Author: Eric Bangeman

When Bloom County appeared for the first time in the Rocky Mountain News in December 1980, 13-year-old me immediately took notice. The style and characters were reminiscent of Doonesbury (Bloom County author Berkeley Breathed has acknowledged the influence of Garry Trudeau’s comic), but it was fresh, goofy, and, most of the time, hilarious. Not only was Breathed’s artistic ability obvious even when compressed into a few square inches of newsprint, it also stood out from the likes of B.C., Wizard of ID, Blondie, and other comic-page stalwarts for its sharp and satirical humor. Every character Breathed introduced quickly found a home in Bloom County‘s twisted little world, especially Bill the Cat, who was introduced to satirize Jim Davis’ continuous attempts to pump out Garfield merchandise.

The strip had a great run until Breathed discontinued it in August 1989, much to the disappointment of his millions of fans. Breathed was the first artist to walk away from a popular comic strip while it was still fresh and funny, and perhaps he set an example for Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) and Gary Larson (The Far Side) to follow, as they unexpectedly wrapped up their comics in 1995.

Breathed didn’t completely give up comics, moving on to the short-lived, Sunday-only Outland, which featured an all-new cast, aside from Bill the Cat and Opus the penguin. Outland ended in 1995, and we wouldn’t see any other comics from Breathed until the launch of Opus, which that ran every Sunday from 2003 to 2008. Breathed has been absent from the world of comics since then, but that unexpectedly and happily changed in July 2015 when the first all-new Bloom County comic in over two-and-a-half decades appeared on Facebook.

In a cryptic message posted on its website, SlySoft, a company that made several applications devoted to defeating DRM schemes, announced that it has shut down. “Due to recent regulatory requirements we have had to cease all activities relating to SlySoft Inc.,” reads the brief message. “We wish to thank our loyal customers/clients for their patronage over the years.”

SlySoft made its name by creating software capable of defeating the Content Scrambling System used by DVDs and later by defeating the Advanced Access Content System and BD+ DRM used by Blu-ray and HD DVD.

In 2016, a time when digital distribution is ubiquitous, the landscape of a decade ago seems almost quaint. Content creators were just as determined to keep video as locked down as they are today, but the battle was waged with DRMed optical discs on one side and decryption software on the other. And SlySoft’s AnyDVD and AnyDVD HD were favored weapons of Windows users who wanted to copy DRMed movies to their hard drives for personal use (and for uploading to P2P sites). Even if you didn't care too much about format-shifting, AnyDVD made it possible to skip past trailers users were forced to watch on DVD players.