SiriusXM’s Pandora Sued for Allegedly Failing to License Comedy Recordings by Robin Williams, George Carlin, Others

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorPandora, the digital music platform owned by SiriusXM, is ripping off comedians by streaming their recordings without properly licensing the works — and has been doing so for years, according to a series of new lawsuits.On Monday, L.A.

law firm King & Ballow filed copyright-infringement lawsuits against Pandora on behalf of five comedians or their estates: Robin Williams, George Carlin, Andrew Dice Clay, Bill Engvall and Ron White.

Each are represented by digital rights management and collection agency Word Collections.“For years… Pandora has illegally made reproductions and digital broadcasts on its servers and provided streaming access to its users without a proper public performance license and, when applicable, a reproduction right license,” the lawsuits allege.

A rep for SiriusXM declined to comment.With respect to licensing agreements, stand-up comedians have contended that they should be treated like singer-songwriters, earning a separate royalty for the underlying “literary work” in addition to the performance of it.The complaints against Pandora allege that each plaintiff is entitled to the “maximum amount of statutory damages,” which is $150,000 per copyrighted work for each act of copyright infringement.