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.

Comments

Bummer

[fishscene]

Well that's a bummer. Who's going to take up the torch against the terrorists? Is there another program that does something similar?

Write to your elected representatives

[TheRaven64]

Point out this case to them. Point out the total value to the economy of things like the iPod and other personal digital music players. Point out that this is vastly more than the total music and movie industries combined. Point out that laws surrounding DRM have ensured that no one could release a portable movie player that let you rip your DVDs / BluRays and so an entire industry has been unable to exist. Ask them why they hate job creation so much.

Re:Write to your elected representatives

[gstoddart]

Why would your elected representatives give a crap about what you say? You don't make campaign contributions, you just vote for them. The campaign contributions and other legal bribes are what controls the real power.

They know exactly who they work for, and it sure as hell isn't you. They don't care about job creation, they care about corporate profits.

This is why the US government is letting the copyright cartels write significant chunks of treaties like the TPP ... the US government is most assuredly doing the bidding of these corporations.

Make no mistake about it, they're not working for you or your interests.

Re:Write to your elected representatives

[Jason Levine]

And then the media companies will counter with a big pile of campaign donation cash and a request for even more stringent DRM, high per-stream royalty rates, mandatory anti-piracy payments, and other pro-industry policies. Do you think your local politician will listen to you or that big bag of cash?

Re:Write to your elected representatives

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. It's not like you're presented with a wide range of choices at the voting booth; the anti-corporate, anti-TPP candidates have a very difficult time getting anywhere. It's utterly amazing that Bernie and Trump are doing as well as they have (both are anti-TPP), but the establishment on both sides is doing everything it can to shut them down and make sure one of their chosen ones, Bush, Rubio, or Hillary, is guaranteed the election. (Of course, after the establishment gave him $100 million to spend on his campaign, Bush finally threw in the towel recently.)

Even if an anti-TPP candidate wins the Presidency, he'll still have to contend with a Congress full of corporate tools.

Re: Write to your elected representatives

[spire3661]

.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.

Re:Write to your elected representatives

[bluefoxlucid]

Actually... the reduction in cost from buying and re-buying the same media again and again *is* a path to job creation. The "you paid $20 for the DVD, and now you'll pay $20 for a DVD that plays on your iPod, and $20 for a license to play your $20 DVD on your Mac, and $20 again for a license to watch the DVD on your phone via Amazon" thing just prices a single good at $100 when the cost isn't actually higher. Instead of paying $300 for a device to play a copy of a DVD you dumped to an SD card, you have to pay $300 and then an extra $20 per DVD you dump to that SD card, and the device maker has to have its own infrastructure and legal agreements to sell you an additional copy of that DVD so they can make sure it's locked to your device.

This all sounds like a good way to make up bullshit jobs (which don't really exist--obviously, the jobs in question would be there to get around regulatory hurdles and make the company a profit), except that consumers don't magically have an extra $2,000 to spend on all these duplicate DVDs. Those jobs vanish away, and anything the consumer *does* buy tends to funnel mostly into licensing fees going up to the content creator--they have to make their money, and target per-unit rather than an amortization, since eliminating the lossy side of a loss-gain net positive average gets you bigger profits--which means the money is going to inefficient corporate profits instead of jobs.

As much as corporate profits aren't evil, pouring additional profits into a corporation's bottom line at the expense of wage jobs is a good way to increase unemployment. It's just slow and inefficient: it doesn't erase the money, but it does slow down the creation of buying power demand, making sure new jobs don't pop up quite as quickly, while not slowing down the elimination of old jobs as we find ways to do more with less labor time. When you eliminate 200,000 jobs per year and only create 120,000 jobs per year, unemployment starts growing; when you eliminate 200,000 jobs per year and create 200,000 jobs per year, you hold to a nice, stable unemployment rate. It's a factor of time.

This is one of the very few cases where someone says "job creation" and isn't completely fucking wrong about jobs actually being created by the mechanism they're focusing on.

Re:Write to your elected representatives

[wwalker]

Except for Bernie Sanders. Do yourself a favor and go google top corporate contributors for him and compare to Hillary. And make your own conclusions.

Re:Write to your elected representatives

[bluefoxlucid]

If a thousand letters flood in this month about a particular campaign point, it's likely that a large chunk of the population has been angered into action. That large chunk is probably 0.0000001%; and we know they're only the tiniest fraction of a population who find the point meaningful. If they're so up in arms as to start sending letters, it means there's a *lot* of people out there who are going to perk up if you start speaking about the issue, and raise pitch forks if you start pushing back against their will.

A handful of letters on one topic when there's no such noise coming your way about another topic means a sizable number of voters are thinking about that topic, even though only a few have decided to do something about it. You should probably pay attention if you don't want to lose the next election despite the six billion dollars of campaign contributions Exxon-Mobil sent you this year.

Re: Write to your elected representatives

[FunkSoulBrother]

I see. And I understand where that covers 95% of people's use cases. I really want to back up the original product, disk space be damned, so AnyDVD was a good tool for me, and I'm not sure what to use as a replacement.

Re: Write to your elected representatives

[ncc74656]

.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.

How do you preserve the DVD extras/menus with this option?

Who cares about the menus and other crap? The menus serve no purpose when you're serving everything up through something like Kodi or Plex. If there's some "making-of" featurette or whatever that you can't live without for a particular movie, rip it and store it alongside the movie.

MakeMKV works pretty well for ripping both DVD and Blu-ray. It'll rip audio and video as-is (subs, too, if you need them) and dump them into a file that you can either serve up as-is or crunch it down further with HandBrake.

Also, unlike AnyDVD, MakeMKV works on Linux.

Re: Write to your elected representatives

[BLKMGK]

This package or possibly one of their others should help you. This one is likely what I'll be grabbing as it most closely mirrors the functionality I needed from Slysoft but they have other packages too.

http://www.dvdfab.cn/passkey-f...

BSD

[IgnitusBoyone]

Well, if they can't make money off it anymore we will gladly accept it uploaded to git hub.

MakeMKV

[Anonymous Coward]

MakeMKV. You're welcome.

Re:MakeMKV

[The Snowman]

MakeMKV is free and not time-limited for DVDs, but costs money and has a time-limited demo available for Blu-rays.

MakeMKV contains both freeware and shareware functionality. You may use MakeMKV to convert or stream DVD and AVCHD discs for free, as much as you want. Converting or streaming Blu-ray discs is shareware functionality. You can use shareware functionality for free during 30-days trial period. If you like MakeMKV and you want to use it after your 30-days trial version expires, you need to purchase a registration key.

source

RIAA shooting themselves in the foot again

[Anonymous Coward]

Many PCs (including my own HTPC) running software such as XBMC and MediaPortal depend on slysoft to play legit BluRay discs. I guess next time they update the BluRay encryption, I'll just have to download a pirate copy instead, because I won't be able to play the legit discs.

Re: RIAA shooting themselves in the foot again

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Linux is your friend in legal backups

[evolutionary]

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.

Re:Linux is your friend in legal backups

[gfxguy]

Agree - the only thing he's right about is that you can't make a backup and sell or giveaway the original while keeping the backup. You're allowed to circumvent copy protection all you want - but you're not allowed to distribute the circumvention. That's probably what slysoft (and I purchased anydvd a few years ago) got caught up in.

Re:You must be new here

[Anonymous Coward]

Liar.

Purchasers of content on media like BR simply want to be able to enjoy that media when, where and how they want and not be tied to TVs attached to BR players ramming 20 minutes of fucking commercials down their throat before they get to see what they actually bought the disk for.

And they want to safeguard the content on the disk that they paid for against the hazards of the fragile media that is being forced on them.

Re:You must be new here

[Jason Levine]

The commercials say "own it on Blu-Ray today" but the laws (bought and paid for by the entertainment industry) say "pay for a limited license to view the material as defined by the large entertainment companies and which can be revoked if they feel like it... today!"

Re:You must be new here

[Opportunist]

I start caring about Hollywood as soon as they give a fuck about me being able to actually view their crap without jumping through 100 hoops for no other reason than "we can make you".

Re:You must be new here

[Jason Levine]

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.

Re:Virtual Clone Drive?

[BenJeremy]

Here's the latest I got, a week or so ago: https://mega.nz/#!O5NBkJZR!9AYwKr4lTSOauP5pgMXC-T4dF7KqpwhpBz9KwT_pcKw

This is an absolutely "must have" tool, and it's free.

Re:Go nuclear: Free software download

[ChumpusRex2003]

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.

Cynicism

[KingSkippus]

I wish I had mod points to give the parent poster. I'm so sick of the "it won't do any good" cynicism posts like those above. You know what REALLY won't do any good? Sitting on your ass doing nothing except crying "woe is us" on Slashdot.

Do you know how we got to the point where a lot of elected officials don't care what people think? People sitting around grousing about how elected officials don't care what they think. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy. If you're going to simply tune out of everything going on and not care or hold people to any standards, then really, why should anyone care what you think? I know if I were an elected politician, I wouldn't give a damn what people think who don't bother to let me know, or even vote. Why would I even waste my time?

I vote in every election and primary I can. I do write to my Congresscritters. I tell my friends what I think about stuff going on and the people who are in and running for office. And yeah, sometimes it doesn't do any good, especially being a liberal in the Bible Belt South. But you know what? At least I'm trying. At least I'm not just whining about problems. And sometimes, people actually do make a difference, especially at a local level. You don't have to save the world, you just have to care. If you don't, then it sucks to be you, but stop trying to piss on the parade of those who do.

By the way, for those of you in the "it doesn't make a difference" crowd, by all means, keep sitting on your asses. Your apathy gives people like me disproportionate say over things going on, so you know, thank you very much for that.

Re:Cynicism

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Do you know how we got to the point where a lot of elected officials don't care what people think? People sitting around grousing about how elected officials don't care what they think. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy.

This certainly sounds great, but in reality caring and trying to change things won't work, or at least not in the USA. Why? Several reasons.
1) The guys with money can simply buy elected officials with legal campaign contributions. The wonderful Supreme Court made this legal, carrying not or being too stupid to understand the ramifications of the decision.
2) The vast majority of Americans simply vote on party preference for everything. Maybe 20% or at most 30% of voters actually examine the issues and consider candidates of both parties. I can't convince my neighbor to care about this if the person who supports fixing it isn't of the party my neighbor votes for.

Not the source code, but how to generate a key

[WoodstockJeff]

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.

Re:Virtual Clone Drive?

[americamatrix]

https://www.elby.ch/en/product... - This is the underlying tech/driver for VCD from Slysoft.

Thanks,

-americamatrix

Re:You must be new here

[TangoMargarine]

If the MPAA works anything like the RIAA, very little if any of the money you pay for your discs ends up in the actual artists' pockets.

Increases piracy

[Solandri]

I buy the blu-ray of a movie I like, then download it off a pirate website. I don't even own a blu-ray player. It's just that I have a home media server and would prefer to have movies in a format I can stream throughout my house. But Hollywood insists on only letting you stream movies over the Internet. No simple way to have a local copy which plays on all my devices.

At first I borrowed a friend's BD drive and tried ripping the blu-rays and re-encoding the movies to a smaller size (raw rip of the LotR trilogy was nearly 200 GB). After struggling with merging the two-disc parts into one movie file and keeping subtitles synchronized, I threw in the towel and just downloaded it from a pirate site. Someone much better at video encoding than I had already licked those problems, plus his encode was smaller yet higher quality than mine.

So I ditched my plans to buy my own BD drive for ripping, and now I just pirate the movies after buying the blu-ray. Though I'm not sure you can really call it pirating, since I own the blu-ray which by Hollywood's insistence that I'm buying a license not a copy means I'm licensed to own and view the content. What does Hollywood think will happen to folks who used Slysoft's software to rip their own discs now? If the lack of updates means the software won't be able to rip future blu-ray releases, those folks are going to start doing what I'm doing - buying the blu-ray and downloading the movie from a pirate site. Only some of them won't be as honest as me and will quickly realize they don't really need to buy the blu-ray in the first place.

BTW, this inverts the backup argument. The blu-ray disc becomes my backup copy, safely stored in its case. Heck, I haven't even removed the shrinkwrap off of most of them. Though I prefer to think of them as a physical certificate of the license to the movie, and my backup would be downloading the movie off the net again.

Re:Increases piracy

[spire3661]

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.

Re:Increases piracy

[theendlessnow]

I buy the blu-ray of a movie I like, then download it off a pirate website.

Which is a violation...even if it sounds like a legit thing to do.

I don't even own a blu-ray player. It's just that I have a home media server and would prefer to have movies in a format I can stream throughout my house. But Hollywood insists on only letting you stream movies over the Internet. No simple way to have a local copy which plays on all my devices.

Current decoding DVD or Blu-ray is a Federal crime in the USA.

At first I borrowed a friend's BD drive and tried ripping the blu-rays and re-encoding the movies to a smaller size (raw rip of the LotR trilogy was nearly 200 GB). After struggling with merging the two-disc parts into one movie file and keeping subtitles synchronized, I threw in the towel and just downloaded it from a pirate site. Someone much better at video encoding than I had already licked those problems, plus his encode was smaller yet higher quality than mine.

Either way it was a violation.

So I ditched my plans to buy my own BD drive for ripping, and now I just pirate the movies after buying the blu-ray. Though I'm not sure you can really call it pirating, since I own the blu-ray which by Hollywood's insistence that I'm buying a license not a copy means I'm licensed to own and view the content.

Not quite. With a Blu-ray the idea is that it is played in a licensed Blu-ray device because in truth, they still want control of your playback rights and even the ability to revoke it at will.

What does Hollywood think will happen to folks who used Slysoft's software to rip their own discs now? If the lack of updates means the software won't be able to rip future blu-ray releases, those folks are going to start doing what I'm doing - buying the blu-ray and downloading the movie from a pirate site. Only some of them won't be as honest as me and will quickly realize they don't really need to buy the blu-ray in the first place.

Not everybody is willing to break the law at any cost to get their own way though. I'm not saying your scenario won't happen though.

BTW, this inverts the backup argument. The blu-ray disc becomes my backup copy, safely stored in its case. Heck, I haven't even removed the shrinkwrap off of most of them. Though I prefer to think of them as a physical certificate of the license to the movie, and my backup would be downloading the movie off the net again.

Your actual Blu-rays are legal of course, you're just not exercising your right to view them on an authorized playback device. Since you're targeting non-authorized playback, either ripped or downloaded from the net... those copies, even of media for which you have physical discs, is in violation.

Country needs a big fix. Sure make copying and distributing Blu-rays and DVDs illegal... I get it. But we (those with backup servers or media servers) should not have to commit a Federal Crime to watch what we own. It's insane.

Re:Increases piracy

[rworne]

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

Re:Virtual Clone Drive?

[tlhIngan]

Well, the Internet Archive has copies of it.

The only thing is it has an older version of AnyDVD HD and a couple of other programs, too.

https://web.archive.org/web/20...

Re:You must be new here

[gfxguy]

I bought AnyDVD, and completely support SlySoft... I never once copied a DVD or BluRay in violation of any copyright laws. I agree there are far too many people who simply want stuff for free, but that doesn't mean AnyDVD wasn't a great product that worked well for legitimate uses.

Re: If that's true...

[JazzLad]

Doesn't matter, dead format. Seriously, the first time grandmas blue-ray chose not to play a new disk because it needed firmware update, it was pushed aside and the old format DVD's were the ones getting purchased.

There is a miniscule difference between DVD and blue ray

For Grandma, sure, but for those of us with great vision and nice TVs, there is a huge difference.

And 3D is just dumb.

Yup, this we can agree on.

Re:Damn shame

[izat]

WinCDEmu is a nice open-source alternative.

Re:You must be new here

[jedidiah]

Are we having nominations for most retarded comment of the week? You should be right up there.

This is a tool for people that have a legal copy already.

There is no "entitlement" here except the basic expectations that come with property ownership.

You are simply advocating the position where only corporations have rights and the rest of us mere peasants aren't entitled to personal property right any more.

Re:Bush, Rubio will have pre existing condition co

[Grishnakh]

What's wrong with pre-existing conditions? It's not insurance if you are able to wait to buy it until after you need it.

Because health insurance isn't like other insurance. If you have to change jobs, that means you need to change insurance, so now suddenly the new insurance doesn't have to cover the old condition? That's bullshit. That's why they outlawed it. The root of the problem is tying health insurance to employment, but I don't see the Repugs trying to fix that either.