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Exclusive: Aurous Announcing Its Legal Defense Team…

Paul Resnikoff
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aurous_lawyers1

The following is a developing story; please check back for ongoing updates in this quick-shifting situation.  Last update: 9:30 am PT Friday.

Perhaps burying Aurous will be more difficult than the music industry initially thought.  Late last night or early this (Friday) morning, Aurous developer Andrew Sampson complied with a court order to remove application downloads from aurous.me.

But Sampson has also secured legal representation from two Miami-area lawyers, according to court documents exclusively secured by Digital Music News.

The papers, including the leaked excerpt above, are now being entered into the case docket at the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida.   They will confirm that attorneys Shawn L.M. Hairston, Sr., Esq. of Hairston Law, P.A., and  Frank L. Hollander, Esq. of Hollander & Associates, LLC are committing to become lawyers of record for both Sampson and Aurous.  Both are certified and active members of the Florida Bar.

The representation signals that Sampson is indeed serious about his intentions to fight back.  So far, the legal assault against Aurous has been swift and heavy: hundreds of pages of legal documents have been filed, with high-powered lawyers from Washington, DC-based Williams & Connolly, LLP and Miami-based Gray Robinson, PA waging the initial shock-and-awe.

Pulling the puppet strings on this devastating opening act was the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), acting on behalf of major labels Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and their various subsidiaries.

As of Friday morning, aurous.me remains a shell, with downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux suddenly missing.  Many of those download files are likely to pop up elsewhere, including offshore-hosted accounts, though it’s unclear how directed and focused development efforts on the codebase will be.

More as this situation develops.

13 Responses

  1. Anonymous

    “Aurous Now Has a Legal Defense Team”

    Good luck with that. 🙂

    • Google to the Rescue! Ripping Off Artists for over 15 Years!

      Google, the EFF, Techdirt the usual band of anti-artist, anti-creator, pro-techcorp profiteering, self interested organizations who always are working to economically exploit musicians and songwriters are sure to be crawling out of the woodwork to support these thieves.

      • William

        You should reconsider your comment, as it may be considered libelous.
        Also, the EFF made a small tweet about the case, likening it to SOPA, but apparently has lost interest, probably when their experts that cracked ComputerCop’s spyware took a look at the code.

  2. Anonymous

    Appears neither attorney has any experience with intellectual property law. Not going to to go well for them – although the building they practice in contains three IP law firms so maybe they’ll ask their neighbors for help.

  4. Anonymous

    This is hilarious. The app sucks. Hard. All this noise for something that no one would ever use anyway. Kid must have rich parents.

    • Anonymous

      Never a good sign when an attorney’s sole Yelp review calls him out for being “creepy” …

  6. My Cousin Vinny

    Hey. Yo. I’m a here to reprsentent this aurabus bus thingy.

    Can ya drive this bus, o just fucking park it in the mud?

  8. Way Down

    The best part of this page is the “advertise on digital music news” banner
    As if anyone would throw dollars at this piece of shit. If i ever am looking for the demographic of bitter musos who like to read bait and switch articles i’ll def give you a call

    • Tone

      LOL, did Paul write something bad about one of your companies?

      Really tho, there’s def some shady and click-baity articles on DMN from time to time, but it’s still one of the best industry sites. Billboard plays it too safe and Hypebot is a cluttered and inconsistent mess.