. I have an HDHomerun tuner hooked up to it and can watch & DVR local broadcasts from anywhere even when I travel for work. As far as I know, the only thing it needs to connect to Plexâ(TM)s infrastructure for is media sharing with other users, which I donâ(TM)t do. It would appear a lot of folks have set up plex media servers in hetzner data centers and sold access to other plex users. You still have to authenticate with