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Comment by lillecarl | Hacker News Reader

Does group watch work across plex servers?

I can see why they don't cover this edge case if I'm to be entirely honest.

My experience is with jellyfin, but without the complexities of cross region licensing + DRM, there's nothing forcing people in different areas to not use the same server

I mean I figured this would be the answer. But do you think It'd be that easy for someone that really want's to make this work? There are lawyers all over the place with or without DRM. The people who make the content don't want it to be spread across regions the "deliverer" didn't pay for, and then implementing this niche feature isn't worth it for the shows that exist cross region.

What I'm saying is: People want to get paid, and if people don't get paid content doesn't get made. I don't like how this works either, but we must also understand that It's complex for that exact reason: Money.

I'm not saying you're stealing since you're not taking anything from someone (Stealing a bike leaves one less left) but you're also not paying for something someone made for paying customers. As long as we have country borders this will be a problem only overcome by people who feel above the law and copy content illegaly.

If we take cars as an example however:

Toyota sells the right to be the exclusive Toyota dealer for my area (city in this case, sometimes smaller or larger areas depending on population) to Joe the Car Dealer. I'm sure Toyota would love if I couldn't get a used Toyota from elsewhere and bring it to my city, as it increases the value of what they're selling to Joe the Car Dealer.

But legally Toyota (and Joe the Car Dealer) can suck it, they can't make it a term of buying a car that I don't bring it cross region, or even that I don't import it from another country entirely (where they may set prices lower as an attempt to maximise marginal revenue from people of different incomes).

I feel media should work more like cars here. Indeed it did, in the past. Disney couldn't stop me buying DVDs from eastern europe, nor could they shut someone down for selling region free DVD players - the most they could do is have the DVD forum not provide DVD standard documentation and licensing stickers to the manufacturers.

I disagree with the comparison, with physical goods there's effort involved in doing all these things, meaning most people won't do it and you still have to purchase the new unit from Toyota (unless someone manufactures a "perfect" replica).

With bits and bytes on the internet there's no effort involved.

I hate the state of media consumption, but it makes sense from a sellers perspective more than a consumer perspective indeed.

Nope, but it's not a problem since a friend can use his account to log in to yours server.

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