I couldn’t find anything via search or in the announcement about this, so I’m asking here:
Question 1: What about the Amazon Drive media file regulations?
Amazon says this it’s TOS
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1.2 Using Your Files with the Service. You may use the Service only to store, retrieve, manage, and access Your Files for personal, non-commercial purposes using the features and functionality we make available. You may not use the Service to store, transfer or distribute content of or on behalf of third parties, to operate your own file storage application or service, to operate a photography business or other commercial service, or to resell any part of the Service. You are solely responsible for Your Files and for complying with all applicable copyright and other laws, including import and export control laws and regulations, and with the terms of any licenses or agreements to which you are bound. You must ensure that Your Files are free from any malware, viruses, Trojan horses, spyware, worms, or other malicious or harmful code.
“distribute content of third parties” would include a movie or not? Even if I bought the DVD and ripped it myself. Another question would be if Amazon actively checks for “applicable copyright” infringements or gives third parties (RIAA, MPAA) access to your data as well. Do you have any information on that? Can I store “The Avengers” on that cloud drive without getting boned by the MPAA? Can Amazon distinguish between a downloaded version and a self-ripped version (self-ripping is allowed in many countries)?
Question 2: How about sharing libraries with others?
A big plus of Plex against it’s competitors is of course library sharing. Can I still do that with the Cloud drive? If so, how many are safe? For example, I’m sharing with a dozen people (2 or 3 of which are regularly using it, the others very rarely). Will that fall under the “operate your own service” statue of that TOS point?
Question 3: Will my files be encrypted?
There are instructions on how to create an encrypted drive on Amazon Drive to mask your files against scanning and then integrate that in Plex in the forums here. Will that be the “standard” for the cloud drive? So in general: Are my files encrypted, even against access from Amazon? This also has implications towards question 1.
Reasoning:
Something like this feature has the potential to be awesome. Example: Me and 2 buddies have Plex Pass subs and own servers at home and so on… A few TB each. We share each others libraries, but of course we have double or tripple entries (Harry Potter 1-8 in 1080p and dual language * 3… thats quite the amount of wasted space). If we would throw together for an unlimited Cloud drive and consolidate our libraries… that would be all kinds of awesome. But if each of us has 10 people they share with, it may be that ~6 people at once watch something on that single server. If that kills the contract with Amazon, it’s not useable.
So if you if have any information on one of those points, please share your knowledge
I can see Amazon shutting this down before the beta has even started! Surely most people using Plex have accumulated a reasonable amount of Media to make it worthwhile. I’m not in the US, so don’t qualify for unlimited Amazon storage for $60, but I’m pretty sure if I did they’d soon object to me uploading 8TB+ of my media?
I’m starting to think Plex are loosing their way a little.
There are users on https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/ with over 100TB of data on ACD. However EVERYONE uses some kind of encrypted filesystem to do so… Several users have been shut down in the past when saving directly to amazons services.
Question 1:
Amazon say you must own a license, and have acquired media legally. This is your responsibility, but they have a privacy policy that “Amazon respects your privacy and Your Files are subject to the Amazon.co.uk Privacy Notice.” I read into that they will not share it with 3rd parties you have not authorized them to share with (within the bounds of the law).
As far as I know all uploads must be done via https, so there is no way for your ISP, or a 3rd party to know what you have uploaded. An Amazon aren’t going to go and tell them (whats the benefit to them - also as far are concerned, you have agreed to the T&Cs, therefore you are legally entitled to have a digital copy of that media).
Question 2:
Plex will try and play as many files via direct play as possible. It is possible amazon can see the ip’s in this senario, but it would be pretty hard to tell who was watching the stream… however as long as you abide by the plex terms of services than you are fine.
Question 3:
Your files will always be encrypted in transit (uploaded to Amazon, and when sent to you via plex). However at rest they are not (i.e. when stored in the amazon cloud). This does mean amazon can look at what you have should they have a desire.
This is surely going to get very interesting. Yes, I agree that you must own a legal copy of the media that you so choose to upload to AWS. However, even if everyone plays by the book, there is the P2P concept that will eventually spawn from this. Plex today allows you to share your content and most are not so willing to do so beyond their family or very close friends. However a Rogue Plex user is born. Said Rogue Plex user starts sharing their entire 100Tb library to the world. This is the part that I think AWS will have an issue with regardless if it is encrypted or not. AWS is now the largest PSP site in the world and they WILL shut that down.
On a personal note, however I do have a strong love for cloud, I would not want my personal “legally owned” content up on any cloud hosted storage, encrypted or not. Plus the bandwidth to stream all that content is not only going to be sub-par in comparison to local network bandwidth, but your ISP is going to get really pissed at your data usage and will start imposing data caps. 4K is here and 8K and 16K is just around the corner. You are going to need a lot more than 100Mb (sustained) FiOS circuit to be able to get the full quality (or N4KQ) 4K or anything 4K or greater.
I understand Plex’s reason to offer such an option, family photos and videos that have miniumal impact to starage and bandwidth but in reality most of the Plex users are using it to stream DVD/Blu-Ray videos to their TV and Home Theaters and with cheap NAS devices and the wide support by Plex for these devices I would think most user would prefer to keep their stuff in house. So I think for the short term and/or a very small community will adopt Plex Cloud.
Now lets add in “the hacker” this just took on a whole new direction and I foresee every Plex Cloud user pulling out. Sorry Plex, this is just no worth it no matter how you spin it.
It should be noted that Amazon says in their policy statement that they will only dig into your files if someone tips them off to illegal or copyrighted material, or law enforcement comes knocking.
With this I would say that as long as you do not do other things to bring attention to yourself or piss off the wrong people you should be fine using Amazon for storage.
@Elijah_Baley said:
It should be noted that Amazon says in their policy statement that they will only dig into your files if someone tips them off to illegal or copyrighted material, or law enforcement comes knocking.
I am very disturbed by this offering. I feel it paints a huge target on Plex and once the MPAA comes after them they’ll sue Plex into oblivion, a la Gawker.
@Elijah_Baley said:
It should be noted that Amazon says in their policy statement that they will only dig into your files if someone tips them off to illegal or copyrighted material, or law enforcement comes knocking.
Can you link to where it says this?
Thanks
Actually that is jus what I get from reading the convoluted mess that is Amazon’s “Terms of use” and their “Privacy statement.” These two articles that I found fro a quick Google search come to the same conclusion about Amazon drive.
Of course those articles, like almost everything else that attempts to discuss legalisms, are also a bit vague.
Remember that legal writing is a lot like the worst side of poetry: “The art of obscuring meaning with language.” And it all comes down to who has the most convincing lawyers not to what is “legal” or “right” or even “allowed.” So anything that can be “prove” with a “legal” document can also be disproved with the same.
My experiences with Amazon says to me that I can trust them not to exceed their basically stated position on this and I do not see that it would be in their best interest to actively go after users without other cause but each user needs to make up their own mind about the level of trust they are going to operate with in regard to each and every service they deal with.
BTW: I would never use Amazon or any other cloud storage as my only storage BUT, if I can actually figure a way with my limited upload speed to get my library backed up there I would be able to turn duplication off on my server’s Drivepool and thereby effectively double my storage space. In fact if this works and I can get my library up there I might even move my Drivepool to a lower power computer or even just turn it on to add files.
But, with my slow upload, it might take a year or two to get my library up there but, once that is done, my download is plenty fast to use the service. Even if the Plex cloud solution does not work out for me I think that it might ne a good idea for me to move my backups to the cloud. $60.00/year for unlimited storage is a good deal and, as I said, I pretty much trust Amazon to not become too big-brotherish.
If you trust a Cloud provider without a way to enforce your right to data integrity such as encryption, you are violating every one of the industry best practices on storage of data in the Cloud. Encryption is not recommended. It is considered mandatory for any business or personal data stored in the Cloud. Plex could be hacked leaking storage credentials. Yahoo! was hacked a couple of years ago exposing hundreds of millions of accounts. It could also happen to Plex.
There are many reasons to want encryption from privacy against snooping to security in the face of an increasingly dangerous internet. With all the good reasons for it, we should be asking: Why wasn’t it a default feature included at the top of the feature list at launch? Man in the middle attacks were a potential problem before Plex added TLS connections between clients and servers. It only took public wifi to allow for server takeover before TLS. Now, man in the middle type threats might be a problem again because the man in the middle storing your data has full control over it while you have none.
$60 for unlimited is a Bait-n-Switch tactic. I am voting that AWS starts blocking Plex users or better yet hand you over to the authorities legally obtained copies or not.
To Elijah_Baley point it is matter who has better lawyers, Amazon has very deep pockets and you as a Plex Cloud user are guanteed to lose and fast.
I sense the adoption rate falling rapidly already for Plex Cloud.
Encrypted or not Amazon has the right to those files if they feel or if some tips them that they are illegal copies. Even if you were just up loading family photos, there is most likely going to be a lot of identifiable information in those pictures that a hacker can use. AWS is already a very large target, now add in millions of Plex Cloud users personal photos and you have desert for those hackers.
This was kind of the idea behind Plex in the first place. To host your on cloud of media stuff and letting you have full control of that content. Going cloud with Plex in my mind defeats that original concept.
The likely hood of Plex being sued by Amazon is very unlikely as Plex does not have the control over the AWS Cloud Drive account nor are they providing it as part of their services, only a method (proxy) to incorporate your AWS Cloud Drive with Plex. The Plex Cloud version of the PMS is not where the content is stored. So PMSC is separate from your AWS Cloud Drive. If I am incorrect, then Plex might have a law suit brewing down the road. Again, it is about how good your layers are.
Glad someone addressed the elephant in the room. Now of course ALL my media is purchased, BUT I have a “friend” who maybe doesn’t own digital licenses for his media. I’m really curious to see how this plays out before I tell him it’s ok to put 5TB of media on the cloud.
Legal or not this is a bad idea for Plex and anyone putting their stuff out on Amazon. I will continue to host my own server for this. Thanks but no thanks Plex.
@SolidSnke said:
Legal or not this is a bad idea for Plex and anyone putting their stuff out on Amazon. I will continue to host my own server for this. Thanks but no thanks Plex.
Guys, I know this is different in many ways, but Plex has been in the business of profiting off this type of stuff for years. They know what they are doing.
