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The Music Industry Sued Aurous, the Popcorn Time for Music, Hours After Release

While like Popcorn Time in every other way, the RIAA says it pulled from illegal Russian filesharing sites instead of BitTorrent.
Image: Aurous

Streaming has made music remarkably accessible. Apple Music costs $3-4 per month in certain countries, and Google Play Music's family plan drops costs down to $2.50 for up to six users. But that didn't stop developers from creating Aurous, a music streaming program that's completely free of ads and free of charge.

And it also didn't slow the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) triggers; the app's developers are facing up to $3 million in charges from the RIAA for massive copyright infringement mere hours after its release.

The program works in a similar fashion to Popcorn Time, a streaming program for TV shows and movies—it sources copies of the content that the user wants, then packages it to stream.

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 Russia. Think of Rapidshare, Mega, those internet alleyways you'd pore over when you couldn't find an album on a streaming service. And while Popcorn Time was hard to peg for the MPAA (it's going after users instead of the devs), the RIAA sees it worthwhile that Aurous' devs, whose identities were very much in the open on their site, face the judges for even thinking of riding on Popcorn Time's coattails.

Aurous' developers decline to comment when asked by Motherboard.