Wanted to leave my two cents here as someone who recently migrated from Plex Media Server to Jellyfin, precisely because I was not happy with the direction that Plex Inc. was going. I am a Lifetime Plex Pass holder, too.
I hope everyone is paying very close attention to the message that Plex is communicating here because it is contrary to their previous stance regarding hosting Plex Media Server in the ‘cloud’.
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
Great. Plex Inc. is now on record stating that the intended use of Plex Media Server is to be hosted at home. The writing is on the wall for anyone else hosting Plex via a hosting provider, such as OVH. Do not be surprised if they follow through with their statement to blanket-ban any ISP that harbors individuals that violate their Terms of Service. It no longer matters if your individual use case is legitimate or not – it can and will be disturbed if the company deems it necessary.
I am not a fan of the troublemakers that are causing this ban, but the method of combating these folks is egregious and not sustainable long term. Those among them who are motivated enough can easily jump to another hosting provider, causing the same problem again. The bystanders are the ones who are left actually harmed.
I understand the pressure that Plex Inc. is facing from various parties to crack down on the selling of Plex shares, but further antagonizing the user base, many of which are paying customers, is not the correct approach. Poorly thought-out decisions such as this are one of the reasons why I decided to explore other options in the first place. A lot of people are on the sidelines watching how this will play out.
I truly hope that this decision is reversed before the situation gets any worse.
