The Turtles have filed a class-action suit against Pandora, claiming $25 million in damages for copyright infringement. The band’s hit songs date from before 1972 when federal copyright protections took effect, but it is arguing that Pandora infringed on copyright by playing its music without permission and now owes it royalties under California law. The New York Times reported that pre-1972 songs only account for about 5% of the music played on Pandora. A representative from the online radio company said that the platform was confident in its actions, noting that Pandora pays separate songwriting royalties on all its music, including those tunes from before the pivotal date.
The band must be feeling good after a first success with its suit against Sirius XM on the same topic in California, which could net $100 million in damages for group unless the satellite radio company manages to win an appeal. That decision is being hailed as a major victory for artists against online and digital music services. But that initial success does not mean there’s any assurance that the courts will rule the same way in this instance.
The nature of copyright law means that the topic will be handled in a piecemeal style for some time. Since there is no federal statute covering pre-1972 copyright payments, the lawsuits are rolling in at the state level. The Turtles’ action against Sirius XM also included challenges in Florida and New York, but those decisions have not come in yet. The various district and state courts also seem inconsistent in their treatments of pre-1972 royalty cases; Sirius XM seemed to be on the brink of positive news in a similar California suit filed by major labels.
A bill called The Respect Act was introduced in Congress earlier this year in an effort to create a national standard for pre-1972 music performance royalties. It has the backing of major performing rights organization SoundExchange, but that bill has been charged with not going far enough with the powers granted to those performers from past decades.