Pandora has been hit with another lawsuit by a comedian accusing the streamer of shortchanging artists by neglecting to obtain the proper copyrights to stream their works — this time by Lewis Black. According to a complaint filed on Thursday in California federal court, Pandora “took and exploited his works solely to make themselves money while knowing it had no license and had not paid, and would not be paying, royalties.”
The lawsuit is the latest in an escalating feud between streamers and comedians pushing to change the landscape of compensation amid a boon in popularity for spoken word content. They raise novel licensing theories arguing that they should be paid for writing their jokes much in the same way that musicians are paid royalties for composing song lyrics.
The lawsuit filed by Black accuses Pandora of knowingly flouting its obligation to secure the proper copyrights. “Pandora did what most goliaths do: it decided it would infringe now to ensure it had this very valuable intellectual property on its platform to remain competitive, and deal with the consequences later,” writes Richard Busch, a partner at King & Ballow representing Black, in the complaint. “Later is now.”
Pandora conceded in financial filings to the Security and Exchange Commission from 2011 to 2017 that it was at risk of losing its comedy content because it doesn’t have the proper licenses to stream the works, according to the suit. Pandora admitted that it “could be subject to significant liability for copyright infringement and may no longer be able to operate under [their] existing licensing regime.” The concession was removed after Pandora was acquired in 2019 by SiriusXM.
“Mr. Black once famously quipped in the wake of the Enron Scandal: ‘You don’t want another Enron? Here’s your law: If a company can’t explain in one sentence what it does, it’s illegal.’ The exact same thing is true here: If a Company can’t explain in one sentence how it has a license to use copyrighted works, it’s copyright infringement,” the complaint reads.
Black seeks more than $10 million over Pandora allegedly illegally streaming 68 of his works.
Pandora has maintained that the current compensation regime is legal under copyright law. In a countersuit alleging violations of antitrust law, it claimed that, “Word Collections has consolidated its comedians’ naturally competing rights into a monopolistic portfolio and fixed the price of the only license available for those rights, ensuring that services have no alternative to its blanket license for its entire portfolio.”
(Excerpt) Read more in: The Hollywood Reporter