Some of the people I know ased me about plex, and I have a pretty huge library.
Would it be legal to ask them money for acces to it?
It would not, however, if they choose to donate to you, that’s sort of a grey area… I have seen intro video’s on youtube asking for patreon donations…
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Understood, too risky… Thank you for help!
If you accept money for access to copyrighted material than yes it is illegal.
Read the covers for your media. It probably says something along the lines of private in home, not for public, etc
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Indeed, didnt think of this, is not worth it anyway.
This is not entirely true… You are actually allowed to rent out your own copies of your movies. Red Box has no licensing agreements, they buy the movies at Walmart, Target, etc and then place them in their machines for rentals. You are allowed to accept money for copyrighted materials, it is however a different story when it comes to streaming content. If you accept donations from people who wish to help you add more storage space, or pay the electric bill, and not for “Access” to your digital content, it’s a grey area… But it is best to err on the side of caution. In all matters involving money and media, it’s best to consult a lawyer familiar with case law on the matter…
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Thank you so much for your amazing answear! Sadly is kinda too much trouble and risk involved… I’ll stick with family and friends I think.
While the question is already answered… I’d like to throw in one more aspect to reassure you it’s not ok to take money:
If you read the Plex Terms of Service you’ll notice it’s limited to non-commercial use cases. So if you take money from your family/friends with whom you’re sharing your media, you’re also violating those terms.
This article may convince you to not second guess the seriousness of Selling Access.
Only 750€? Lucky him.
Still, I see a difference between (publicly) offering access to your server to strangers for money and asking your friends to contribute to hardware/electricity when using your server. I doesn’t make it legal, but a) the chances of getting caught are much lower and b) the consequences would be probably less severe. If your buddy pays you a beer or whatever once in a while nobody would notice.
I mean even ripping a Blu-Ray is illegal in most country but no one cares if you keep it for yourself.
Still taking money opens doors to being accused of “commercial” piracy and therefore for many people this is probably a red line.
news flash that’ll hold up with services like hulu, netflix, cbs all access, but not something like plex. plex only has freely available content through their plex pass. what you chose to do with what’s nothing more than a portal is entirely up to you reagrdless of terms of service. that said one should be freely sharing the media they have, not charging for viewing it.
My point was about the use of Plex in general… not the ownership of your media. With the given TOS you won’t be allowed to share your private home videos and ask for money using Plex (you could of course upload/share them for money using a different platform that allows it).
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