Streaming Engine Aurous Shuts Down Over Lawsuit From RIAA

The Aurous music streaming engine was pulled offline Thursday less than a week after launch after a lawsuit was filed against its creators by the Recording Industry Association of America. The suit was filed against the company, and developer Andrew Sampson, claiming he was “well aware of the copyright infringement caused by their service and willfully intend for it to happen.” Like the ill-fated movie streaming service, Popcorn Time, Aurous did not host content, but instead utilized public APIs to locate songs on other online sources such as SoundCloud, YouTube and Spotify, then streamed to Aurous users. Aurous claimed that it wasn’t making money with the ad-free service, hence there is no copyright infringement. The RIAA countered that the company was building a user base using copyrighted works, and could “monetize now or later with advertising and other methods of generating revenue.” Aurous announced the shutdown with a Tweet Wednesday morning that read: “We’ve closed up shop, be sure to follow @Andrewmd5 it was fun guys!”