Spotify has faced the same kind of issue - and last fall, the streaming service removed multiple comedy albums, evidently over licensing disputes. Provided to YouTube by The Orchard Enterprises Guys Named Todd George Carlin Complaints & Grievances 2016 Released on: Auto-gen. Each of the plaintiffs is repped by King & Ballow partner Richard Busch. District Court for the Central District of California. The lawsuits against Pandora were filed Feb. “While Carlin would have been thrilled for his Works to live on through valid licenses and payments, he would have seven dirty words to say about Pandora’s actions and willful copyright infringement no doubt,” says the suit on behalf of Main Sequence, which manages George Carlin’s estate. In the filings, Pandora also admitted that it “could be subject to significant liability for copyright infringement and may no longer be able to operate under existing licensing regime.”
They cite Pandora’s “Risk Factors” disclosures in SEC 10-K filings from 2011-17 (prior to its acquisition by SiriusXM) in which it acknowledges that it distributes spoken-word comedy content “absent a specific license from any performing rights organization” and that it never obtained a license for the underlying literary works for those sound recordings. In addition, Pandora’s “failure to obtain the necessary licenses for the Works, or pay royalties, but to nonetheless infringe by exploiting the Works, has been willful,” the complaints allege.
Pandora “knew or should have known that the harm caused by its repeated unlicensed public performance of the Works over the Internet was aimed at comedy writers and comedy publishers,” each lawsuit states. In total, the five lawsuits seek $41.55 million in damages from Pandora.
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. The material had been performed on Septemand was released alongside the first performance of the routine which shows a marked contrast in the writing of the routine.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 title track of the working version of this show was released on the official 2016 release I Kinda Like It When a Lotta People Die.
Obviously." The unaltered opening to the program was later discovered by his daughter, after his death. Changing the name.'" After explaining briefly the nature of the show, Carlin added "Everything's the same, except I had to take that piece out.
And it was all about natural disasters and stuff and I had a nice nine minute piece on that but the morning I woke up and saw the special effects thing on the TV I thought 'Oh yeah. I had to make a few alterations 'cause–You wanna hear the name of what the show was called and I'm telling you the truth? The name of it was I Kinda Like It When A Lot of People Die. In an interview with Opie & Anthony on October 24, 2001, Carlin explained: "It's gonna be good, though. The working title of the show was "I Kinda Like It When A Lot of People Die" but it was changed after the Septemattacks.