Plex announced to block instances on German hosting provider Hetzner

https://forums.plex.tv/t/not-allowed-to-use-hetzner/853570

by chrkl • 3 years ago

82 116 3 years ago

forums.plex.tv

ericls• 3 years ago

I'm not against them punishing people who violated the policies, but this doesn't look like a good solution to that problem.

wkat42424• 3 years ago

A service that exists to enable piracy is banning piracy? Good luck :P

This is like when OnlyFans tried to ban porn. Just close up shop then.

I mean let's be honest. Piracy is the raison d'etre for Plex just like porn is for OnlyFans.

dmitrygr2• 3 years ago

I mean let's be honest. Piracy is the raison d'etre for Plex just like porn is for OnlyFans.

Strange, I have been using it for years to stream my own movie collection (ripped by me from my own DVDs) to my chromecasts and phones.

Someone12343• 3 years ago

You're in the minority.

wkat42424• 3 years ago

But Plex exists to share it with your friends which makes it piracy. It's their added value over something like Kodi.

jnsie• 3 years ago

I have too and I 100% agree that there is a strong non-piracy use-case for Plex. However if you browse the reddit r/Plex sub it's shocking the percent of people not only using it for piracy but also working to build their own user bases - I can't tell if they receive payment or not. I've seen many posts with people lamenting the behaviors of their end users, numerous with people asking for recommendations on request systems (where end users can request content) and even a few - I kid you not - complaining that they invited random people to use their Plex server but did not receive a response or were treated poorly when the end user (that term again) used it. All that is to say...I think many people are mis-using Plex

cacois3• 3 years ago

Technically that's still illegal in the US. Breaking DVD encryption is not legal, so ripping them is not legal.

vorpalhex• 3 years ago

Look, I'm not sayin it stands for Pirate Netflix.. I'm just saying nobody has ever said it didn't stand for that.

throwaway8943452• 3 years ago

I'd love to have a modern interface to my collection of legally acquired DVDs and BluRays and so on. It's pretty absurd that such a thing doesn't exist already. This isn't meaningfully "piracy" despite whatever the DMCA (and other laws our masters at the MPAA may have handed down to us) may say.

cacois3• 3 years ago

Couldn't agree more, but this is why we don't have nice things. The digitizing of DVDs we lawfully own isn't legal.

dijit3• 3 years ago

eh, I am not using it for piracy; I just like the convenience of streaming services. So my plex library is all blurays, DVDs and a handful of VHS’s that have been digitally encoded.

However, availability of bluray for new titles seems to be waning. so I can imagine many who use plex like I do will turn to piracy soon.

I’m weird though and prefer to own my stuff, I hate renting and especially I hate services which rent an entire library at once and lock it out completely without me paying arbitrarily. Feels like they are landlords of media, instead of constructors.

tacticalturtle• 3 years ago

If we’re being pedantic though - in the US, streaming blu-rays and DVDs is also violating the DMCA, because presumably there was a step involved by the operator to bypass the encryption on the disk.

Other than family home videos, it’s pretty hard to find a 100% “legal” source of content for Plex.

sgt2• 3 years ago

Using Hetzner cloud for production services (Frankfurt DC), so definitely not anything to do with piracy.

Jamie9912• 3 years ago

Thats odd, I thought it would've been the other way around. More reason for people to move to Jellyfin/others

judge20202• 3 years ago

Got it. So they want to show the lawyers that they’re doing something to “combat piracy” even though they know it will do absolutely nothing and result in a bunch of pissed off legitimate customers.

What would be a better solution, legitimately? Plex is ripe for lawsuits from media giants in every corner of the world, so even if their software isn’t illegal, they’re always going to have a target on their back and enough lawsuits will bankrupt them anyways.

throwaway8943452• 3 years ago

Are there any new efforts to build an open source plex alternative? I know about Kodi, but it has its own glaring issues.

dijit3• 3 years ago

Jellyfin?

bo0tzz• 3 years ago

Jellyfin

_ea1k• 3 years ago

Seems like Emby and Jellyfin are the two most common alternatives.

hattmall2• 3 years ago

When I used to use Plex and it started getting shutdown the hosts always switched to Emby. I have had far more success with Kodi though since the last like 4 years. The real plex alternative to me would be IPTV services that all seem to use Xcodes and have huge VOD libraries. But Kodi + Debrid Services has been great.

freedomben3• 3 years ago

Perfectly set up the plug for Jellyfin!

I waited way longer than I should have to migrate. In many cases you don't even need to change anything, just mount your media into jellyfin and it will read everything. Give it time to build out a cache of course. I've been way, way happier with Jellyfin than I was with Plex.

Aeolun• 3 years ago

What would be a better solution, legitimately?

Incorporate in a country where companies/people cannot bring frivolous lawsuits? Seriously, it's pretty well established at this point that providing a video streaming service product is not illegal. Plex is not the one providing the content.

freedomben3• 3 years ago

Can you name any specific countries that meet the requirement? (honest question)

paxys3• 3 years ago

A company can be the target of lawsuits regardless of where they are incorporated. Or otherwise they can get their domains blocked or seized.

hotheadhacker• 3 years ago

It's like you're making YouTube responsible for any leaked movies? It's always the user who does it. Plex is just a platform.

judge20202• 3 years ago

Sure, but YouTube created the Content ID system in a settlement with Viacom in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y.... . Maybe the ruling would've been different if they appealed it to the supreme court, but that could've been a worse situation for everyone (e.g. because Google had to create Content ID, any sufficiently big service must also create a Content ID-esque system).

stanac• 3 years ago

And YT is actively removing pirated content. I am not saying this move by plex is the same thing, but at least it looks like they are doing something about piracy.

paxys3• 3 years ago

How many pirated movies do you see on YouTube? The platform very actively blocks such content.

hendersoon• 3 years ago

Determine the type of behavior that likely indicates a server is shared with many different people, which should be extremely easy, then send that user a series of warnings culminating in banning their Plex account if they don't comply, with a transparent easy appeals process in case they get it wrong.

TechBro86156• 3 years ago

Alternatively: don't have Plex accounts in the first place. Distribute the software in such a way that it can be deployed silently and independently of any connection to the company that creates it. (In ancient times, this was actually the normal way of distributing software - you went to the store and bought a CD with a program on it, and then you could run that program on your hardware without ever interacting with the company that made it.)

menacingly• 3 years ago

The efforts to "go legit" from Plex are entertaining. They're cutting out the piracy like they're going to find something else under there.

"these pirates, who constitute a percentage of our business that rounds to 100, are really getting in the way of our business"

wkat42424• 3 years ago

I tried one of their legit movies once. It was super blurry and interrupted every 10 minutes by ads. It was ridiculous. I got the impression it exists as a scapegoat only.

drcongo• 3 years ago

The catalog of legit movies on there is worse than the bargain bin of a long-closed, backwater Blockbuster.

TylerE2• 3 years ago

Kinda like when tumblr banned all the porn

OJFord3• 3 years ago

Tumblr definitely had (has?) cornered niche blogging too though I think? Especially photo-heavy content, as a Wordpress alternative for a personal blog not a 'website'? I think anyway, honestly didn't realise it was significantly used for porn.

OnlyFans on the other hand... didn't they recently say something (trying to appease payment provider I think) about being a general purpose fan payment/follower thing (like Patreon) not just porn? Sure.. it just so happens that the latter category 'rounds to 100' as you say, but yes, general purpose and theory and even intent perhaps!

mellosouls• 3 years ago

Already discussed:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37517216

neoromantique• 3 years ago

Oh, so that's what this email was about.

I have already moved my plex to a home server prior to this, but this anti-consumer bs is just enough of a final push to move over towards the better alternatives.

Good riddance

whalesalad• 3 years ago

https://jellyfin.org/

Rebelgecko• 3 years ago

How effective is Jellyfin as an alternative? When I tried it un the past it still had some rough edges (especially the app)

alphabettsy• 3 years ago

It’s workable, but not as nice. I switched back.

nilsb• 3 years ago

As far as UI/UX is concerned their tvOS app is in a really rough shape. The web UI has a fairly reasonable program guide (edit: for Live TV), while the app doesn't. Also navigation in the app doesn't feel polished at all unfortunately.

newsclues3• 3 years ago

I've only used Jellyfin but good enough not to consider switching to Plex.

Someone12343• 3 years ago

I've given this a legitimate shot two times, both self-hosting and via a professional host and both times on I have massive streaming problems on a 1 gig connection.

It, on paper, has competitive features to Plex but Plex streams almost as reliably as Netflix does.

tombert4• 3 years ago

I run Jellyfin on my home server, and this has been a problem for me as well. Even within my home network I'll have occasional stuttering while watching movies, despite the fact that I'm using a dedicated server with 128gb of RAM and 12 CPUs, with a 10 gigabit network card in a 10 gigabit switch, and I'll still get stuttering.

I've debated moving to Plex but I'm broadly against running proprietary software on a server (for reasons I cannot honestly articulate terribly well).

iforgotpassword• 3 years ago

Hm, I'm occasionally using a friend's instance and it works just fine. Don't know exactly what kind of connection he has but definitely not a Gbit.

prophesi• 3 years ago

I have a lifetime Plex Pass, but I switched to Jellyfin years ago and never looked back. Well, I did switch to iOS at some point and the best app for it at the time was still in Testflight, but the ecosystem is a lot better now.

For those complaining about Jellyfin's performance, which I've not encountered, you should remember that hardware transcoding in Plex is paywalled.

(Made the initial switch after they added their streaming services to the dashboard, amongst other corporate decisions I don't want in a media server I host myself)

newsclues3• 3 years ago

I self host it on a 50/10 Mbps cable line from a Ubuntu desktop connected via WiFi and it's fine.

TechBro86156• 3 years ago

I run it on my laptop, and when I want to watch a new episode of a TV show, or a movie, I search for it on 1337x.to, find the mp4 with the most seeders, copy the magnet link, paste it into Transmission and then press enter. Within half an hour, the file is in the folder where Jellyfin knows to look for it. Then I open Jellyfin on my phone and watch the content in bed.

This works for me because I've never cared about hoarding a library of TV shows and movies that I've already seen. I just download what I want when I want it.

UtopiaPunk• 3 years ago

I self-host Jellyfin on an old HP ProDesk PC that came from an office selling unneeded equipment. It's connected to my consumer wifi router/switch switch via Ethernet, and I stream videos on my TV via the Jellyfin client on a Roku Stick (which itself is connected to my network via wifi). Jellyfin streams great on my setup.

I know that's not very helpful in improving performance in your specific situation, but I just wanted to add my anecdata that Jellyfin doesn't require beefy hardware or above-average networking to run well. Sorry that I don't have much insight as to what was causing the performance issues in your setup.

beeb• 3 years ago

Same experience here. Could never get reliable playback.

Isthatablackgsd2• 3 years ago

I have Intel NUC (i7 8559U) for Jellyfin server and 1gig connection. No shuttering issue in my home network, it run flawless in HTML5 Player, Jellyfin's ExoPlayer and MX Player Pro.

Likely the issue is the transcoding process, you would need look into that. It could be the CPU is not transcoding quickly enough, I/O bandwidth issue (CPU to hard drive or vice versa), QuickSync are not enabled in Intel CPU. Newer video codecs (HEVC/AV1), audio codecs, 10-bit, higher resolutions are a big factor in transcoding.

sgt2• 3 years ago

A setup that I can now heartily recommend (after using it for 6 months) is Apple TV 4k and the Infuse media app[0]

It's able to find your movies and series on Samba shares (and probably other types of locations, too) and categorize, find subtitles, adjust audio and so on.

This assumes you've already got your media somewhere of course (like a file server on your LAN), but I bet 99% of the HN crowd has a home server anyway. And if you use torrents, you can dump the media there.

[0] https://firecore.com/infuse?utm_source=hn (you will need the Pro version which is about $15 a year, if I recall. Well worth it!)

TechBro86156• 3 years ago

If you're pirating content, you should retain complete control and security over your setup. How does Infuse enforce its yearly license cost? There must be some telemetry at the very least, which is exactly the issue that got Plex into this situation and why people would do well to avoid it (unless of course you're just watching your own legal copies of media).

hasel• 3 years ago

+1 for the Apple TV mention. I gave up and ordered one to use Infuse, might try out Swiftfin first though, for my Jellyfin setup. It’s always trade offs with the official Jellyfin clients, can’t get everything working 100% of the time with the same setup. I have an Android TV and keep having to switch between LibVLC and ExoPlayer depending on what I’m watching, not to mention the numerous bugs and clunkiness. Like for some reason I can’t wrap my head around, ExoPlayer Jellyfin can’t play ASS and has to transcode the whole file while ExoPlayer Plex can. When you seek before waiting for a previous seek to finish and start playing you end up with a broken stream where the local progress bar and time doesn’t correspond to what’s actually shown on screen. After trying Infuse on my phone, it seems exactly the kind of “just works” I’m looking for.

toastercat• 3 years ago

Used this with my Roku to stream movies locally, and it worked OK for the most part, but on more than one occasion it had a hard time with larger video files, often causing audio sync issues, weird freezing, or subtitle failures. I tried both the Jellyfin app and the Emby app on Roku with similar results; not sure if it's Jellyfin or the Roku app.

I've since switched back to Plex which streams flawlessly on my local area network.

hellisothers• 3 years ago

I tried Jellyfin vs Plex, I forget why, but it’s like how I wound up buying a Subaru because on paper it looked like it checked all the boxes. It does technically check all the boxes but it’s still unpleasant to drive in a myriad of little ways, just like Jellyfin. Checking boxes doesn’t add up to a pleasant user experience.

micromacrofoot• 3 years ago

It's unfortunate, but I imagine Plex is often on the precipice of being litigated out of existence (whether or not said litigation is actually valid).

sccxy• 3 years ago

Hosting pirate content in Germany is risky anyway.

I thought it is very common to get "warning letters" from lawyers with 500 eur "fine" for torrenting.

nerf0• 3 years ago

Who's laughing now Hetzner? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32607728

zzzeek• 3 years ago

it sucks because Jellyfin really should be replacing Plex, but they just don't have the client experience ready to go yet. The Samsung TV client has been languishing in a github repo for years, the Android client is quite crashy and difficult, and the web interface leaves much to be desired as well. But a couple of ex Plex employees fixing it up and we could be done with this silly Plex stuff.

traveler01• 3 years ago

It's always amusing watching companies committing suicide.

ChrisArchitect2• 3 years ago

[dupe]

ChrisArchitect2• 3 years ago

More discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37517216

dustedcodes• 3 years ago

What is Plex, can someone explain what it is and how it works? I tried to figure it out from their website but didn't find much information on those topics. I don't have an account there, didn't have to sign in, just clicked on free movies and was able to stream a great movie in my browser entirely for free. Like, what?

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

Plex is a self hosted media center that has trimmings to allow you to stream to mobile devices and the web.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/200288286-what-is-plex/

notesinthefield• 3 years ago

It is a personal media management application that has sprawled into offering streaming plugins. Thats it really. If you dont mind wrangling your metadata, it is a pretty fantastic way to stream your personal music or movie library.

PrimeMcFly• 3 years ago

I never understood why Plex was so popular.

Serviio[0] is much better IMO.

[0]https://serviio.org/

kyriakos4• 3 years ago

What's causing headaches are shared accounts. If plex disabled that feature they'd get rid of people who sell shares on plex instances or maybe just limit the number of shares per server. There is no legitimate use case of a plex server used by 20 accounts. Media companies go after pirates who sell pirated content before caring about users who pirate for themselves who may as well have legitimate content on their servers.

Plex announced to block instances on German hosting provider Hetzner

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