I would like to share my jellyfin movies and tv shows with my friend. I was thinking about allowing only his IP address to connect to my jellyfin server.
Is it a crime? Can I be arrested for this? I do not plan on running a mega operation for hundreds of people.
Is that ok to do?
All responses are saying “it is illegal”. But is it more illegal than pirating a movie for yourself only? Would it still be illegal if you would have paid for the movie? In that case it seems like lending the dvd to a friend…
Distributing to others is “more illegal” than consuming it yourself
For instance, right now it is not against the law to watch a video on YouTube that somebody else uploaded.
If it turns out after the fact that somebody’s intellectual property rights were violated by the original video upload, you will not be punished for that, only the original uploader can be punished for the IP violation.
To apply that analogy: It wouldn’t be against the law for your friend to watch it. If this was the case. Your court case would be different. You’d be in the role of both YouTube and the uploader here, since you operate the Jellyfin and also uploaded the movie there.
Yes but if you torrent a movie just for yourself to watch, you’re distributing it to hundreds of people, so it’s way worse
I’d say two people pirating a movie is exactly double as illegal compared to one person doing it. At least in total. And sharing a legal copy with friends is completely fine in lots of jurisdictions. I mean other terms and conditions apply… You might have to circumvent some copy protection to be able to do that, and that might be a different offense. But apart from that, it’s similar to lending them a DVD (Well, actually since you’re copying it, it’d be more like burning them a copy of one of your DVDs).
Giving them access to Jellyfin is not fully “copying” a movie, it is just access to streaming (they can download, but that’s on them).
Overall, this makes little sense anymore and I feel that limiting data sharing is hard to conceptualize, let alone prevent with regulation.