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Slysoft (of AnyDVD Fame) Closes After Increased International Pressure By AACS (myce.com)
jlp2097 writes: It looks like the recent activities by Hollywood studios and the AACS LA finally led to the closing of Slysoft Inc, creator of the popular AnyDVD HD tool for creating personal backups of BluRay/DVD/etc. Slysoft Inc's website confirms the closing due to "recent regulatory requirements". The final nail in the coffin has also been confirmed with slightly more details in their forum: "this is final. Slysoft is gone." Sad to see them go — it looks like legitimate buyers of BluRays will now have to find other sources for backing up their property to HTPCs and NASes.
MakeMKV. You're welcome.
While you can argue piracy, the USA it is perfectly legal to make backup copies of commercial media you legitimately own. Very important for owners of old DVD, VHS tapes, laser disks and so on. Once nice thing about linux is it's a lot harder to just "shut down" because it's world wide and the USA is the most anal when it comes to copying laws. It's inverse is China where it's apparently unfashionable NOT to copy things..(and in many cases sell the copies..). Anyway, there are reasonable policies when it comes to backups of things we purchase but in the USA, the business are trying to require people to purchases their media more than once if possible. We gotta rethink these IP laws as they don't encourage innovation as much as they promote lazy fat cats to just rest on the laurels of a single creation for not only their lifetime, but the lifetime of their descendants.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
About what? Neither XBMC nor MediaPortal can play encrypted DVDs or BluRays natively, they require something else to decrypt the discs, and that something is anydvd hd. Future, and in fact some present, discs can only be decoded by anydvd by accessing an online database, which no longer works as of today. My information is just plain facts.
This isn't "Hey, I want to download HOT NEW MOVIE for free instead of paying for it." It's "Hey, I bought a Blu-Ray of HOT NEW MOVIE but would like to view it on my computer, my tablet, my phone, etc. Why can't I rip the file and use it for my own use?"
Yes, some people will use the rips to upload them for others (totally illegal), but we shouldn't ban technology based on "some people will use it for illegal stuff." If we did that, then all computers would be banned on the premise that some people use them to commit crimes.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
But that wouldn't really achieve much. The main feature of Slysoft's solution, was not the software itself (which is certainly impressive) but the fact that they would update the software with new encryption keys every few weeks, often within days of a new encryption key being used.
AACS has a huge inventory of keys which can be used. Slysoft had managed to find an exploit in either a hardware or software player, which allowed them to extract the key when a newly released disc requested a previously unknown key ID.
Decoding both DVD and BD are "known things". AnyDVD was not the only product doing it.
Two important parts to doing BD, though - One is having a valid key to get past the AACS, and being able to replace it when a version of AACS comes out that revokes your current key. If your key has been added to the revoked list, simply putting a disk in the drive with that version of the list essentially "bricks" the drive for reading ANY Bluray disks until you change your key.
The second is being able to implement the BD+ interpreter to fix up deliberate errors introduced into the video... And it changes periodically.
Where the companies that sell such products get their "market lock-in" is keeping up these changes. AACS is easier than BD+, from what I read, because you don't always have to change your key when a new AACS revocation list comes out, but the BD+ programming can and does change multiple times per month.
.isos are overkill. Just get the movie data any way you can and store it on a network share. A hell of a lot easier than dealing with optical burning. If you arent burning to optical, then you dont need isos.
Good-bye
I just want to point out that DOWNLOADING the file is absolutely legal under Sony V Universal since you own a legal copy. Its the UPLOADING that gets you in trouble. If you DL directly from an HTTP/FTP site, no problem 100% legal., but if you use a torrent, that can be a problem unless you zero out your upload completely.
I went the same route as you giving up on optical, i wanted pristine disc rips, but its simply too much hassle when the scene people have it down cold.
Good-bye
DVDFab is still going strong.
Downloading content you could otherwise rip via fair use or space shifting is not legal.
See MP3.com and their cloud service which looks a lot like today's Apple's iTunes Match:
Buy a CD, pop it in your computer, download MP3's from MP3.com without having to rip and encode.
They lost because essentially having someone else rip your CD's for you requires permission from the copyright owner. That cost MP3.com $53.4 million.
UMG v. MP3.com
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit