Let's say, hypothetically, you thought Plex/emby share were fantastic, and you wanted to let people know a discord link to a couple, but you were concerned about unsavory characters trying to horn in
...on the good things and ruin it for everyone. How would one go about letting people know, in a responsible manner.
I am genuinely confused and do not understand what a paid plex share is and how it ruins things for everyone. Would you be able to elaborate? I'm a jellyfin user and haven't really messed too much with Plex. I'm curious if allowing screening of your personal collection to strangers on the internet is considered piracy?
A paid plex share is a plex server that someone is running + selling access too.
This is against plex' terms, gets plex accounts banned; and in some cases, Plex (co) has taken rather drastic action by blocking entire VPS providers from reaching plex.tv; thus plex server software no longer functions on those VPS's at all.
Naturally, people selling shares want to maximize profit, so they use VPS providers on the cheaper end; resulting in cheaper VPS solutions being blocked for everyone.
Plex (co) has taken rather drastic action by blocking entire VPS providers from reaching plex.tv
Why is that the fault of those selling Plex shares? That's the fault of Plex for taking that drastic action, and even having the power to disable access to their software which is self hosted on a VPS.
They violated ToS. I get what you are saying but the scale can be massive and while i also don't agree with Plex's course of action at all, they pushed back in the face of tos breaches.
Plex shouldn't have access to your self-hosted services in the first place. My Jellyfin can't be shut off by the Jellyfin project maintainer. My LibreOffice can't be uninstalled from my computer by The Document Foundation. At least... they shouldn't ever be expected to.
Anyone (still) running Plex chose to use a service that relies on a 3rd party. They agreed to their ToS. They agreed to the service model.
I run Plex and am fully aware at anytime they could F me in the A and I'd have no one to blame but myself. I don't agree with their actions at all, in any way but it's their software and they can do what they want with it.