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Plex Responds, Will Allow Users To Opt Out Of Data Collection (www.plex.tv)
stikves writes:
This weekend Plex had announced they were implementing a new privacy policy, including removing the ability for opting out of data collection and sharing. Fortunately the backlash here, on their forums, Reddit, and other placed allowed them to offer a more sensible state, including bringing back opt-out, and anonymity of some of the data.
Plex CEO Keith Valory wrote Saturday that some information must be transferred just to provide the service -- for example, servers still check for updates, they have to determine whether a user has a premium Plex Pass, and "we have to provide accurate reporting to licensors for things like trailers and extras, photo tagging, lyrics, licensed codecs and so on... [W]e came to the conclusion that providing an 'opt out' in the set-up gives a false sense of privacy and feels disingenuous on our part. That is, even if you opted out, there is still a bunch of data we are collecting that we tried to call out as exceptions." But to address concerns about data collection, Plex will make new changes to their privacy policy: [I]n addition to providing the ability to opt out of crash reporting and marketing communications, we will provide you the ability to opt out of playback statistics for personal content on your Plex Media Server, like duration, bit rate, and resolution in a new privacy setting... we are going to "generalize" playback stats in order to make it impossible to create any sort of "fingerprint" that would allow anyone to identify a file in a library... Finally, in the new privacy tab in the server settings we will provide a full list of all product events data that we collect... Our intention here is to provide full transparency. Users will have one place where they can see what data is being collected and where they can opt out of playback data that they are not comfortable with."
And he emphasized that "we will never sell or share data related to YOUR content libraries."
Plex CEO Keith Valory wrote Saturday that some information must be transferred just to provide the service -- for example, servers still check for updates, they have to determine whether a user has a premium Plex Pass, and "we have to provide accurate reporting to licensors for things like trailers and extras, photo tagging, lyrics, licensed codecs and so on... [W]e came to the conclusion that providing an 'opt out' in the set-up gives a false sense of privacy and feels disingenuous on our part. That is, even if you opted out, there is still a bunch of data we are collecting that we tried to call out as exceptions." But to address concerns about data collection, Plex will make new changes to their privacy policy: [I]n addition to providing the ability to opt out of crash reporting and marketing communications, we will provide you the ability to opt out of playback statistics for personal content on your Plex Media Server, like duration, bit rate, and resolution in a new privacy setting... we are going to "generalize" playback stats in order to make it impossible to create any sort of "fingerprint" that would allow anyone to identify a file in a library... Finally, in the new privacy tab in the server settings we will provide a full list of all product events data that we collect... Our intention here is to provide full transparency. Users will have one place where they can see what data is being collected and where they can opt out of playback data that they are not comfortable with."
And he emphasized that "we will never sell or share data related to YOUR content libraries."
Is sucking my DAMN balls, or else its swirly time, nerds!
I bought it!
"we will never sell or share data related to YOUR content libraries."
First law suit by MPAA and others looking for pirates and WHAM all your data is now with a bunch of lawyers and their clients.
There is only ONE way for a company to never hand over data, that is to never collect it in the first place.
Plex has now just become untrusted
But hey, the truth hurts. Act like one, get linked to them.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
We all know everytime a company says they will allow opt out they know that ignorance will have a lot of people opted in by default. It'll never happen while steaming cunts like Ajit Pai installed into power - drain the swamp my ass - but Congress should make opt out the default by law.
"Plex"... What? Oh, I can hear it now, "Google is your friend!" Fuck off, Slashdot has something called "editors". They do something. Maybe. Sometimes. Or not...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
But of course they know that.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
only one step back. that's how the bigger companies do it. fuck you raw.. and then promise to be more gentile next time.
eliminate ALL data collection by default, period (i.e. opt-in not opt-out). freemium subscribers? nobody needs to know who those are only that 'a paid user' used whatever feature or content is paid for on a per-piece basis.
And how do you know they will not collect your data?
I'm 24. Maybe I'm just old??
after they confirmed they sold information to Donald J Trump. They hate us and want us to die, as is the way of their CONservative kind.
Plex is a company, and while they may never sell your day, they are willing to share they data, sell themselves, or change their mind, in pursuit for a good return for their investors.
>> "we will never sell or share data related to YOUR content libraries"
1) until MPAA sues them for it
2) Until someone/some company offers them a boat load of money for it.
3) They decide to offer it to the highest bidder to help their bottom line for the 'investors'
Every Company always says they will NEVER sell your data.... until they do.
I think you'll find that DMCA is civil not criminal and it is only illegal to distribute content for x amount of dollars that I can't be bothered to look up
so let there be more upityness from you my sexy wench. how much?
And as bankruptcy have shown in the past, such data is considered an asset and can be sold to highest bidder and/or anybody interested in.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Yes, Plex built concentration camps and put their users in them and then proceeded to gas 6 million of their least favorite ones while waging violent war on Europe and the US, oppressing and killing thousands of civilians and servicemen. Those god damned nazi bastards!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh wait, all they did was collect my usage data without letting me opt-out? THOSE GOD DAMN NAZI BASTARDS!!!!!!
Can we please agree to define opt-out as automatically meaning assholes?
Things are either opt-in or a necessity. Even things we can't live without, like food, are opt-in. Not once have I gone into a store to buy e.g. a network cable, and had to opt out of buying food at the same time.
Opt-out is used by spammers and people who want to spy on you. Never by trustworthy people.
If that's your yardstick for Nazis, you might want to have a word with the group that descended upon Charlottesville, who haven't done any of those things yet frequently refer to themselves as Nazis.
F/LOSS removes this BS. If they do something you don't like, fork it, change the code, be happy.
PMS is NOT even OSS, much less F/LOSS.
I've been running an old version for a long time. The server doesn't connect to Plex servers - ever.
I don't have a Plex account.
Remotely streaming is pretty easy - use a VPN or SOCKS proxy (ssh does this easily). Used it yesterday from a coffee shop to listen to music via a Plex Server web interface.
I guess you could say that I've opted out.
As for media, you do realize that almost every DVD I've bought includes the movie trailer on it. No need to ask some foreign server for the trailer.
And has Plex done any of the things the Charlottesville group did? Did they do anything any other nazi groups did? No. Not even a tiny subset of it, so shut up.
People need to stop constantly, frivolously misusing words like nazi to describe things they don't like. It doesn't do anybody any good and only diminishes its meaning. Plex changed their privacy policy. Don't like it? Then stop using it and find an alternative. There, you just opted out. Congratulations.
The only thing you need to pay to use is the phone app, were you can only browser and cast to other devices (like chromecast) for free, to watch on the phone/tablet you need to buy (one license per user, not per device), other clients are free.
It's sad to hear that one of the last trusted systems is now being lost to evil. No one seems to get the point that any forced data collection, anonymized or not is evil. It opens the door for small increases and more anti-consumer changes later.
Plex, it doesn't matter what you say about anonymizing data, any collection that's forced puts you at the same scumbag level as Roomba, Google (Along with the Location must now be turned on for Bluetooth to work and no Google response) and Microsoft. If the capability is there, the data will be collected and abused.
Goodbye Plex, you've been a trusted go to for a long time but no more.
People need to stop constantly, frivolously misusing words like nazi to describe things they don't like. It doesn't do anybody any good and only diminishes its meaning.
Amen. In fact, it dilutes the value of the word, and makes it harder to fight the real Nazis (in this case).
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It was not a white supremacist rally. The news is lying. A few white supremacists choosing to attend doesn't make it a KKK rally. Also there was an actual KKK rally a month before that no one cared about but photos of the KKK rally were posted to Twitter and being used to show that there were Nazis at the UniteTheRight rally. There is zero proof that there was a white supremacist bent to the rally; news outlets and SJWs just made that shit up and rolled with it. If you disagree, provide proof. No, a photo from Twitter does not count.
I chose a different path and opted out of Plex. Removed from my hard drive. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, fuckers.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I should hope they are making the same commitment to content from shared libraries. Also, it should be opt-in not opt-out, shame on you Plex.
As the developer on a huge-scale application (and a fan of privacy), I really hope that people don't opt out of reporting crashes and other anonymous usage data. Collecting and analyzing that sort of data ("telemetry" but that's a bad word here on /.) is an essential part of the software development lifecycle.
I'm just saying, it's a tool that we use to make the software better. If you believe that the call stack where the application crashed is really that sensitive (and that I could de-anonymize it based on nothing more than the call stack and a per-application randomly generated UUID), go ahead and turn it off. That's the user's right, but I would just hope to evangelize and try to convince them otherwise :-)
People like you need to quit being disingenuous with other people's words. When I said they acted like Nazis, you obviously failed to draw the parallel to involuntary data collection.
But hey, it's idiots like you that allow real dilution of words to happen, with your lacking brain power.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Liar liar he's on fire. accurate reporting my ass.
Lul. There are white supremacist groups that planned the event it on their website. They put out a call for everyone with them to join.
Fuck off. Nazis are not well known for their data collection. You could have said NK, China or Russia if you truly wanted to make parallels with data collection. Fuck, you could have said Google. Just fuck off trying to turn things around when you were the one to overstate like a motherfucker. You'll be known as the boy who cried Nazi.
Alex Jones, you should register for an account.
Too little too late.. Already switched to Emby... SOOOOOOOOOO much better than Plex.... Wish I'd known about
Emby sooner...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Opt-In is the only user-respecting option. Anything less is evil.
Yes Nazis are also known for data collection.
They put large swathes of populations on IBM cards with basically a column for Jew, a column for communist, homosexual, agitator and so on.
The Nazis collected data and used that data for genocide.
I REALLY doubt most companies that are collecting data are intending to use the data for genocide, though.
Still it is possible that large scale massacres occur in the future based on data aggregated by a political entity and/or bought on the free market.
"Nazis are not well known for their data collection."
Better take your uneducated ass right the fuck back to school, because they sure as fuck were.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.