They’re taking away the option to use those functions which you’ve paid for based on your location. Doesn’t matter what your stance on this is, in my country this is illegal and warrants a refund, at worst through a court decision.
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Super happy Plex is being serious with fighting plex shares. Yes some innocent people will get caught in the middle of this but this got to be done or we all lose plex
100% supporting this
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As I already said, I wouldn’t. And I’m inclined to believe myself about what my reaction would be…
Plex pass (unless I’m mistaken) isn’t, and never has been, a requirement for hosting a plex server anywhere. Nor does it include any functionality directly related to hosting a server at a provider such as Hetzner. You could host a server on Hetzner just the same without a plex pass, and equally be caught up in this IP block just the same. So if they’ve added any limitations it’d be to the license to the free version.
I’d love to see what piece of law you think makes Plex’s proposed actions illegal.
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Better yet, block all Plex users!
If a Plex user is breaking the terms, Plex should prevent further people breaking the terms by banning every single user of the platform. Foolproof solution!
It’s such a stupid line of reasoning and I can’t believe the Hetzner block passed through presumably multiple layers of approval.
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People bought the Plex Pass on the good faith they could host their server anywhere. This is now violated and nullified - the Pass is no longer fit for my purpose.
I truly think this is the beginning of Plex winding down their hosted server product. The only alternative I can think of is that Plex higher management is so monumentally stupid as to think banning one provider will stop the pirates making thousands per month from moving to a different provider and resuming operations within days.
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I heard there was a murderer in your neighborhood. Prepare to do time for his crimes.
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Again, plex pass not required for hosting the server. That you (or anyone else) chose to make a completely optional purchase on top of that doesn’t mean that Plex owes you anything now. The functionality you’ve paid for will still be functional on any server that you sign in to.
To be clear, I understand why people are upset. It’s frustrating when you can no longer use something in a way that you had previously done so. But the idea that plex should provide a refund for something that was in no way required for the usage that won’t be possible moving forward is a bit OTT.
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Oh please. If you don’t see how this is a betrayal of the expectations that were set when the license was purchased, you are kidding yourself. The understanding was clear that we could run the software where we liked, not only on the vendors favorite networks.
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Please show me anything anywhere that provided an expectation that the plex pass was somehow linked (in any way at all) to running the server software. It isn’t and never has been.
Expectations that you have in your head are not the same thing as expectations a provider has set out and is obligated to provide.
The only reason I paid for plex pass it was for the hardware transcode which some hetzner servers have, if they are blocking the hetzner severs then they need to refund, if I was aware of this ofc I would not pay for the plex pass! Jellyfin offers hardware transcode without the need too pay so yeah I expect a refund
Bro. Plex will never love you back. This is embarrassing
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https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__314.html
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__323.html
Here are some relevant laws, feel free to interpret them as you like. I haven’t contacted a lawyer yet since I haven’t lost my access yet. I’m very much open to other solutions that hopefully won’t require me to go that far, so at this point there’s no need for me to get detailed legal advice. But German consumer protection laws are very strict, so a good lawyer will surely find a way. Probably even a bad one.
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I’ll take that as you can’t show anything that demonstrates Plex have given you, or anyone else, an expectation that a plex pass was required for hosting at hetzner.
I’d really be interested to know how you can (or think you can) interpret either one of those as being relevant to the situation at hand.
i agree, plex pass is not needed for their situation. you could spin it as the HW transcode angle, but that gets really muddy. it’s not needed for anything essential if self hosting, and is completely useless for DVR and most things it’s required for.
but it’s funny that most in the thread have a plex pass. absolute waste of money.
channels dvr is better than plex/jellyfin/emby but requires an android device or appletv. best experienced on appletv. if i’m paying a sub, the service better work. plex is a mess of broken features with a shiny UI.
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On the one hand, I can understand Plex’s predicament, and I myself as a user who only hosts content which I fully own a copy of cannot sympathize with the countless pirates which based on frequency of the Radarr and Sonarr posts on r/PleX make up the vast majority of the Plex userbase. However, I in good conscience cannot accept this arbitrarily and unilaterally denying of users’ service based on solely the hosting provider of their choosing. It is the equivalent of a restaurant refusing service to someone merely because they reside in Washington state instead of California, or vice versa. Where I host should have no bearing on my service and especially when I had no reason ever to believe so especially if I were above board. As a matter of act, I actually had once contemplated moving to the cloud and Hetzner was on my shortlist–so I dodged a bullet here. Plex, this is prejudicial and damaging. I quite frankly am not thrilled with your heavy-handed, lazy behavior, and I will speak out against this nonsense until I am blue in the face until Plex gets their act together.
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I have yet to receive this email and have been hosting my Plex server on a dedicated server with hetzner for about 6 months now.
If I do lose access to my server due to it being on hetzner I will be making a claim with my CC company for my Plex lifetime pass as Plex are not allowing me to use my paid for service.
Why do they even care where I host my server? I’m the only user no one else has access to it.
@chrisc so if I am on hetzner, but have not had the email am I ‘safe’?
Go ask a lawyer or the Verbraucherschutz if you’re interested. They can answer all your questions as well as mine. Any details about any potential legal procedure do not belong in this forum and I have no obligation to discuss this with another customer of this company who has a different use case and seemingly only wants to talk down valid customer criticism. I’m not interested in a legal battle with Plex, that’s why I express my discontent with this decision in hope of another solution that won’t involve lawyers and courts.
I got it a few hours ago, really sad to see such a dumb move from Plex… people that run servers for profit purposes will simply move to other hosts or find ways to bypass this like proxies/cloudflare whatever…its really the dumb user that only use it for his personal use that will be hurt by this, so yeah Plex taking the easy route all the way or someone using Hetzner servers really messed up things and brought some kind of legal threat to Plex, other than that I cant realise the end game for this wide ban… I guess I will just have to move to Jellyfin, my Hetzner server is also the home of my website and some other customer email services from my business so yeah thinking that we are using Hetzner to Plex is outrageous as I’ve being using Hetzner servers since 2014 for my business and only began using a Plex server in 2020…so yeah shame on you Plex.
Hey guys. As I said I texted the Billing Team and requested a refund of my Lifetime subscription and just got the money back. I encourage everyone, that is unhappy about this discussion and thinks that they deserve a refund, to contact them too.
EDIT: I just got 111,62€ of the Original 119,99€ back.
I had it since 2023-07-25.
Here is there response:
“Thank you for reaching out to us. Plex Pass subscriptions are usually non-refundable, as indicated in our terms of service. However, we’ve made an exception in your case and have cancelled your Plex Pass subscription and initiated a prorated refund of €111,62 EUR for you.”
I’m thankful for the refund but I’m still quite unhappy about the decision.
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Hang about, you were the one insisting it’s illegal. It now sounds like you don’t really know one way or another, but just thought you’d throw it out there (presumably) in an attempt to make Plex reconsider their position.
Nope, valid customer criticism is fine. And Plex probably do rightly deserve some criticism for the way this has been handled. The impact it is having on legitimate users probably does warrant better comms about why the decision was made and what else was done to try and find a different solution. However, that’s a big difference to insisting they’re breaking the law or that they owe you a refund.
