Huh, and where did that come from?
A lawyer for the RIAA would easily argue that because Plex, for many years before DVR functionality was added, had agents that allowed obtaining commercial movie metadata and therefore encouraged piracy in some countries. The riaa has won court cases over less (search engines).
There are or were recently even KB articles that suggested ways to convert video from disc.
You do realize that Plex has contracts with metadata providers such as IMDB and TheTVDB, right? How would they be liable for signing agreements to use an API that rights holders donât seem to be suing directly over?
You donât have a real argument here. Youâre just kinda throwing nonsense at the wall in the hopes that people donât notice how stupid it comes off as.
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That is meaningless. I ran my own DVR for recording 10+ years before Plex had this functionality.
The content is legit but I still needed Plex to give me meta-data for my legit content.
Plex was not the conduit for using videos improperly. When you stream from a site you donât have a contract with and the siteâs TOS state this canât be done itâs a different story.
When Plex first introduced Plug-ins with the ability to playback from other sites it was a much different world. Many of these sites would take âviewsâ anyway they could get them. They didnât care as âstreamingâ was new. Things are different now. Sites now monetize their streaming or charge access and donât want access done this way. They change their TOS to state this. They put filters and blocks in place to try to stop this. They consider it âabuseâ and âtheftâ of their service.
What is Plex to do? Do you want them to knowingly violate the law? Do you want them to be in a position that could get them shut down or sued out of existence?
This really isnât a hard decision to make financial or business wise. It affects 3% of paying users. These paying users can for the most part still get this content through the sites own apps (ABC, FOX, NBC, etc) and many of the shows are on other legal services that many people have access to.
Letâs let Plex get back to working with Legal content that WE source (DVR or rip where legal) and sources they legally provide (podcasts, news) so everyone is safe without jeopardizing the software existence over a feature set that isnât used that much as a whole.
BTW, out of that 3% of paying users. Not all of these plugins are video related. I for example use many plugins that arenât 3rd party video related. Trakt, agents, utils, etc. So the true number is less than 3% who will be affected by the video streaming plug-ins.
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This actually seems to make no difference. More than a few cases revolve around companies or programs that provided a mechanism by which folks could make, share or view DRM broken content. There doesnât seem to be a requirement of any kind for direct or indirect involvement. Simply being a tool that is used seems to be enough to prosecute under the DMCA.
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Yea, I donât think so.
Got any case law to back that up?
Iâm sure what you think was only a contributing factor to the case and wasnât the basis for any ruling in itself.
I tend to imagine that Iâm the âtypicalâ user. I guess not.
Oh well.
Any word on the android fixes? Iâm almost completely moved to Emby because of a select few VERY annoying android bugs that are 8+ months old.
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Come on man. This is general knowledge.
http://www.dmca-info.com/notable-court-cases.html
Thatâs just a tiny slice. You do NOT have to be directly providing the mechanism for DRM circumvention in order to be sanctioned under the DMCA. Now it can just be enough to provide a mechanism of some sort to view the products, share the products (or portions of that product) even if the company is not involved in anything more than simply providing space to host or a program to view.
Simply put any program, site or company that will allow a DRM circumvented product to load, play or be stored can be subject to a DMCA sanction, EVEN IF THAT PRODUCT IS NOT SHARED.
Note that in some cases Judges HAVE granted exemptions under the âsafe harborâ clauseâŠand in others they have not. It all depends on the judge.
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Well that is something completely different than what you originally said about agents.
Providing a means for Meta-Data is completely different then providing a mechanism to break DRM (in the US). Meta-data has always been needed for legally acquired content such as DVR/PVR recordings done outside of Plex.
Plex has never provided any methods to break or circumvent DRM. Plex has always assumed you had legal content and didnât provide any methods to work around this. The closest thing to giving you video you didnât have a legal right to is the plug-ins that stream from public sites.
Did you mean only 3% of Plex Pass users were not smart enough to block the analytics ?
OR
Youâre saying you are gathering 100% data of 100% Plex Pass users to make such drastic decisions ?
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Thatâs not very constructive, so Iâll refrain from commenting 
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Sorry if you felt like that but all my friends (we are around a hundred or so Plex Pass users in numbers) including me donât subscribe to providing analytics either via Plexâs own options or by other means. When the Plex Privacy things happened even those who didnât bother about this stuff took notice and measures. Based on that do you still feel you have enough data to support these decisions. Wouldnât it actually make sense to do a poll for the paid users ?
EDIT: That 0.06% is still around 15,000 Plex Pass Users and roughly $1.125 million (15,000 x $75) they put in Plex [Ref:Plugins removal?]
do you still feel you have enough data to support these decisions
yes.
Elan said it was 3% not 0.06%. Also a lot of Plex Pass users would have paid twice that. But it doesnât matter if it was 50% of all users. Sometimes decisions have to be made on things like this.
As previously said, just a few years ago content websites didnât care much how users were viewing the material they posted on their sites. In todayâs world they care very much and restrict what can and canât be done and who can distribute this content without a license. Times change and Plex needs to as well. Video plug-ins were always a âgrey areaâ from the beginning but itâs not so much a âgrey areaâ anymore and is seen âdarkerâ now.
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@cayars
Thats just a conservative estimate. Bottom line is its not a small number of users being affected.
Ripping Blurays & DVD is illegal (has always been) thats why its not allowed to be discussed in forums. Plexâs core feature is to play those DRM stripped content. Hows this white, grey and black decided there.
Doesnât matter the number is my point. If itâs something the industry doesnât want you to do then as a software vendor you donât do it.
Youâre making the same point about breaking DRM. BTW, itâs legal in some countries to break DRM for your own personal use.
The difference of white, black, grey is in who is providing the tools. If Plex is doing it then itâs a black or grey area (at best). If the user is breaking DRM or getting content from a non-legal manner, Plex doesnât know about it nor do they need to care.
If Plex sees a file on my system named âTop Gun (1986).mp4â what does that tell them or you? Nothing. It could be a rip, or it could be my DVR recording. Itâs meaningless to Plex. Plex is not providing any method for me to get content illegally. They do provide a way for me to get content legally via DVR functionality. Iâve got 10 tuners, so Iâm constantly adding new content to my system every day (nearly every hour).
RIght now I am going to stay with the latest version which includes plugins (on both of the servers I own) until thereâs a sanity check at Plex headquartersâŠ
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Go back and read the announcement. All plugins in current form at some pointâŠ
Plugins will not be supported in further releases as far as I understand. You can still use Plex as it is right now.
To be honest I am a bit sad they didnât scratch more. I used plugins, but for the love of god there are more important things. We finally get subtitles? Sub Zero already redundant which was my most important plugin.
We got problems with sync on many devices. There is a ton of feature requests which are still pending, some features that should have been implemented years ago. Yes the music player needs some love.
If it was me. VR, Alexa etc and what not could also been scratched. It s not like I don t like those features, but first and foremost Plex should be able to:
- organize all the content right
- play
- Sync
While usually standing for the minorities, don t screw all the people for a few, while it helps nobody.
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