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Plex Sued for Copyright Infringement by Press Agency

Plex Sued for Copyright Infringement by Press Agency * TorrentFreak

https://torrentfreak.com/plex-sued-for-copyright-infringement-by-press-agency-231004/

Zuma Press has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Plex streaming platform at a California federal court.

Title is somewhat misleading. It's not for anything video-related. It's for using a (probably free) photo of actress Cuca Escribano without permission.

29 comments

HughJanus

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The same photo is still in use by The Movie DB, one of Plex’s data suppliers.

So someone submitted a copyrighted image to a 3rd-party user-created database and Plex ingested the image.

Seems like the claimant has a legitimate case but it's strange that they didn't sue the people actually providing the image. Not enough money in it, probably.

PM_Your_Nudes_Please

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It’s also odd that they wouldn’t start with a simple takedown notice or Cease & Desist notice. Courts don’t tend to look kindly upon frivolous lawsuits when it’s clear that the filing party didn’t try to resolve things out of court first. Because it ties up the system when courts could be focused on bigger or more complicated issues. Judges don’t appreciate feeling like their time is being wasted.

HughJanus

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Well it sounds like they took it down immediately so it was "resolved" but I guess that doesn't undo the lost revenue.

LufyCZ

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From what I know, if they complied immediately, the plaintiff doesn't really have a case

Nioxic

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Its just an api.. lol :(

pete_the_cat

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Most people use the service for perfectly legitimate purposes. On the fringes, however, some users abuse the software to share pirate libraries publicly, a considerable thorn in the side for rightsholders.

I've been using it for over a decade and I don't know single person that uses it for "perfectly legitimate purposes" (assuming they mean "not for pirated content, considering the next sentence). There's no reason to use Plex as a front end for all other streaming services.

crit

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Backing up your own physical media is a legitimate and legal privilege though

pete_the_cat

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Absolutely, it's just a huge pain in the ass, I did it when I started out back in the late 2000s and didn't have access to any good torrent sites and my college blocked torrents anyway.

Dsklnsadog

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Yeah it doesn't matter your experience. You need to accept everyone is innocent unless you can prove it. So... To bad

pete_the_cat

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You need to accept everyone is innocent unless you can prove it. So… To bad

What? I'm not a lawyer out to get people, I'm just saying that the majority of their userbase is most likely playing pirated material.

Dsklnsadog

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And I'm saying you can't prove that, so it doesn't matter. It's just a guess. A good one in my opinion, but nothing else.

scottywh

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It works great as a DVR for my OTA antenna.

DrinkMonkey

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There's no reason to use Plex as a front end for all other streaming services.

I’ll disagree here. If I don’t know where something is, I can just list all of the streaming services I subscribe to in Plex and just go there to start watching something.

Moreover the individual streaming services have designed their apps to literally hide the shows you’ve been watching whereas Plex keeps things front and centre. Much smoother.

pete_the_cat

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There's sites that provide that service as well, it's not specific to Plex, but if you're already on Plex it is a nice feature, unless you're my parents and think that it's already in the library and then get annoyed when they see you have to pay for it half the time.

DrinkMonkey

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To help them out, you could unselect those services which require payment inside Plex, and just leave the streamers to which they have access?

I’m not aware of any alternative services on Apple TV that do this. Certainly Just Watch and services that interact with it will work, but not with the same integration with my own library.

WarmApplePieShrek

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They know that. They have to pretend they don't know that.

brax

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Wow, how does any of this make sense? Plex doesn't host the image... seems like another case of corporate execs having no fucking clue about anything. 5/7 gg

crawley

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I thought the whole point of these things is to sue them so you can get it front of a judge who might say it is in fact legally Plex's responsibility, so the whole thing becomes Plex's legal responsibility, and they can either crack down massively internally or get sued into oblivion by others, and they didn't have to go through the whole big rigamarole of suing each individual person.

Darkassassin07

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Lmao, did they start with a C&D or just go straight to court?

It was ingested automatically from a public source; if you didn't even bother to inform them of the infringement, the case should be thrown out for that alone. There's no intent here, it's just incidental.

What a waste of time, energy, and money, for all involved...

brax

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They probably started with uploading the file themselves lol

pennomi

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Wasting the time, energy, and money of Plex is the goal though. Do it enough times and the business folds.

matey

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Most people use the service for perfectly legitimate purposes.

But also, the copyright infringement is for using a picture of an actress on their website; the photographer who took the photo usually licenses it for third party use, and Plex didn't have permission to use it.