Slyck.com

Slyck.com is a defunct website that once produced unique original file sharing news stories, shared aggregated technology news stories from the World Wide Web, and has a user forum.

Slyck.com
Type of site
News site with articles about P2P networking and Filesharing
Available inEnglish
OwnerTom Mennecke
Created byTom Mennecke, Ray Hoffmann, Nick Parr, Drew Wilson, et al
URLslyck.com
RegistrationOptional (to post on forum)
LaunchedAugust 10, 2001[1]

History

Ray Hoffman began operating Slyck.com as Slyway.com in 2000,[2] which initially was an aggregate news site with some original content, and contained guides to the most popular file-sharing resources at the time, whilst providing statistics of p2p file sharing networks, which included Napster, iMesh, Scour, Usenet and IRC. On the 10th of August 2001, Slyway.com was renamed Slyck.com.

Impact

Due to the lack of mainstream news coverage on p2p, file sharing and discussion of copyright legislation, Slyck.com had a significant impact as a news site, which New Scientist cited as a "popular file sharing news site",[3] Digital Audio Essentials (2004) referred to Slyck.com as "an excellent resource"[4] for news and information on file sharing, and in Steal This Computer Book 4.0 the site was considered to be "up to date on the latest file sharing technology and news."[5]

Content

The website conducted interviews with file sharing software developers and intellectual property role players, maintaining statistics of P2P file sharing networks, and notably shed light on the developing conflict between file sharing users and intellectual property owners, which covered the legal battle against copyright and intellectual property infringement, such as the takedown of torrent websites like Loki Torrents[6] and Suprnova.org,[7] events that were covered in mainstream media from input by the Intellectual Property owners, which lacked the views of file sharing users, which was represented in the Slyck.com coverage. Notably, Slyck.com extensively covered the Torrent website, The Pirate Bay, and the efforts by Swedish and other national authorities to shut down the website and prosecute the founders/owners of the Pirate Bay. Slyck.com covered other news topics like roll out of Broadband Internet, new technology and hardware and advances in networking.

Slyck news writers were able to interview notable individuals such as:

  • Michael Weiss of StreamCast,[8] Nir Arbel of SoulSeek, and [9] Pablo Soto of Optisoft S.L[10] and Kevin Hearn[11][12] of WinMX were interviewed regarding their software and P2P networks.
  • Jon Lech Johansen, nicknamed DVDJon was interviewed,[13] regarding the DeCSS software that allowed for DVD discs to be played on the Linux Operating System, and allowed for development of duplicating software for DVD discs.
  • Muslix64,[14] a software hacker who first circumvented the AACS protection scheme for HD DVD and Blu-ray discs, discussed his reasons for the circumvention of the Digital Rights Management software.[15][16][17]
  • Dean Garfield, then head of the MPAA's legal team, was interviewed by Nicholas Parr about the MPAA's legal campaign against movie piracy.[18]

In March 2010, Slyck.com was threatened with legal action[19] by the controversial[20][21] UK law firm ACS:Law for defamation, due to comments made by forum users on Slyck.com's UK file sharing Allegations/Lawsuit Discussion sub-forum.[22] Nothing came of the threatened legal action.

Current status

Slyck.com no longer actively or significantly provides any file sharing news articles, with the last posted news article on file sharing, dated 16 June 2016.[23]

gollark: 🐝❗
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gollark: I mean, it's kind of weird aspect-ratio-wise?
gollark: https://github.com/rust-lang/regex/tree/master/regex-capi
gollark: I think they designed it with that in mind, or made an interface layer.

References
  1. Slyck.com Whois record. godaddy.com. Retrieved 2010-07-14.
  2. "Slyck 2.0" Slyck forum, April 5, 2006.
  3. "Movie file-sharing hubs poised to decentralise". Will Knight, NewScientist.com, December 22, 2004.
  4. Digital Audio Essentials. Bruce Fries and Marty Fries, O'Reilly Media, 2005. p 94. ISBN 978-0-596-00856-7. Retrieved 2010-07-14.
  5. Steal This Computer Book 4.0. Wallace Wang, No Starch Press, 2006. p 165. ISBN 978-1-59327-105-3. Retrieved 2010-07-14.
  6. "LokiTorrent caves to MPAA" Thomas Mennecke, Slyck.com, February 10, 2005
  7. Torrents "Suprnova.org Closes" Thomas Mennecke, Slyck.com, December 19, 2004
  8. "Interview with the CEO of StreamCast Networks". Slyck News, August 16, 2003.
  9. "SoulSeek Interview", Thomas Mennecke, Slyck News, December 26, 2003.
  10. "Interview with Pablo Soto of the Manolito P2P Network", Thomas Mennecke, Slyck News, February 17, 2004
  11. "WinMX Interview". Thomas Mennecke, Slyck News, December 25, 2003.
  12. "The Future of WinMX" Thomas Mennecke, MP3newswire.net, January 27, 2003.
  13. Slyck.com Interviews Jon Lech Johansen. Thomas Mennecke, Slyck News, April 4, 2005.
  14. "Interview with muslix64, Developer of BackupHDDVD". Slyck.com, January 24, 2007
  15. "Hi-def DVD security is bypassed". BBC News, January 26, 2007.
  16. "Why One Angry Customer Broke AACS". Derek Slater, Electronic Frontier Foundation, January 26, 2007.
  17. "Hacker Opens Crack In High-Def Movie DRM - HD movie player format cracked". Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek, January 26, 2007.
  18. "Slyck Interviews the MPAA". Nicholas Parr, Slyck.com, December 22, 2005.
  19. "Wank Plan Goes Wrong ACS:Law Threatens Slyck.com With a Lawsuit". Thomas Mennecke, Slyck News, March 21, 2010. Retrieved 2010-07-28.
  20. Piracy letter campaign 'nets innocents' BBC News, January 26, 2010.
  21. Major law firm drops filesharing threats - Staff continue 'bullying' at smaller outfit Chris Williams, The Register, May 12, 2009. Retrieved 2010-07-28.
  22. "UK Filesharing Allegations/Lawsuit Discussion Sub Forum". Slyck Forum.
  23. "Hacker Posts over 51 Million iMesh User Accounts for Sale on the Dark Web", Amanda Marie, Slyck News, June 16, 2016. Retrieved 2017-07-16
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