Needs to happen yesterday given it’s now a criminal felony in the US to put content into Plex other than through ota tuners. (Ripping Blu-rays may still be only civilly)
If Plex doesn’t get this out the door soon I suspect as the charges start to be filed there will be a mass exodus of people using Plex.
Please expound on your statement?
Right now, there are only 2 ways to get legal 3rd party content into plex (plus ripping CDs for music I guess):
Literally every other way you can get content into Plex is illegal in the US. Ripping blu-rays is no longer covered by fair use, downloading via torrents/news/ftp (etc) has always been illegal (although previously there was a gray area if you also subscribed to 3rd party services that gave you access to that content). And that was effectively the only way to get any mainstream content in.
Now, streaming (and torrent, etc.) is now a criminal felony in the US with up to a 5 year prison sentence even for individual users. And even the act of sharing your plex with friends now makes you and your friends felons with all that entails.
Hence the party is over for what Plex offered wonderfully.
So Plex needs other means of getting content into Plex or naturally people aren’t going to be paying for plex passes for something that they can’t get any meaningful content into.
I put in a feature request that was highly detailed about how to use deep linking and integrate all of the 3rd party streaming services with base level functionality of subscribing to a show/movie, having it tell you if you have a service that will or does have it, or what service you need to subscribe and add, add new stuff to on deck, what’s new and into the guide data, and launch those items into the apps themselves right at the video. Obviously phase 1 doesn’t provide watch status nor ability to set to record with DVR but it’s a start. I then outlined phase 2 which would be to do deals like Tivo has done with their 4k streamer and SlingTV that provides a full integration with dvr recording capability and watched status.
Phase 3 would be convincing the services to allow direct viewing in plex of course and/or plex getting licenses like Google/Sling/Hulu etc. for the various channels and offering them as a service built in.
It was closed as not feasible immediately even though the CEO has talked about it coming. Hence I’m asking what the status is on this feature that the CEO mentioned and is absolutely doable right now but was closed as a feature request. Because I really really hate these services, they all suck and I really want to stay using Plex with all of it’s great stuff with a guide that has everything from all of the services I subscribe to in it, the ability to search for new stuff and have it show up in on deck/what’s new when it comes down, and track what I’ve watched and what’s news in a series etc.
PS there is a MASSIVE demand for this kind of functionality. And NO ONE has done it right yet. Plex can and it would drive a massive number of people to plex. AND, it would give plex the ability to provide an online only service that didn’t require a plex media server if the person was ONLY using streaming services which would VASTLY open up the market for Plex.
Ah understood. Notwithstanding your feature request, there have been no changes, that I’m aware of, in US copyright laws in recent years.
It has been and will forever be illegal to circumvent DRM encryption, thus rendering archival privileges moot.
False. The omnibus bill that had endless pork also had amendments to the copyright act changing copyright violation for streaming or downloading content from a simple mister-meaner if prosecuted criminally to a minimum 2 year maximum 5 year felony conviction. (Distribution is not what I’m referring to)
Thus now instead of most copyright being prosecuted in civil courts because criminal prosecution was largely pointless it now will be criminal complaints by the studios with felony charges.
If found guilty no passport, good luck getting a job etc. to say nothing of jail time.
Ie the stakes have been upped massively even for people casually using someone else’s Plex server with a friend or even using someone else’s Netflix account.
Ah interesting. Direct Reference?
Never mind
It appears, via a quick glance read, the Protecting Lawful Streaming Act (PLSA) does not focus on individuals, or end use streaming but for-profit “enterprise-scale criminal copyright infringement, by means of digital streaming, a felony rather than a misdemeanor”
It appears it’s purpose is to normalize felony penalties to for-profit enterprise-scale criminal streaming of video (closing the steaming loop holes).
Prior to the PLAS, Copyright Infringement could be either prosecuted as a misdemeanor or felony depending on the severity of the case.
As with most things, Hollywood will pay our representatives mass sums to “strengthen” the PLAS to include all manor of additional strings to widen the net. Currently however, it’s focus appears to be on the aforementioned parties.
Right. The new legislation refers specifically to for-profit activity.
@John_Galt I’ve yet to hear the case made otherwise but I’m all ears. Any information you have would be appreciated.
Sorry, discord emails were getting dumped to spam. Hopefully I see these going forward.
Apparently at the last minute it was updated to put in the limitation of for profit. I stand corrected. (of course if you’re having people pay for your plex server etc. you’re not in the cross hairs)
This is still a big deal to get done and into the app. And would open up Plex to people without servers too thus massively expanding the market so I’m still interested to know where the CEO is with this.
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