Plex Cloud legal questions.

General Discussions
1

OK. So, I’ll say it outloud: I do not understand or get Plex Cloud. I get the core concept “see, all your media in the cloud”, this seems like the last thing imaginable I want. My Plex, and pretty much those I know, are all MKVs of BluRay I own. All files are pretty large, and I store a lot (about 34TB right now)… the idea of migrating to the web strikes me as ridiculous.

Worse, while there is some area about: I have a physical copy of my media on hand locally, and I have an MKV, I argue I paid for what I bought… but if I transmit to the web, wouldn’t I be opening myself up to claims of outright piracy, using providers who already have anti-piracy policies, especially in the cases of Google & Microsoft…

How does plex plan to get around that issue?

2

There’s nothing for Plex to get around. Who you choose, of the three providers, is up to you, and what you store there is your choice as well.

3

…And storing 34TBs of data in the cloud will run you about $10 a month if you use Google GSuites for business

4

Yeah. OK. I have every intent of storing ripped BD’s in the cloud, so I can stream them at lower quality, and risk being busted for piracy. This sounds like an awesome plan. Makes no sense at all to me… I can’t for the life of me figure out the point to this… I mean, I guess my question is: are there a lot of people just using plex for homemade videos and their own video production content?

5

I’ve got no data on usage patterns, but as to streaming at lower quality, this would only happen if you did not have the download bandwidth to support the higher bitrate. As Plex Cloud is fully able to stream BD Rips

6

@hthighway said:
…And storing 34TBs of data in the cloud will run you about $10 a month if you use Google GSuites for business

True, If you are willing to risk the possibility of loosing access should Google decide to enforce the limits they have in their agreements.

I have not looked lately but I “think” their signup states that you must have a minimum of 5 users for “unlimited” to apply.

There are many people with only one user with a ton of content and, so far, they have had no problem but Google could, at any time, decide to enforce their rules and limit access or charge the full amount.

Also be aware that using Plex Cloud for your own use with your owned content would, probably, not be a problem, sharing the files could be and the fact that the files reside on Google unencrypted means that there are risks involved. You just have to weigh your risk/reward ratio and decide if t is justified.

7

Great decision to open about this.

The concept of Plex Cloud, now available to Plex Pass members, is a great one, in theory, but not in fact. The company wants to use cloud computing as another off-shoot to create a Plex Media Server without having to spend money on a NAS device or a Desktop and have that run all the time.

The main concern here does not come from cloud providers themselves, it comes from Plex; which is acting extremely passive not addressing these concerns by having a disclaimer about what you are about to do with your data.

No one can account for what people use Plex for. What it is suppose to be used for, as I use it for is to get my legal content (all my information is legal) from one device to another. Cloud services simply do not care about being able to do this. When you are uploading data to a cloud account, even if it’s private, you are in their view uploading information that goes against their Terms of Service.

My recommendation is to e-mail your cloud provider and ask them if Plex Cloud is allowed. You must have a written e-mail response that clearly states what you can and cannot do on the cloud service. I have done this with all three providers: Dropbox, Onedrive, and Google Drive have responded to requests about using this feature. Google Drive is the only cloud provider that will allow for the content a person owns can be uploaded. However, if they receive a request from a content owner or they get a hit from the hash checks they run on all files uploaded to a cloud service to take down, they reserve the right to do this at all and they can discontinue the account.

It would be great if copyright law was changed to view content differently because your stuff is your stuff, you should be able to play across different devices without fault, but cloud services are not having any of this. It will be interesting to see how long Plex Cloud will last.

If you want to build a stable server, build a server. The simplest way is to repurpose a desktop, never use a NAS on less is over $500 to run a more stable server. You can only know based on your needs.

To build a music, tv, and movie server, desktop solely used for this would be great for building a great media server.

Let’s continue this discussion.

8

Plex cloud in theory Is a great idea, as said what you use your plex for is up to you, but in the UK as far as I know the right to make a copy of your dvds you own was revoked around june 2015 so regardless if you own the dvd its not legal, so yeh uploading it to a cloud service surly opens you up to legal hell ?