Did anybody else receive notices about Plex shutting down access to servers hosted with Hetzner?
Is anyone else pissed off about that?
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https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/16iqwf4/anyone_else_get_this_plex_notice/
yup people be pissed due to plex’s overzealous stupid attempt and blocking plex share criminals who will migrate providers in minutes…rather than maybe just doing share limits
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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.
Extremely cool behavior on their part
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Yep. Me too.
I’m looking at alternative media servers and canceling my plex pass come October.
The family will just have to deal with the change.
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This is the first time I’ve regretted getting the “lifetime” plan because I have nothing to cancel haha. This is terrible behavior on their part and I hope it financially impacts their company
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12 oktober is the last day i use plex
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What is to stop them from blocking other hosts in the future. This sets a terrible precedence. A lot of people use dedicated servers and VPS to host their plex servers and its not against the TOS. Instead of sending C&D or dealing with criminals through legal channels, they are hurting legitimate customers.
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Terrible precedence indeed. What’s next? OVH?
I’ve been a legitimate, lifetime Plex Pass user for more than ten years now, and for the past six years I’ve run my personal PMS on a dedicated server hosted by OVH on the East Coast. I’m doing this mostly for latency reasons, since I live on the West Coast, but I also have family and friends in Europe. Having the server located in between has been just about perfect for everyone.
Banning IPs used by some of the largest VPS/dedi hosts in the world will hurt a lot of innocent Plex users. I fully understand the problem you are trying to address, but this is most definitely not the solution.
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What about the people that use Hetzner for bandwidth reasons. Some use it for themselves on Hetzner all because it would be a lot faster for them to host it there, instead of clogging up their own internet.
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This is literally me. I have 10mbps upload because of my crappy cable provider and travel regularly. I want to watch my media when I’m on the road
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This is…an unfortunate heavy handed approach to screw over a lot of loyal Plex users. Plex clearly just wants to get in the pay for streaming business and is edging out all the loyal customers. I suspect this is the beginning of the end.
If I had to guess, I would say all the cloudflare errors today were caused by plex’s IP blocks blocking their own cdn partners from getting to their pages.
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This is from earlier today:
@chrisc - would you mind commenting here? Thanks!
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From that post:
Most of the action here all happens in the shadows and it isn’t very visible to regular, legitimate users. And if we’re doing things right, it shouldn’t be visible or impact regular users
welp… i dont think that will apply anymore after this hetz change takes place
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We don’t really have anything else specific to say that wasn’t covered in the email sent to affected users. If an affected user wishes to continue using their Plex Media Server without issue, they should move it to be hosted from home. (Or at least a different hosting provider. But our personal media server was always designed and intended for users to host themselves at home for personal user, not in a shared hosting environment. Doing the latter could have unexpected consequences if other people also using the same hosting provider choose to take actions that violate a Terms of Service agreement, which is one reason it’s not something we recommend.)
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It’s probably not just hetzner. Thats part of the issue with this. For home users that don’t have the bandwidth, don’t want a computer on 24/7, or simply don’t want to open ports into their home network to the world have no guidance on where they can migrate to. You could go through the pain of migrating to another hosting provider and still get blocked on the 12th. Their entire email comes across tone def and completely uncaring. The writing is on the wall.
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By this logic, if a Xfinity user violates ToS Plex will block all Xfinity users. Solid reasoning. 
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It is hetz for now but if this is their new stance on multiple plex accounts on the same server/ip then there is for sure going to be more to come.
I just didnt know that was a ToS violation and saying it is not recommended also kinda says it isnt but they are just going to do it anyways. Does not speak very well for the decision makers, that is clear.
There are programatic ways to combat this without taking out users who use it for legit reasons but i guess that approach is out of the question.
Surely does suck for lifetime pass users who get the short end of the stick but at least those who are not can hit them in the wallet as that is the only place that will matter. Ive never really had anything good to say about these forums and the support that “help” other than posts being ignored and deleted so i guess problems are just a company wide one.
Take it or leave and who cares stance…
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Come on now. You know that’s not true and I can prove it. Let me quote from the Plex Cloud (remember that) welcome email:
Your always-available Plex Media Server running in the cloud frees you from needing to run a PC or similar device in your home. Plex Cloud is always there for maximum media enjoyment on any device, anywhere—so you can organize, share, and play your media without hard drives raising your energy costs and whirring all night keeping you awake!
It was when you launched Plex Cloud that I was introduced me to the concept of hosting my Plex server somewhere other than at home, and it was when you took it away that I started looking at hosting my Plex server on Hetzner.
Only if a company, say like Plex, takes the lazy way out and blocks the entire IP range of a hosting provider. My IP address is clean, has been clean for many years, and has never violated any Terms of Service agreement with Plex or anybody else, for that matter. There is absolutely no technical, or contractual reason for you to block my access to the service I paid you for. It should be easy for you to whitelist known good IP addresses. Not doing that is a significant breach of trust with your paying and contract-abiding users.
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This shouldn’t matter either. I have my own Plex server and my wife has hers. We like different library layouts, settings and collections. I’m not going to buy a second IP address to please Plex. They simply don’t care about their users anymore. They don’t serve the users anymore. They serve a board and Hollywood. It’s over. Theyve forgotten where they came from. Time for emby/jelllyfin.
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Is this all hetzner or not? Becuase I’ve been using my server with them for around 4 years. It’s not only used for plex and i’m pretty sure i haven’t violated any TOS.
I haven’t received any email. Moving servers is out of the question, plex is secondary on it. Am i safe or am i switching software?
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