Estates of Robin Williams, George Carlin sue Pandora over comedy rights | Engadget

Spotify is not the one streaming service to face a dispute with comedians. Both Puck and The Verge have discovered the estates of Robin Williams and George Carlin have sued SiriusXM’s Pandora for allegedly streaming the comedy legends’ jokes with out full licenses. The late comedians’ representatives declare Pandora solely has the licenses to stream the recordings, not the jokes themselves — and it supposedly would not have “any copyright.”

Williams’ property needs $4.1 million in damages for copyright infringement, whereas Carlin’s is searching for $8.4 million. Comedians Andrew Dice Clay, Bill Engvall and Ron White have additionally made complaints, asserting Pandora hasn’t offered a “fraction of a penny” for his or her work.

The estates declare Pandora confessed to having improper licenses in SEC filings between 2011 and 2017, predating SiriusXM’s acquisition. In these filings, the service warned traders it could not assure the corporate would keep away from “additional licensing costs” from rights teams for spoken-word comedy. Companies steadily embody danger alerts like this in filings no matter their licensing intentions, nevertheless.

We’ve requested SiriusXM for remark. Pandora is not a stranger to license battles. It paid $90 million in 2015 to settle a battle over allegations it used a loophole to play pre-1972 songs with out paying labels, and was 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 take a look at in court docket, in accordance with Puck, and the end result of the Pandora case might have an effect on how Spotify and different companies pay comedians for his or her work.