If you haven’t heard about Aurous yet, it is largely called the Popcorn Time for music, as it offers free music streaming services based on torrents. Or more information about the new app and how it works, check out my last month’s article on it, here.
On October 10, the service entered the alpha stage and it has already caught the attention of authorities. Although, as it was explained in the previous article, the service is nothing like Grooveshark and is completely legal because it uses public APIs from legal sources, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) doesn’t seem to agree. RIAA has filed a lawsuit against Aurous developers by accusing them of being “well aware of the copyright infringement caused by their service and willfully intend for it to happen.”
According to Andrew Sampson, one of the app’s founders, RIAA is asking for $3 million damages, for trampling the rights of music artists. Because of its similarity to Grooveshark, Aurous started to attract attention early which brought other types of problems for the app’s founders until today. Developers of Aurous had to shut down their funding campaign started on Indiegogo and fully refund its backers.
This setback didn’t stop Aurous from entering its alpha stage as expected and it did become popular fast. Sampson declared that more than 8000 people were downloading the app at any other time. Apparently, Sampson is determined to fight back and even has ideas that will improve their service. In future updates, Aurous will offer labels the possibility to ask for the removal of songs that are infringing and add a system that will allow users to “tip” artists with bitcoin cryptocurrency.
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