I’ve been thinking about this more and more. According to the sidebar, this community is “A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.” Based on that I don’t think Plex qualifies.

Privacy: Plex clearly records the metadata of what you watch. When I used it, it would send me a report by email of what my “friends” were watching. Even with that turned off, their services still track telemetry.

Control: Plex has all of it. They can (and do) make unilateral changes to the service, how authentication works, where you can run it, etc.

So I ask, when you are hosting something that is entirely dependent on a commercial entity to function, is Plex really selfhosting in the spirit of this community?

  • Doomsider@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    2 hours ago

    Piracy is infringing on copyright. Ripping DVDs is most definitely consider a form of piracy. Although without sharing it, I think a jury could see it as non-infringing personally.

    I do agree there is a huge difference between ripping media and downloading/sharing it as far as civil liability goes.

    I take some umbrage with calling either ripping or downloading stealing though as it does not deprive the owner of their property. The correct term would be commercial copyright infringement.