back to article Aurous shutters for good, will pay $3m damages

Pirate music wannabe Aurous has shut down, barely three months after first surfacing. Billed in Vice as “BitTorrent Music for your Dad”, and described as a “Popcorn Time for music”, the outfit, whose sole proprietor was Andrew Sampson, has agreed to pay damages of $3m. The case is notable for the speed with which the operation …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ugh...

    Dude, if you're going to f**k with the music industry, do your research first and know how to either provide an actually useful service, or keep yourself truly anonymous.

    *sigh*

    1. tmTM

      Re: Ugh...

      He was kidding himself if he thought the music industry weren't going to have his head on a pole.

      Why you'd write, release and become the public head of such an obvious target is beyond me?

  2. Quortney Fortensplibe

    Tut! Tut!

    When will these cheeky upstarts learn that only Google are allowed to link to copyrighted material, with impunity:

    SEARCH TERMS: "some-song filetype:mp3"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Tut! Tut!

      What you need is some kind of search engine, to Google the Google.

      No doubt it'd be totally illegal.

    2. dotdavid

      Re: Tut! Tut!

      Careful, you'll be getting El Reg's forums shut down for being a pirate search engine.

  3. IHateWearingATie
    FAIL

    Sympathy?

    Not likely

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    photo?

    I know we are getting used to the randomness of the pictures El Reg uses to decorate articles ...

    But what is the relevance of a Weagles player being hit in the nose by an Aussie Rules football?

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: photo?

      "But what is the relevance of a Weagles player being hit in the nose by an Aussie Rules football?"

      Well, it's now an out of order parking meter with the word FAIL on the LCD display which is ever so slightly more relevant, but not by much. Maybe the picture editor has stared Xmas hols early and the YTS trainee has been left in charge? :-)

  6. Unep Eurobats
    Pirate

    3 MEEELLION dollars

    I'd be interested to know how that figure was arrived at. It doesn't sound like Sampson could have made anything like that money during the short time his service was running.

    Would it have been a case of pay up or go to jail? I suppose it might have been possible to scan logs and estimate how much copyrighted music was downloaded through Aurous and hence how much revenue was potentially lost. Presumably RIAA has a finely tuned algorithm for this.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Holmes

    Final Score: Music Makers = 1, @AurousApp and Music Thieves = 0

    A bit of a narrow result; if we added all the failed attempts to shut down ThePirateBay, the results would look slightly different.

  8. Nunyabiznes

    I spy...

    "Recording Industry Ass. of America"

    I see what you did there.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I spy...

      You must be new here...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Victory for musicians??

    For the record: RIAA represents the record companies who have a long history of screwing musicians.

    I almost feel sorry for Sampson... but I assume he's a greedy startuptard.

  10. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    FSCK music

    It's interesting that the RIAA blame pirating for the decline in profits from recordings when you can argue that the real culprit is the record companies themselves that have stifled creativity to the point that all their carefully curated acts sound the same.

    Let's face it - the music industry is all about profits and not music.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: FSCK music

      "It's interesting that the RIAA blame"

      Everybody except themselves.

      Historical notes: Music industry revenue was declining from the late 70s until CDs came along(*). Sales spiked as people refreshed their collections, then it declined until people started sharing mp3s on the Internet. It started declining again when they shut down napster and friends and has stayed that way ever since.

      (*) Revenue, not sales. Sales have been declining since the early 1960s.

  11. Stevie

    Bah!

    Another strike against The Internet of Twats.

  12. bjr

    Party like it's 1999

    Where si the demand for a piracy service in 2015 when there are so many legal free or cheap ways to get all the music or movies that you want. If you are willing to listen to a few ads Pandora and iHeartradio are free and they have really great apps that are much easier to use then downloading a pirated mp3. If you don't want the ads the monthly fee for Pandora is very reasonable, Spotify only slightly more. The same goes for a Netflix subscription, the month fee for Netflix is which is only $10 a month.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Party like it's 1999

      Pandora? Spotify? Those guys are screwing us as harder than the pirates, and getting away with it cos they're not so 'tarded.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    music makers still didn't win anything

    big money music industry did. the corporates whose only difference between any manufacturer (gun, car, computer, fast food, etc) is their product. gaining profit by any means necessary including hosing over content providers, industry staff, and customers.

    Basically lawyers and investors getting paid to maintain a status quo while the music makers, similar to manufacturing or coding producers, take whatever is left over.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I miss napster, it was the only place I could get music I couldn't buy because they were out of print and not available. It had a wonderful community of people dedicated to music that would rip vinyl just to share with others. I'm sure many record companies were annoyed but at the end of the day if you're not going to make the music available then what do you expect and yes I know there was a lot of "Popular" sorry "Shite" music on there but I never downloaded that.

    What would happen if someone created a spotify type app that harvested youtube? Would that be taken down for copyright as the royalty would have been paid by youtube therefore there would be no argument or am I missing something?

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