SlySoft

Logo from SlySoft

SlySoft Inc. was a software company based in Saint John's , the capital of Antigua and Barbuda . Because some of SlySoft's programs bypass copy protection measures, distribution is illegal in some states.

history

SlySoft went online with the first version of AnyDVD in July 2003 . The company acquired rights to some programs from the Swiss company Elaborate Bytes and in early 2007 took over the emulation software Game Jackal from the Australian-based computer company Jacal Consulting. From June 2007 this software was developed and distributed exclusively by SlySoft.

On January 1, 2008, the company switched its prices from US dollars to euros at a 1: 1 ratio. With the dollar exchange rate at the time, this was equivalent to a price increase of around 40 percent. SlySoft justified this change with the fact that the company pays its employees in euros and therefore profits are reduced in view of the weak dollar exchange rate.

Announced for January 1st, 2009 and finally implemented on January 19th, 2009 SlySoft changed the licensing model for all products offered. In addition to the much more expensive licenses for lifelong free updates, there have also been update subscriptions with a term of one, two, three or four years since the changeover. Products licensed in this way can also be used for life, but are no longer authorized to update after the subscription period has expired.

In November 2010, SlySoft claimed that as of January 1, 2011, it would no longer offer licenses with lifetime update rights. In an announcement published in the forum and sent to all registered users by e-mail, it was stated that this step would be announced in good time in order to give all interested parties a chance to purchase a lifelong update subscription. At the beginning of 2011, the supposedly last option was extended to January 3, then to January 4, after which all announcements regarding the license change were deleted without comment and all previous licenses continued to be offered unchanged.

The company's website has not been accessible since February 23, 2016. The following day, SlySoft announced its liquidation. This was justified with the ongoing legal disputes with the license administrators of the Blu-Ray copy protection AACS LA. On March 1, 2016, the website was changed from slysoft.com to redfox.bz - this step was justified by the fact that the previous employees want to revive the programs under the name RedFox.

Legal

Owners of websites that had linked SlySoft's website were warned by the Waldorf law firm . On October 14, 2010, the Federal Court of Justice ruled after an appeal by Heise-Verlag against representatives of the music industry that the setting of links as a pure information-gathering equivalent of footnotes is generally permissible. With this ruling, contrary decisions of lower instances were rejected and the lawsuit of the music industry was dismissed on all points.