The music industry hated
Grooveshark because it never paid for the music it streamed, and it was finally able to shut it down earlier in the year. Now a new service called
Aurous has appeared, immediately drawing the wrath of the
RIAA in the form of a lawsuit.
Grooveshark worked as a shell on top of
Google, which basically searched the web to find the songs (most of them illegally uploaded) you wanted to hear. Aurous works the same way, but instead uses the
Torrents to find illegally uploaded song files. It's similar to
Popcorn Time, which does the same thing for movies and television shows and currently has those industries scrambling.
Aurous has in interface that's very similar to
Spotify, and features ad-free streaming, which also means that the copyright holder, the artists and songwriters aren't getting paid. The service debuted an alpha version last week.
The music industry was quick to react, showing just how much the site is feared.
On Monday, the RIAA on behalf of
UMG, Sony Music, Warner Music, Atlantic and
Capitol Records, filed a lawsuit against Aurous and its creator
Andrew Sampson for "willful and egregious copyright infringement."
The problem is that Aurous operates as a decentralized
BitTorrent search engine, and the company can argue that it's not hosting any illegal content.
This will be an interesting legal battle that's only just beginning.
