The Record Industry Is Suing Aurous, the Popcorn Time for Music

While Amoeba Music is busy trying to open up a marijuana dispensary on the premises of their Berkeley location in order to boost sales, the internet is now abuzz about a new piece of software called Aurous, which people are saying might be the Popcorn Time of music.

Aurous uses peer-to-peer BitTorrent technology to stream, not download, music, and has drawn comparisons with illegal video streaming app Popcorn Time for its familiar and polished user interface.

But the RIAA made the difference between the two clear; while Popcorn Time’s backbone is BitTorrent, the complaint mentions that Aurous sources from one file uploading site based in Russian Federation.

As things stand, the service is still available from Arous’ website, but there’s no telling when or if it will be pummelled into oblivion by a judge’s gavel.

Of course, there are a few downsides to the Aurous service, starting with the extremely limited selection.

Doesn’t matter now as the three majors, UMG, Sony Music and WMG (as well as subsidiaries Atlantic and Capitol) have filed sued against the app. “This service is a flagrant example of a business model powered by copyright theft on a massive scale,” industry watchdog RIAA said.

Aurous lets you enjoy your already existing collection of FLAC, MP3, WAV, OGG, OPUS, even WebA but obviously what makes it very risky is its ability to use Aurous to search for any song you want and listen to it whenever you want.

“Like Grokster, Limewire or Grooveshark, it is neither licensed nor legal.”

“We will not allow such a service to willfully trample the rights of music creators”, said an RIAA spokesperson in a statement provided to the Guardian.

It remains unclear is how Aurous plans to fund the legal fight.

However, Sampson does already have the backing of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and was certainly bullish when responding to the record industry’s “empty” legal action yesterday.