Post #38901

2025-12-07 17:22 UTC

Playing devil’s advocate, I understand one point of pressure: Plex doesn’t want to be perceived as a “piracy app.” See: Kodi. kodi.expert/…/mpaa-warns-increasing-kodi-abuse-po… To be blunt, that’s a huge chunk of their userbase. And they run the risk of being legally pounded to dust once that image takes hold. So how do they avoid that? Add a bunch of other stuff, for plausible deniability. And it seems to have worked, as the anti-piracy gods haven’t singled them out like they have past software projects. To be clear, I’m not excusing Plex. But I can understand such an unspoken motivation.

Replies (5)

@almost1337@lemmy.zip 2025-12-07 18:31

I wish more people understood this perspective

Open ##39122
@explodicle@sh.itjust.works 2025-12-07 19:09

It’s really nice of them to fight the good fight while I use Jellyfin instead.

Open ##39234
@KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2025-12-07 20:55

Sure, apart from charging for remote access.

Open ##39569
@kieron115@startrek.website 2025-12-08 04:43

They’ve taken other measures as well. Nobody knows the details besides them, but they blocked an entire cloud provider called Hetzner because too many people were using it for pirate Plex servers. They absolutely have to maintain the image of being legitimate.

Open ##40697
@ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2025-12-08 05:50

There is that but it’s primarily that they’ve taken over 40 million dollars of venture capital. They are almost certainly under immense pressure to turn profitable asap and converting lifetime pass users into revenue streams somehow, converting new users into SaaS, etc are going to be things they pursue more aggressively. Don’t take the devils money if you don’t want the devils stipulations

Open ##40809