Is it a crime to share my jellyfin library with only one friend of mine?
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.
Exactly. In Poland that would be legal because it's personal use with close circle (family, friends). It's legal to download a copyrighted media file that's been shared online and share it within that close circle but not share it publicly or to larger groups. So downloading a copyrighted file via torrent is still illegal because you are simultaneously sharing the file with wide audience.
The regulation roughly translates to 'fair use' and there need to be similar laws on other countries as well, at least for the download part. You should be free to assume that whoever put a media you see online had the right to do so (if they didn't, they broke the law but not you by downloading). If downloading a copyrighted media file was illegal then visiting any website would be a crime because they contain media (images, videos) that our browsers automatically download in order to display them.
Ah surprising that Poland's still got copyright laws that relaxed, I thought they'd been more or less harmonized in the whole EU. Finland's laws used to be pretty much like what you describe too, but they were changed… uh, fuck, I think 10 – 20 years ago to be stricter and I have a vague memory that they claimed it was to be more in line with how most other countries are in the EU, but it's very much possible that either the politicians behind this lied, or that I remember wrong
In the US, it’s a violation of copyright. You could be sued, but wouldn’t likely be arrested.
I would say that the odds of being sued are minimal, close to nonexistent, if it is just a few close friends and family. Jellyfin uses password protection which helps, but you can improve your odds of staying off the media companies’ radar by keeping the server on a private VPN like Tailscale and remembering the rules of Fight Club.
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...
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.
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).
I technically have a dynamic IP but my IP address has not changed in nearly 3 years.
I live in a city with 500,000 residents.
But to answer op's question, technically yes. You would be committing a crime to share your videos to a friend even if it's only one friend.
However, should you do something like set up a VPN for your friend so that the communications between your home network and their home network are completely encrypted, it is highly unlikely that you will ever be caught or punished for the crime.
You should check your router to see if it offers a VPN generation function. My Netgear router allows me to VPN into my home network from any openvpn endpoint with the appropriate certificate installed, and the process is quite simple.
Having said that, I am not a lawyer, and if I were a lawyer I would not be your lawyer, so do not take my words as any form of incentive or instructions to actually convince you to commit a crime. You must rely on your own best judgment and act in your own best interests before doing anything that is legally shady.
Doesn't matter really. If you use something like cloudflare and a domain name. You have programs like DDNS-updater that can update all the A records as soon as your IP changes.
so long as you guys don't watch the same thing at the same time from two different locations, it's effectively you just letting him borrow one of your DVDs (I'm a not a lawyer)