From bouncing around my favorite corners of the Internet, I get the impression that large numbers of people have "a guy" (of any gender), akin to a weed dealer in furtiveness and legality, who is hooking them up with an underground, probably Plex-based (but increasingly moving to Jellyfin), streaming service. I get the impression that there are hundreds to thousands of these little "Plex server" operations, each serving a couple dozen to a hundred or so users out of the goodness/vileness of each "guy"'s heart and the hobby budget of that "guy"'s homelab. This isn't all Plex gets used for or even necessarily the main use case, but I think they're out there.
Obviously no "guy" will admit to doing this, but my "Plex Server Guy Theory" neatly explains this post announcing that general discussions of piracy are allowed in the Lemmy.ml Plex community and this post by someone apparently serving enough new Plex user volume that a webhook would be convenient to have. I've also seen people discussing Plex refer to "my users", as if they have a user base of friends and trusted or semi-trustred acquaintances rather than just a household or family.
I personally neither have nor am a "Plex Server Guy", nor do I know anyone who has admitted to me that they do have or are one, so I can't be sure they really exist. But I have suspicions.
Are "Plex Server Guys" as I imagine them real and common and I am just too square to have ever been invited to do crimes with everyone else? Are they rare in real life but enriched in the dubious/cool corners of the Internet? Does it depend on your country? What's the deal?
I'm a Plex guy. I share my library because it's a bit of fun and scratches my IT interest itch. I actually run Plex and Jellyfin in parallel but pretty much everyone prefers the Plex interface (and most smart TVs have it ready to go, even the silly ones with off brand app stores).
Mostly it's just an excuse to play with cool toys, and a reason to work out how to run things I wouldn't otherwise bother with.
I've always downloaded stuff, since the dialup days. Originally it was for things that were region locked / "unrated" in Australia and thus not available... but now it's just so much more convenient than paid options that it's a no-brainer. Like I literally can't pay any legit service for the level of access and convenience I have now.
It's not even about money anymore. Between the purchase price and power consumption of my dual Xeon rack server and JBOD, the 1000/400Mbps fibre connection, and the time I spend on it I'm paying enough to cover half a dozen subscriptions or so with change... But the convenience! I can watch anything, anywhere, on any device. No jumping between services to find stuff, no episodes/movies going missing, no login restrictions, no player that won't work because your HDMI cable is lacking a decimal place or whatever the hell they're doing now.
Anytime someone we know in real life complains about having issues with their legitimate streaming service I offer access to Plex. I think there's 40ish users, but only a dozen or so that use it with any real frequency. Maybe 4-5 concurrent streams at peak times, outside of that is usually occasionally the work from home "workers" / the night shift people, or me streaming music at work or similar. I think the most I've had is 7 or 8 at once.