( Opinion ) Plex Slammed By Huge Copyright Coalition For Not Policing Pirates

[Matrix]

 

Plex has become the latest neutral technology to get slammed for not doing enough to prevent movie and TV show piracy. According to pro-copyright lobby group CreativeFuture, which represents more than 560 companies and organizations, Plex - like Kodi - is a "dangerous digital media player" that has joined the ranks of "internet heavyweights who refuse to take responsibility for the criminal behavior on their platforms."

 

In days gone by, living rooms around the world could be found stacked with video cassette tapes full of films and TV shows. Some bought, others recorded at home, these copies would need to be waded through, to find whatever content the owner fancied watching that day.

 

With the rise of digital technology, however, such physical collections have largely disappeared, replaced by copies that occupy virtually zero space, with thousands of movies, TV shows, music tracks, and photographs effortlessly stored on relatively cheap hard drives.

 

Paper-based indexing systems, for those who cared to maintain them in the analog age, have now been replaced by software that not only does all the hard work but also makes collections a thing of beauty. While there are alternatives, Emby for example, the clear market leader is Plex. However, the company behind the software is now facing a backlash for failing to control how people interact with its creation.

 

According to CreativeFuture, a pro-copyright coalition of more than 560 companies and organizations, Plex – which is basically a pretty media player – is helping to fan the flames of piracy. While there are some exceptions which we’ll come to shortly, people generally need to be in physical possession of movies or TV shows to watch them using Plex, with torrents providing the necessary material.

 

“[T]he problem now finds itself on a dangerous precipice where it could easily slip right back into becoming a crisis again, as it was in the mid-2000s – before streaming was all the rage,” Creative Future writes.

 

“Thanks to a rapidly growing media application called Plex, torrent-based piracy is back in vogue, and better than ever (for criminals who have no problem with profiting from content that doesn’t belong to them, that is).”

 

To set the scene, that Plex is some kind of ‘rogue’ application, CreativeFuture (CF) aligns the media player with another piece of software, one that has also suffered reputational damage as a result of its users’ activities. The choice of adjective to describe both is particularly interesting.

 

“To understand what Plex is and how it functions, it is helpful to look at Kodi – another dangerous digital media player that we have written about repeatedly here at CreativeFuture,” CF notes.

 

The claim that Plex is dangerous is supported by an article published in The Verge, which reported on so-called ‘Plex shares’. Without going into the minutiae, ‘shares’ effectively allow Plex users to access content on other users’ Plex servers which, in some cases, could have been obtained illegally.

 

That some Plex users allow others to access huge libraries of pirated content is a fact, with some being targeted by anti-piracy groups such as BREIN. But, in common with so many piracy controversies in recent years, CF feels that if Plex users are doing something illegal, then the company behind the Plex software should be held responsible for their actions.

 

In this respect, CF claims that like “most” tech platforms, Plex is doing what it can to avoid accountability.

“In turning a blind eye to its piracy problem, Plex has joined the ranks of internet heavyweights who refuse to take responsibility for the criminal behavior on their platforms,” the copyright coalition notes.

 

“With heightened scrutiny on the biggest platforms, lawmakers across the country, and abroad, have increasingly demonstrated less tolerance for tech companies that sidestep law and order in their relentless quest for user growth.”

 

Quite what CF believes Plex should do isn’t covered. If we take current industry strategies as a benchmark, we might guess that the organization would encourage the use of some kind of pro-active filtering mechanism, which would prevent Plex users from adding potentially infringing material to their own computers.

 

Of course, that would mean massive implications for end-user privacy, almost impossible calculations to determine who is allowed to add content to a library within the law in multiple jurisdictions, plus an inevitable backlash and migration to other platforms that reject such intrusions. It would also require the company behind Plex to get deeply involved and therefore acquire ‘knowledge’ of infringing user behavior, something that raises all kinds of red flags.

 

The piece, which deserves to be read in its own right, also accuses or Reddit of being a “notorious piracy-enabling outlet”. What it fails to mention, and probably should’ve done, however, is that Plex is already making progress with various entertainment industry groups to tackle piracy in the best way possible – providing users with easy access to licensed content.

 

In 2019, Plex announced it would begin streaming thousands of free movies, TV shows and music documentaries from within the app, after striking deals with relevant rightsholders. The content is ad-supported and the hope is to expand the offering in the future.

 

“Over time, we’ll be adding more stuff from different studios and creators — from Oscar-winning Hollywood movies to the latest from India, Russia, China, Japan, Africa, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe to really cool independent movies fresh off the festival circuit,” the company said.

 

That Plex now finds itself in the firing line isn’t really a surprise – if Reddit is a “notorious” enabler of piracy, then any company with end users could find itself tarred with the same brush. TorrentFreak contacted the software developer for its opinion on the latest set of claims but at the time of publication, Plex chose to remain silent.

 

Source

[bigcid10]

Their reaching on this one

I have a nas and I have plex on it and I let friends I know log on to it and watch 

all the pirated moves they want ,I just turn a blind eye

Like Shults use to say "I KNOW NOTHING" lol

[steven36]

It being  a  Freemium app there subject to be responsible  for how you use it.

 

On July 2, 2015, Plex revealed the machine hosting its blog and forums had been compromised. Personal information such as IP addresses, forum private messages, email addresses, and hashed and salted passwords had been accessed. This access was gained via a 0-day vulnerability in their forums software^] Following this intrusion, Plex migrated its forums to Vanilla Forums to reduce the burdens of sysadmin maintenance and security.

 

In 2017, Plex announced a new privacy policy by which it was no longer possible for Plex users to prevent their user data from being collected. However, in a later privacy policy update, Plex CEO Keith Valory stated the company would generalize the playback data and offer users the ability to opt out of sending more specific playback information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plex_(software)#Privacy

 

 

Security and Privacy Problems with copyright breathing down there neck  no way i would  get involved  in running in sharing all my media on a Pliex server   why should I risk my   just so Sue and  Bob can watch my movies . They can  go buy a legal service if they don't  know how to pirate , Spoon feeding pirates  there media  is never a good idea . Kodi being a  open source beast there not responsible for people making addons for it  only the person that makes the   addon is . But Ace will show up at your house for making public addons.  But Plex is responsible for there service .

 

I see no sense in it i use to use Kodi  I paid  for a  leecher  for like 3 years   but it got old  i got were i was just using my leecher  to download movies and watch latter  .well i did this for years without paying  for a service . If i want to watch a movie  I'm  just going use free ways again its  not like Im hurting . If i want keep up with what I  download and stream I dont   need Plex   or Kodi Ill just make me a TrackT  webapp  with ICE SSB. I have  some really good free streaming sites were i made my own webapps  and  i  just use a browser and go  to sites to download my stuff. In the end being a lazy pirate who use  Plex  , Kodi and  apks made by 3rd parties will just cause  problems  when they change the app Toss  , Or they break your addons or apps. Were if i make my own apps it dont matter one goes down i delete and find another site to replace it  maybe about 15 minutes  work.

 

Plex  started going to hell  when they  got  ad-supported Movies like YouTube did, but put it in the online section..  No one wants to see ads  none of the webapps  I make has ads as  each app  i make  i install ad blockers in them.

https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-injecting-web-show-ads-now/360942

 

If i cant block a sites or apps ads  i dont use it . The reason its a problem  is this ether your a open platform that carters to piracy under the  fact people can use it  for good or bad like a web browser. But once  you become a for profit app selling and making money   from ad supported streams   and selling  subscriptions to ad free ones  its just a matter of time tell you get sued.  if you dont change your software were  you can't use it for Piracy . You can't be a for profit software  and serve up piracy. Every app that did  got sued and shut down since the days of napster. You cant serve two masters . Not nothing is wrong with free YouTube movies because at lest i can  watch it  in a browser or make my own SSB webapp  for it and  use adblockers .But if they ever get ads that adblockers cant block then it is no longer a option .