If you haven’t heard the news, Aurous is the new music “service” that’s given music industry high-ups a new reason to lose sleep. Billed as “Popcorn Time for music”, the controversial service has already been slammed with multiple lawsuits.

There’s been some confusion about just how Aurous works, but the one thing just about everybody agrees on is that it’s against the law, effectively providing totally unpaid and ad-free access to music on-demand for its users.

Much has been made of Aurous’ reputation as a ‘Popcorn Time for music’, i.e. a service that streams music directly from torrents, but according to its founder, Andrew Sampson, it’s a little more complicated than that.

Speaking to Billboard, Sampson said his app doesn’t allow users to stream music directly from illegal file-sharing sites. Instead, Aurous works as an internal database of links to content.

Regardless, the service has already drawn the ire of some very powerful music industry institutions, including the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), who wasted no time in going after Aurous with all of their legal might.

As Lexology notes, just three days after its alpha launch, the RIAA’s constituent major labels — Atlantic, Warner Bros., UMG Recordings, Sony Music, and Capitol Records — filed copyright infringement action against Aurous and founder Andrew Sampson.

Suffice it to say, it was a move that everyone saw coming. Indeed, most of the interviews with Sampson leading up to the launch of Aurous discussed potential and seemingly inevitable legal action from the music industry.

Sampson seemed unfazed and even bratty. When asked what he would do if served a cease and desist, he replied, “Ignore it. If someone asked us to shut down our service over one song, we wouldn’t. If someone were to approach us about a pre-release album being available, we would be obliged to help them remove that.”

From under an anvil of legal action, Sampson recently reached out to Aurous fans to show their support for the service as they contend with the RIAA’s suit, urging them to send a message to the RIAA via a viral #StandWithAurous campaign.

“On October 14, before the chisel could even be laid to the stone, the RIAA sued us,” Sampson wrote in a statement, “claiming we were nothing more than a pirate service, a judge ordered us to halt our operations; just like that all our hard work put on hold.”

“But we could not disagree more with the RIAA, you see there is a reason we chose the .me suffix for our website, Aurous isn’t about money or profits, we don’t need to impress shareholders, Aurous is a player that is being built for you…”

“Something that lets you bring all your services together. Not only that, but we had a big goal in mind after launching, create a community of music lovers all around the world. A community that can support each other and do beautiful things.”

“On October 28th, a judge will decide if Aurous can continue operating, we need all of your support. So tell the RIAA that creativity cannot be censored, that innovation cannot be silenced and most importantly, tell them you #StandWithAurous.”

The hashtag #StandWithAurous did begin to trend on Twitter, but perhaps not in the way the 20-year-old Sampson and his co-creator had hoped. It even sparked a rival campaign dubbed #IRespectMusic.

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Naturally, there were plenty of trolls flooding the tag as well. As one such tweeter wrote, “I #StandWithAurous not because of the RIAA bullshit, but because paying for streaming is too expensive for me.”

Meanwhile, others objected to the very concept of Aurous, writing, “Too bad I can’t #StandWithAurous because #IRespectMusic.” Not helping the case was Sampson himself, who compared his service to a gun manufacturer.

“So because gun manufacturers make guns, and people shoot other people, they’re complicit in murder?” Sampson tweeted, which as far as helping your public profile goes, is probably one of the worst things you could say.

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