Update, Friday AM: Aurous has now pulled all available downloads from aurous.me following the court order; Aurous founder Andrew Sampson has confirmed the yank-down in a tweet this (Friday) morning.
The following is the story we published Thursday afternoon, immediately following the court-issued temporary injunction.
The order, signed by US District Court judge Jose E. Martinez at 2:20 pm ET today (Thursday), orders Aurous to halt all further distribution of its application, including on aurous.me. The ‘Temporary Restraining Order,’ means removing all available downloads immediately from aurous.me, under penalty of the court.
The order, received by Digital Music News this (Thursday) afternoon, comes less than two days after Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment filed suit against Aurous in federal court, and less than a week after Aurous launches its ‘0.1 alpha’ version. “Plaintiffs’ motion for a Temporary Restraining Order is GRANTED in part as set forth herein,” the court order declares. “The motion is otherwise denied.”
“According, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that, pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 502 and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(b), Defendants and their officers, agents, servants, employees, attorneys, and all persons who in active concert or participation with each or any of them, or who are aiding or abetting their conduct, are hereby RESTRAINED and ENJOINED until further Order of this Court from infringing, or causing, enabling, facilitating, encouraging, promoting and inducing or participating in the infringement of, any of Plaintiffs’ copyrights protected by the Copyright Act, whether now in existence or hereby created, including but not limited to, by (a) making the “Aurous” software application, whether in desktop or mobile versions, including applications running on the iOS or Android operating systems, available for download or use; and (b) allowing the transfer to any person of any or all domain names or URLs through which Defendants infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights (including, without limitation, aurous.me).”
As of 6:30 pm ET, aurous.me remains live, with the BitTorrent-based streaming application available for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.
The order isn’t a permanent injunction, and would permit Aurous to continue distribution and dissemination if cleared in court.
More as this story develops. Here’s the order:
Good job! Thanks for the attention, now there are a lot of developers who can’t wait to create a similar application as many people are clearly interested. And I’m sure it’ll be free and open-source. Good luck trying to stop people from sharing code (Popcorn Time). The music industry is fucked. You are not artists, you are a bunch of greedy bastards, trying to make money from content that literally takes zero effort to copy. Copies have no value. A copy of the Mona Lisa has no value. You’re all fucked unless you realize this and try to monetize your talent in other ways (live shows, merchandise etc.). The corporations will not save you, they will use you and starve you to death as long as they can fill their pockets.
LOL, how old are you, 12?
1. Not all artists and labels are greedy. Many just want to be compensated for their work, like everyone else in this world. If you think that’s greedy, you’re an entitled little bastard that’s never struggled in life.
2. There are a lot of fans that are willing to support the artists they love by paying for access (Spotify, Apple Music) or buy downloads. Not everyone is an entitled little brat who expects everything for free.
Oh, by the way, I’m a 31-year-old music junkie who GREW UP ON NAPSTER. I had an awakening a few years back though and decided that supporting the artists that I love is the right thing to do.
“I’m a 31-year-old music junkie who GREW UP ON NAPSTER. I had an awakening a few years back though and decided that supporting the artists that I love is the right thing to do”
Cool, bro.
Yeah, it sounds corny. It’s true though. I downloaded a lot of unauthorized music between the years 1999 and 2005 but that’s because the industry as a whole was lagging behind technology. They’re pretty much all caught up now, though, so there’s just no excuse to not support them.
But in a larger sense, the idea of expecting anything for free and chastising those who create it for wanting to get paid is just absurd. It’s represents the pinnacle of entitlement.
Don’t feel the need to defend yourself.
“Yeah, it sounds corny.”
Not at all — I didn’t mean to be ironic.
“They’re pretty much all caught up now, though, so there’s just no excuse to not support them.”
A lot of people agree these days; more and more fans use Patreon and similar services to support their favorite artists directly, etc.
“Copies have no value”
Please post a copy of your of your visa, thanx.
Copies of art (aka reprints) are actually ridiculously expensive. Just saying.
and in your Utopian existence how would the non-touring, non performing song writers benefit?
No judge can make the source code disappear. But nice try!
Wack-a-mole isn’t a business model, remember that
Let’s apply your reasoning to a capital crime such as murder…
We as a society will never be able to stop murders from happening. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go after murderers and punish them accordingly, though. Using your reasoning, we should just give up because there will always be murderers. Right?
Did you just compare a 20 year old, creating an app that utilizes public APIs from Youtube and Soundcloud to a fucker murderer? Yes lets leave a kid in financial ruin for developing something.
Oh, please…
Tone is spot on. Criminals have used your whack-a-mole argument since the dawn of man, it’s kind of getting tired.
yep, i sure did. now do you see how flawed that reasoning is?
let’s try another example:
property theft is a non violent crime and will likely exist forever. should society just throw its hands up and say, “there’s always going to be burglars, so why even try to stop and punish them?”
It’s a start.
Question for the pro-copyright lot – One day it will be possible to copy the entire musical database of Earth onto a usb-like keyring as well as share that file with anyone. The ability of Spotify to hold and manage a 30 million song database will be available to everyone at some point. Earth.mp3 will be emailed across the globe to friends in 2 minutes. This is really the endgame here, like a musical singularity if you like. What will you do then?
My takeaway from Aurous (and all the other file-sharing apps back to Napster) is how easy this stuff is to build. Kids, literal kids, can assemble these things from the toolbox which are the personal computer and the Internet.