Plex to Shut Down Plex Cloud Service on November 30

[Sackofnickels]

That FBI warning is such BS. While it is technically true that infringement without monetary gain could be criminally illegal, it's a crazy narrow standard. The most common criminal infringement by a huge margin is through monetary gain. I studied this while in law school for a journal article I was helping write: I could not find a single instance of a conviction based solely on 17 USC 506(a)(1)(B) or (C) - they were all based at least in part on (A) which requires financial gain. Granted I was only looking at searchable databases on LexisNexis, so it's possible there are guilty pleas or something I couldn't easily find. Nevertheless, the FBI's threat to investigate criminal infringement that doesn't involve financial gain is laughable.

Also, there are a few cases (some that post-date the MPAA) that have held it is fair use to make archival copies of CDs or DVDs for the purposes of having a backup in case the original is destroyed (e.g., making a copy of a disk and never using it until the original is destroyed). Notably, more convenient use is not fair use (e.g., using a rip on a NAS because loading disks is inconvenient).

At the end of the day, I think most people that make personal copies don't have to worry at all. The harm is so de minimis that nobody will ever care.

I hope that is the case. It sure is a lot easier to access a movie from Plex than having to pop in a disk and then go through all the menus before it starts playing.
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Another loaded term: "unauthorized". The DMCA is contested over and over again on this point and with mixed results because "fair use", yet another loaded term, is so ambiguously defined. This is a matter for the courts, and so far only on a case-by-case basis, so the FBI and the MPAA are entitled to their interpretation, and so am I. My conscience is crystal clear on this matter.

Are you buying the right to watch a movie that happens to be on a particular medium, or are you buying a piece of media that happens to have a movie on it? I personally believe it's the former, and the studios show their hand by selling DVD/BR/DC multipacks, practically admitting that the medium is irrelevant to the rights. Problem is, DRM is a funky freakin' mess.

I would prefer to buy the disk and have a copy on Plex. Not to mention many of the disks I buy these days have a Blue Ray, Digital and DVD copy all in the same box. So ripping a disk and throwing it on Plex should not be an issue.

Over the years I have purchased movies on iTunes only to have them disappear from my library. I would prefer to save my own and have a physical copy.

 

[Hoosier317]

I think they're afraid of getting in trouble for hosting pirated content. Terrarium TV is shutting down too.

Though we do frequently see that companies underestimate just how much people will store when you give them unlimited cloud storage. Crashplan just discontinued their consumer service (to focus on business services). This was because a small number of users (less than 5% from what friends who work there have said) stored numerous terabytes of backups. This made the consumer service financially unviable for them (when you factor in all the other costs like support, infrastructure, bandwidth, and more) when they were charging $99 or less per year for their service. There will always be those that push things and ruin them for the larger majority.

...you have clearly never used Plex. Plex does not host or hold the content, pirated or otherwise. Plex and whichever service you chose to store the content in the cloud has absolutely no business connection to one another. You granted a Plex server access in the same way you connect Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. to anything else.

This has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with the price of cloud storage, the amount of cloud storage available or any perceived abuse of it. None. Zero.

From the very beginning, Plex Cloud was limited when compared to a traditional Plex server. It was missing a large amount of features and was very buggy from the first day until today even. Instead of running a Plex server on your own computer, Plex had installed one for each interested user on a data center VPS they had partnered with. Plex Cloud users were limited by the throttling put in place by both the VPS and Plex as a way of ensuring that every user would have some form of balanced experience. This...as opposed to users with high bitrate, 4K content starving power and bandwidth from those with more basic content.

Plex nor Kodi/XBMC have dealt with legal threats due to their absolutely of legitimate server features, but instead with extensions/add-ons that allow access to pirated content. Both services have limited their availability and disavowed those types of things. Additionally, Kodi has had the additional issue of streaming services being sold on Craigslist and such with the sole purpose of selling someone a device loaded with the software and the very extensions/add-ons that provide access to pirated content. Again...not a user's own content they store for themselves.

Additionally, Crashplan never tied the discontinuation of their consumer plans to a minority of users using excess amounts of storage space. An article proposed that theory...with no quotes or input from the company itself. Regardless of whether or not it seems likely or logical, Crashplan never made that claim.

 

[seinman]

Filename and content obfuscation sounds like an obvious solution.

Plex relies on file names being exactly to their standard to properly match the file with the associated metadata (movie title, description, genre, poster, etc.). So that would ruin the whole point of Plex.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

...you have clearly never used Plex. Plex does not host or hold the content, pirated or otherwise. Plex and whichever service you chose to store the content in the cloud has absolutely no business connection to one another. You granted a Plex server access in the same way you connect Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. to anything else.

This has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with the price of cloud storage, the amount of cloud storage available or any perceived abuse of it. None. Zero.

From the very beginning, Plex Cloud was limited when compared to a traditional Plex server. It was missing a large amount of features and was very buggy from the first day until today even. Instead of running a Plex server on your own computer, Plex had installed one for each interested user on a data center VPS they had partnered with. Plex Cloud users were limited by the throttling put in place by both the VPS and Plex as a way of ensuring that every user would have some form of balanced experience. This...as opposed to users with high bitrate, 4K content starving power and bandwidth from those with more basic content.

Plex nor Kodi/XBMC have dealt with legal threats due to their absolutely of legitimate server features, but instead with extensions/add-ons that allow access to pirated content. Both services have limited their availability and disavowed those types of things. Additionally, Kodi has had the additional issue of streaming services being sold on Craigslist and such with the sole purpose of selling someone a device loaded with the software and the very extensions/add-ons that provide access to pirated content. Again...not a user's own content they store for themselves.

Additionally, Crashplan never tied the discontinuation of their consumer plans to a minority of users using excess amounts of storage space. An article proposed that theory...with no quotes or input from the company itself. Regardless of whether or not it seems likely or logical, Crashplan never made that claim.

I'm a contributor to Plex's open source project dude. Think I might know how it works.

As I stated previously, my comment on Crashplan and a major part of the reason they discontinued the consumer product was due to the cost of some users massive backups. I don't care what you read in the news and what story they told through the PR announcement of the change, the story I've heard directly from employees within engineering, marketing, and finance is a bit different.

 

[spyguy10709]

At the risk of getting flamed, I had several terabytes of data backed up with Crashplan, but I didn't consider that as "pushing things"; they offered unlimited storage so I paid for the service and used it. I didn't exploit any loopholes or anything like that, it was all above board. It seems like if they couldn't maintain profitability with that policy then they should have charged more for additional storage, you know?

But Crashplan had other issues, too. They had that sluggish Java UI, and for years they kept promising a native Mac client without delivering. I've since moved to Backblaze and don't miss Crashplan at all.

The best part about backblaze? They EMBRACE people with large amounts of data to store. Chances are, if you're backing up multiple TB of important data, you're a person who is in the position of recommending tech services to people. That's what apple always used to get about their pro customers, but I can say without any sort relationship with them other than as a customer, backblaze WANTS your business, and wants you to love their service. Even if that means leveraging their scale to provide services to you that are unfeasible from a cash perspective on the individual level. They don't cap uploads like Google, and genuinely give you as much bandwidth as they can at all times. I can tell with my Gig connection, they're solid.

 

[now i see it]

This is the cloud version of a bricked hard drive (or one that's about to brick). How many cloud users back up their cloud data? Probably none. Welcome to the cloud.

 

[seinman]

This is the cloud version of a bricked hard drive (or one that's about to brick). How many cloud users back up their cloud data? Probably none. Welcome to the cloud.

This is not that at all, actually. The stored files are separate from the Plex Cloud server. You store your files on a third party cloud storage system (dropbox, amazon, google drive, etc) and link that account to Plex Cloud. So when the Plex server shuts down, your files are still in tact. If we are doing analogies, this is like your motherboard failing. You can plug a USB hard drive into a different computer and the data is still on it.

You're right about the backup thing, though. Look up the "3-2-1 backup rule" and follow it religiously with any data you can't afford to lose.

 

[shareef777]

I think they're afraid of getting in trouble for hosting pirated content. Terrarium TV is shutting down too.

Though we do frequently see that companies underestimate just how much people will store when you give them unlimited cloud storage. Crashplan just discontinued their consumer service (to focus on business services). This was because a small number of users (less than 5% from what friends who work there have said) stored numerous terabytes of backups. This made the consumer service financially unviable for them (when you factor in all the other costs like support, infrastructure, bandwidth, and more) when they were charging $99 or less per year for their service. There will always be those that push things and ruin them for the larger majority.

Or, hear me out now, a business be more financially responsible and calculate how much it costs them per TB (factoring in all costs like "support, infrastructure, bandwidth, etc") and they charge users the price per TB with whatever profit margin they want.

If a business offers "unlimited data" then it's not a users fault or problem to determine if it's financially viable for said business. Companies get away with so much crap already with all the false claims they spout.

 

[Hoosier317]

I'm a contributor to Plex's open source project dude. Think I might know how it works.

Based on your initial post, clearly that isn't true.

I don't care what you read in the news and what story they told through the PR announcement of the change, the story I've heard directly from employees within engineering, marketing, and finance is a bit different.

...and now we are supposed to believe you have high level contacts within three different Crashplan corporate departments?

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

...and now we are supposed to believe you have high level contacts within three different Crashplan corporate departments?

Their headquarters is right here in NE Minneapolis. I see them at the bar all the time and have worked with a couple of them in the past. But whatever. Believe that they write in the media if you like. Doesn't bother me one way or the other.
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Or, hear me out now, a business be more financially responsible and calculate how much it costs them per TB (factoring in all costs like "support, infrastructure, bandwidth, etc") and they charge users the price per TB with whatever profit margin they want.

If a business offers "unlimited data" then it's not a users fault or problem to determine if it's financially viable for said business. Companies get away with so much crap already with all the false claims they spout.

Businesses very frequently do these types of unlimited deals to get the initial customer growth they need to be successful. Their projects are also often off or they don't have a way of knowing what type of growth they'll see in the future in terms of use or customers.

For instance, cellular providers use to all do unlimited data and mean it. The problem was, user growth and consumption far outpaced the rate at which they could keep up with it. They simply couldn't keep pace. Once people started consuming tons of data on their iPhones, that pace only quickened. And with the success of the iPhone, growth of smartphones exploded. This put a huge toll on the provider networks. We saw all of the major networks struggle with outages and slow network issues because of that demand. So they had to go to these more limited "unlimited" plans in order to keep the data usage in check.

CrashPlan for their part didn't make false claims. They just realized that it wasn't profitable to allow consumers to use their service for $99 or less a month. So they got rid of the consumer plan and went to $10/month per computer on the business plan. They pivoted to a market and rate they're hoping to make work more profitably and sustainably for them. Most business users are likely to have smaller backups and likely less of the hoarders that want to backup every movie and other torrent they've downloaded in the past 10 years.

 

[shpankey]

I'm a contributor to Plex's open source project dude. Think I might know how it works.

What open source project?

 

[Uncle P]

Their headquarters is right here in NE Minneapolis. I see them at the bar all the time and have worked with a couple of them in the past. But whatever. Believe that they write in the media if you like. Doesn't bother me one way or the other.
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I'll back you up on what you said about CrashPlan, except that Code42 moved across the river so they're not actually in NE Minneapolis any more. The people I know who work there have told me the same reasoning...

 

[beanbaguk]

I use Plex in my home theatre set-up and have been a longtime faithful user. I took out the lifetime subscription before the rates went up (I still think it's very reasonable), however lately, I've had a lot of problems with their transcoding server service.

I've ended up using Infuse which as a client is far more reliable, but their indexing engine is clunky and slow to say the least.

Short of long; They really must work on their hardware transcoding engine.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

I'll back you up on what you said about CrashPlan, except that Code42 moved across the river so they're not actually in NE Minneapolis any more. The people I know who work there have told me the same reasoning...

That move took forever. I'd looked at a position with them some years back and the advisor they worked with (another Minneapolis company) was honest and told me things didn't seem right there. They were seeing buyout in the future. The Code42 pulled out of their plans to go into that huge building in the middle of Uptown and the buyout aspect seemed even more likely. Since they've made the change to drop the consumer product and moved into a much less expensive building on the edge of downtown. Seems they're trying to re-balance things and find their bearings. Their forensic market play is an interesting one too.

 

[seinman]

Short of long; They really must work on their hardware transcoding engine.

The problem is that there aren't really any good consumer-level hardware encoders that are good. Sure you've got quicksync and the like, and graphics cards that support hardware encoding... but they use low-quality encoders to keep costs down. Software transcoding is still the way to go until the quality hardware encoders come down in price. To put the pricing into perspective... a hardware encoder that's considered the gold standard in this space, the Black Magic Pro Recorder, costs $495. When something like that can be had for $50, then go for it. Until then, you'll get a fast processor for cheaper that can do better software encoding and a much lower price.

 

[beanbaguk]

The problem is that there aren't really any good consumer-level hardware encoders that are good. Sure you've got quicksync and the like, and graphics cards that support hardware encoding... but they use low-quality encoders to keep costs down. Software transcoding is still the way to go until the quality hardware encoders come down in price. To put the pricing into perspective... a hardware encoder that's considered the gold standard in this space, the Black Magic Pro Recorder, costs $495. When something like that can be had for $50, then go for it. Until then, you'll get a fast processor for cheaper that can do better software encoding and a much lower price.

Fair point. I've not been able to have much 4K content as my KabyLake i5-7400 really struggles. It's absolutely fine for 1080p content mind, and I can easily run four streams at once without any system impact.

The only option I see is a i7-7700K, but that ups the wattage from 65w to 91w which is quite a difference. Especially with regards to cooling. (And cost - the CPU has sky-rocketed in price in the past few months).

 

[seinman]

Fair point. I've not been able to have much 4K content as my KabyLake i5-7400 really struggles. It's absolutely fine for 1080p content mind, and I can easily run four streams at once without any system impact.

The only option I see is a i7-7700K, but that ups the wattage from 65w to 91w which is quite a difference. Especially with regards to cooling. (And cost - the CPU has sky-rocketed in price in the past few months).

The key to 4K with Plex right now is to make sure you don't need to transcode it. That means, unfortunately, having separate 1080p and 4K libraries with identical content; people with 4K devices that can direct play need to use the 4K version, and people who can't will use the 1080p version. Unfortunately Plex doesn't make this easy to manage. At all. Not sure which will happen first: Plex making this scenario manageable, or processors getting fast enough to handle 4K transcodes.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Problem is, there's almost no way to distinguish between the two,

FTFY

 

[alexgowers]

I think it comes down to this. Plex relied on third parties for this service. Illegal or not, fair use or piracy, these private companies don't have to take the risk and would just close or make Plex impossible on their platform.

The only reliable way I've found to share my massive collection of family video was to use Resilio Sync and Synology Nas devices to mirror and update content in multiple folders and then stream to phones, Apple TVs and computers at each site. It also creates redundancy on multiple drives in multiple locations with unlimited storage and no 3rd party entities snooping.