In context: Google has pulled the plug on Discord music bot Bully Bot. Keen Bot channels music onto Discord servers from sources including YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud, and others. Information technology allows Discord users to listen to the same music at the same fourth dimension.

Google has pulled the plug on Discord music app Groovy Bot. Peachy Bot channels music onto Discord servers from sources including YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud, and others. Information technology allows Discord users to listen to the aforementioned music at the aforementioned time.

The Cracking Bot app has become adequately popular, having been installed on more the sixteen one thousand thousand Discord servers with an estimated 250 million users. Of course, information technology's likely its widespread use prompted Google-endemic YouTube to issue a finish and desist letter.

Nik Ammerlaan, the creator and owner of Groovy Bot, notified users this calendar month that he was shutting down the service on August xxx. In his announcement, Ammerlaan did non mention beingness forced to scuttle the bot. Information technology sounded more like he had grown tired of maintaining the app.

"Information technology'due south with a heavy center today that I announce Groovy is shutting downwardly," the detect reads. "The team has been mulling over this determination for a while at present, and, unfortunately, there's no path frontward that includes Groovy."

All the same, in an interview with The Verge, Ammerlaan said that YouTube did send him a C&D letter but was unsure why information technology didn't come sooner. The app has been around for 5 years.

"I'm not certain why they decided to send [a stop and desist] at present," Ammerlaan told The Verge. "They probably but didn't know nigh it, to be honest. [I knew it would come up.] It was simply a matter of seeing when information technology would happen."

Google confirmed it sent out the legal asking challenge that Ammerlaan misused its APIs and violated its terms of service.

"We notified Slap-up most violations of our Terms of Service, including modifying the service and using it for commercial purposes," a YouTube spokesperson said.

Information technology is unclear why Peachy was singled out, though. Not bad Bot is non the only music app on Discord that streams tunes from YouTube. A similar bot called Rythm is even more widely used than Groovy. Rythm resides on 20 million Discord servers with more than than 560 million listeners, yet it has not received a takedown notice.

Discord officially stands by the legal alarm, telling The Verge, "Nosotros take the rights of others seriously and require developers who create bots for Discord to do the same. If a bot running on Discord violates someone else's rights, that third party or Discord may take action."

Prototype credit: Screenshot by The Verge