Spotify is never the exclusively streaming service to face a dispute with comedians. Each Puck and The Verge enjoy realized the estates of Robin Williams and George Carlin enjoy sued SiriusXM’s Pandora for allegedly streaming the comedy legends’ jokes with out stout licenses. The unhurried comedians’ representatives claim Pandora exclusively has the licenses to movement the recordings, no longer the jokes themselves — and it supposedly doesn’t enjoy “any copyright.”
Williams’ estate needs $4.1 million in damages for copyright infringement, whereas Carlin’s is hunting for $8.4 million. Comedians Andrew Dice Clay, Invoice Engvall and Ron White enjoy furthermore made complaints, asserting Pandora hasn’t supplied a “allotment of a penny” for his or her work.
The estates claim Pandora confessed to having contemptible licenses in SEC filings between 2011 and 2017, predating SiriusXM’s acquisition. In these filings, the service warned investors it would possibly well well well now not guarantee the firm would lend a hand faraway from “extra licensing costs” from rights teams for spoken-observe comedy. Companies frequently include threat indicators admire this in filings no topic their licensing intentions, however.
We’ve asked SiriusXM for observation. Pandora is never a stranger to license battles. It paid $90 million in 2015 to decide a war over allegations it outdated a loophole to play pre-1972 songs with out paying labels, and used to be sued in 2019 for supposedly displaying lyrics from Rage Against the Machine and Tom Petty with out permission. But comedy licensing issues have not had a agency test in court, in step with Puck, and the of the Pandora case can enjoy an impression on how Spotify and other services and products pay comedians for his or her work.
All products suggested by Engadget are chosen by our editorial crew, self sustaining of our parent firm. Some of our tales include affiliate hyperlinks. Ought to you set one thing by arrangement of this form of hyperlinks, we would possibly well well originate an affiliate commission.
