Lewis Black sues Pandora for  million in comedian copyright infringement lawsuit

Lewis Black sues Pandora for $10 million in comedian copyright infringement lawsuit

A comedian has filed another lawsuit against Pandora accusing the streamer of ignoring appropriate copyright for streaming artists, this time by Lewis Black. According to the complaint filed Thursday in California federal court, Pandora “took and used her work only to make money, knowing she was not licensed and did not and would not pay royalties.”

The lawsuit is the latest in a growing dispute between streamers and comedians, who are trying to change the compensation landscape amid the boom in spoken content popularity. They present new licensing theories, arguing that they should be paid to write their jokes, just as musicians receive royalties for writing song lyrics.

Black’s lawsuit accuses Pandora of knowingly neglecting her duty to maintain proper copyright. “Pandora did what most Goliaths do: they decided to go bust now to ensure they have this valuable intellectual property on their platform to stay competitive and face the consequences later,” wrote Richard Bush, partner at King & Ballow. Black. , in the complaint. “Later is now.”

Pandora acknowledged in financial filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission between 2011 and 2017 that it was at risk of losing comedy content because it did not have the proper license to broadcast the work, according to the lawsuit. Pandora acknowledged that it “could be subject to significant liability for copyright infringement and may not be able to continue operating [their] Existing Licensing Regime”. The grant was lifted after SiriusXM acquired Pandora in 2019.

“Aten. Black once joked after the Enron scandal: ‘Don’t you want another Enron? This is their law: if a company can’t explain what it does in one sentence, it’s illegal.’ It’s exactly the same thing here: if a company cannot explain in one sentence how it has a license to use copyrighted works, that is copyright infringement,” the complaint states.

Black is seeking more than $10 million because Pandora illegally distributed 68 of his works.

Pandora maintains that the current compensation regime is legal under copyright law. In the antitrust infringement suit, he said that “Word Collections consolidated the naturally competitive rights to its comics into a monopolistic portfolio and set the only available license price for those rights, ensuring that the Services had no alternative to their outright license”. for your entire portfolio.

Musical works are protected by two copyrights: one for the sound recording and one for the underlying written music. Streaming services like Pandora and Spotify pay royalties to each copyright holder.

But for spoken word recordings, which are classified as comedic performances, streaming services only pay for the recording, not the composition itself — in this case, the writing of the comedy. The Word Collection, which is trying to position itself as an ASCAP-like comic book collection group for composers, is trying to change that. His clients include the properties of Robin Williams and George Carlin, who sued Pandora in February.

Among the reasons that spoken word artists do not receive the same compensation as musicians is that performance rights organizations such as BMI, ASCAP and SESAC have existed since the 1930s to represent composers, while spoken word artist rights organizations like Spoken Giants and Word Collection, I have. It only exists since 2019.

“They shoot first and then shoot, that’s how tech companies work,” said Jeff Price, CEO of Word Collections. “They were caught and paid a parking ticket. They use their money to make life difficult for comedians and make their salaries more expensive.”

Price continued: “Comedians are looking for companies that will use their stuff to protect the law, licensing and paying royalties. Nobody is asking them to reinvent the wheel.”

Pandora and SiriusXM did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

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