Why is Plex not illegal?

In my book, there's only one reason why Plex isn't illegal, and that's the fact that the vast majority of people who use it are just a little bit smarter than the average bear.

The average bear doesn't know about the existence of such things as XDM-XDMC. The average bear doesn't know that they're even possible. The average bear wouldn't understand them if you tried to explain them. The average bear is totally oblivious to the fact that there could be any advantage to using an open source media server. The average bear is unaware of the fact that we're in a digital age, where everything we do can be recorded and stored. The average bear has no idea that being able to access our personal media from anywhere is a huge advantage.

Now, it's true that some people don't even realize there's any such thing as an open source media server, or they think that it's only available to criminals. And it's also true that some people don't know that it's legal to use a Plex media server to stream media to their Plex clients on their home network. But this is a problem that Plex can solve for them. Plex can educate the masses about what Plex is, how it works, and why it's not illegal.

Plex is a great idea, but what if it fails? As I've mentioned above, I'm a huge proponent of open source software. The fact that Plex is an open source project means that anyone can contribute to it. Anyone can submit patches to the code, and anyone can review those patches. Anyone can get involved, and the quality of the product is largely determined by the quality of the contributors. But what happens if it fails?

Well, that's when the real work begins. It starts with the people who are already using Plex and want more. They may decide to use alternative software to try to make up for the fact that Plex doesn't meet their needs. They may decide to run their own server on their home network. They may decide to use a different software solution. Or maybe they will start using the media servers of other open source projects, like Kodi, or Windows Media Center, or even MythTV.

Is Plex free legal?

I recently got a free trial of Plex Media Server.

It runs on my PC, and it's not connected to any network. How is this legal? Do you have to sign a contract for the free trial or is it free forever?

Plex is a legal service. You pay them money to use it on a computer, and they sell the software to you. If you don't pay them money, then you are not legally allowed to use their software on a computer.

No, they don't "sell" the software to me. I just install it on my own computer.

Yes, you are technically correct, but in practice it is very different. Plex is not sold to you, but you're encouraged to install it on your own computer. I would not call it "selling" or "renting" the software, but I think most people would.

The best analogy I can give is that if you bought a book, then read the first 5 pages and decided you didn't like it, then threw it away, that is not "buying" the book. If you buy a CD and then burn it to a disk and listen to it in your car, that's not "buying" the music.

How much does Plex cost?

That's what we hear all the time.

Is it free? Is it an upgrade? How much is it? As usual, there are different answers to that question depending on who you ask and what kind of account you have. We'll cover both of those below, but first let's take a look at how Plex works.

Understanding Plex. Plex is a streaming video player, photo gallery manager and music library, all in one. You can use it as your own personal media centre. It's available for iOS, Android, Windows, OS X and Linux.

It's available as a free service or you can pay for a premium service which gives you more storage space. Plex offers a lot of great features, but the key ones for most users will be the ability to organise your media and the ability to share your media. How does Plex work? Plex uses a system called the 'Plex Media Server'. The server stores your media one of your hard drives, which means you can access your movies, TV shows and music directly from your computer (if you have a fast Internet connection) instead of from the cloud.

You can also stream your media to other devices using Chromecast and Roku. What is the Plex server? The server is what stores your media. As well as storing your photos, videos and music, it also holds the meta-information that tells Plex what it is.

Plex tells you when something has changed by pushing a message through the server. For example, if you're watching a new episode of Game of Thrones on Netflix, the server will tell Plex that you've added a new episode to your collection, and Plex will push the episode to all your devices.

So the server is what Plex uses to store all your media. You can choose to either store your media on the server or your device, and whether to stream it or not.

When you're using Plex on the web you'll find that the server is running on your local computer. If you're using a desktop computer, you won't need to do anything. However, if you're on a smartphone or tablet, you'll need to download the Plex app from Google Play or the Apple App Store, and select a server.

How does Plex connect to your server?