RIAA Obtains Restraining Order Against Aurous

It’s been a week of drama for brand new music discovery tool Aurous. Just four days after its launch on Saturday the RIAA sued the creator of the software and demanding $3m for their trouble.

Legal paperwork has been steadily filed ever since, but today came the most significant development yet. Following a request from plaintiffs Atlantic Records, Warner Bros, UMG, Sony and Capital Records for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, a judge in a Florida district court has now issued his response.

In an order issued this morning, Judge Jose E. Martinez granted the labels’ motion for a temporary restraining order.

“Defendants and their officers, agents, servants, employees, attorneys, and all persons who in active concert or participation with each or any of them, or who are aiding and abetting their conduct, are hereby RESTRAINED and ENJOINED until further Order of this Court,” Judge Martinez writes.

As a result, Sampson and everyone associated with the Aurous project are now forbidden from “infringing, or causing, enabling, facilitating, encouraging, promoting and inducing or participating in the infringement of, any of Plaintiffs’ copyrights protected by the Copyright Act, whether now in existence or hereafter created.”

Those restrictions include, but are not limited to, any further making available of the Aurous software in any form. Sampson and his co-defendants are also restricted from transferring any domain names to third parties.

To protect Sampson in the event that he’s been wrongfully restrained by the court, the labels were ordered to post a bond of $5,000 as security for any costs or damages.

The request from the labels for a preliminary injunction was denied pending a maximum 30 minute hearing now scheduled for October 28, 2015.

“The parties shall confer prior to the hearing to determine how to split the allotted time. lf the parties are unable to agree on how to split the allotted time, the Court will decide how to split the allotted time,” the Judge warned.

It’s unclear whether Sampson has been served with a copy of the order already but in any event the Aurous software currently remains available via Aurous.me.

“Our legal team is actively working to secure our place in the music eco system,” Sampson said earlier today on Twitter. “Rest assured we want to be around a long time.”

At the moment the RIAA appears to have little interest in those efforts.

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