Unless Plex have suddenly become an ISP then I’m not sure how you think net neutrality laws would apply here.
I don’t think calling any EU authority will bring up a solution.
Even if the EU is not too busy to dictate the length of a cucumber or the radius of a banana, I don’t expect them to react at all.
But even if they write to Plex, Plex will ignore it. If they order Plex to change their policy, Plex will ignore it. If they order Plex to pay a fine, Plex will ignore it. No US court will force a US company to pay or do anything if a non-US organization demands it.
So instead of waiting endless month for nothing, we should meet at the Jellyfin forums to share hints for an easy migration.
And they are based in Switzerland. We are not part of the EU (yet have some contracts with them)
I wonder if Plex GmBH is the same thing as Plex, Inc.
Source and public knowledge
I don’t use the forums much, but I’ve been a Plex Pass user for nearly a decade. Plex was happy to take our money when they needed the early investment and our now happy to abandon us core users and advocates for the company.
Plex was happy to send me their newsletter and login emails but not an email saying I would be affected. I received no notice at all.
Much like many people here, I’ve decided to migrate to something else. Using the various work arounds I think still feeds the machine in using our data to further their business aims.
I am however going to take the opportunity to update my reviews of all Plex products across the full spectrum of devices I use.
Edit: typo
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What are you migrating to? I’ve had very few issues with Plex over the years, but moves like this certainly scare me. Jellyfin or Emby?
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OVH next almost certainly. Wait for the thread lol
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I tried Emby in the past so will have another go. At the time, the inconvenience of migration was the biggest issue. Keen to see what’s happened in the past 2-3 years in development.
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Update post-block:
So I added my voice here on receiving an email notification that my servers access to Plex would be blocked. Like others, it was quick to identify this was targeted against Hetzner. I had added here how this block would be futile and just shows a complete lack of technical understanding, or even respect for customers that they would happily inconvenience them for something that will never work.
On Friday evening I went to watch a film and my Plex server was not found, “bummer” that’s the block now taking effect. I thought to myself I should fix that this weekend.
An hour or so later on Saturday afternoon with a WireGuard tunnel configured I’m back to business as usual and no issues accessing my Plex server hosted in Hetzner from all my apps and networks.
My setup and approach may be a bit rarer but for anyone inconvenienced with this block just look at implementing a WireGuard tunnel between your Hetzner hosted Plex media server and a cheap VPS at another hosting provider.
In my circumstances I have a significantly powerful server where I use virtualisation to break off into multiple local networks, and VMs. This server is used for personal “techie things”, remote access, and a lab environment used as part of my profession. Plex was just a small addition so that I can manage media remotely (on a gigabit connection) to be accessed from anywhere in the world when I’m traveling, with the use of hardware transcoding to compress even 4K movies down to a tiny bitrate able to watch things on spotty hotspot connections in the middle of nowhere.
Now the virtualised network dedicated to the Plex VM is simply routed through a cheap VPS that I can change at will. Simple.
I am kicking myself that I purchased a lifetime pass for Plex… and just hope the alternatives out there improve so I can soon migrate and never use Plex again. Unfortunately Plex has a small monopoly in terms of accessibility from all sorts of devices so it’s easy to SHARE (trigger warning) access with friends and family.
The fact that Plex were so eager to significantly inconvenience a portion of their customer base (admittedly a small portion) to implement an entirely pointless block says a lot. Those users selling access and which were the target of this ban, they no doubt faced not a single minute of downtime serving their customers. What a waste of everyone’s time!
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My setup and approach may be a bit rarer but for anyone inconvenienced with this block just look at implementing a WireGuard tunnel between your Hetzner hosted Plex media server and a cheap VPS at another hosting provider.
sorry but can you expand on how the client connects to it? I think I can figure out how to create a tunnel between hetzner and a cheap vps, but do I need to claim my plex server again from the cheap vps ip address/port? I am currently affected by this block and have no way of watching any of my stuff.
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Here is a forked guide for tunneling a docker container through WireGuard.
The whole “big block” of plex is obsolete with a VPS for 3€ that offers 80TB of traffic. What a waste of time, energy and money.
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This is how companies die. Rip.
I don’t understand why rangeban a whole host IP’s vs simply banning Plex accounts with more than x “friends”. The latter would actually ban account sellers, the former just bans everyone from your service.
Even if I self host at home I would use a vpn for privacy, and since you can’t use Plex without account auth that wouldn’t work either!
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As has been mentioned earlier in this thread, because a reseller could just make a separate Plex server for every customer (or small group of customers, under the limit). There’s no technical reason you can’t have two, five, or twenty Plex Media Servers all using the same set of media files for their libraries.
Make it one server instance per PlexPass. Easily policed, hits the resellers where it hurts, and doesn’t piss off paying customers who have done nothing wrong.
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And if resellers aren’t using accounts with plexpass? How do you police that?
And what about legitimate users who, for whatever reason is important to them, run more than one server? Is it ok to inconvenience them?
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So you’re now concerned about legitimate users being inconvenienced?
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I’m pretty sure I said many posts back that the impact on legitimate users was not ideal and it wouldn’t been better if it hadn’t impacted.
However, I was more interested that you (as a very vocal opponent of this block and the impact it has on legitimate users) seem less bothered about inconveniencing people when it (presumably) wouldn’t impact on you. So what makes you more deserving than the people your ‘suggestion’ would impact on?
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No more than X users per instance; plex pass required to share an instance; and one instance per Plex Pass are eminently fair policies that, unlike arbitrary bans on whole unnamed providers based on notions of collective guilt: 1) don’t assume or imply that anyone is guilty of anything; 2) actually solve the problem; 3) can be written into the TOS; 4) don’t require your customers to guess or mindread about what they can and cannot do.
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How about we focus on the crap Plex is pulling and not on random people?
Where did you get that from? Sounds like you’re making stuff up.
Just stop them sharing to too many people, or running multiple servers, PlexPass or not.
End of the day, it is up to the multimillion dollar company to figure that out, not to us paying customers.
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