Comedian and star of many shows bearing his name, George Lopez recently joined the ranks of comedians suing streaming service Pandora, claiming the SiriusXM-owned company streamed his copyrighted works without permission. Lopez’s lawsuit follows claims from Lewis Black, Bill Engvall, Ron White, and the estates of Robin Williams and George Carlin alleging the music streamer used their works without a license. A court recently consolidated the lawsuits into a single action based on the commonalities underlying the claims.

The comedians’ lawsuits all share the same basic allegations: Pandora streamed their copyrighted content without a license and without paying royalties. As stated in Black’s complaint: “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 seek backpay for the millions of dollars Pandora should have paid in licenses and royalties for the right to stream the comedians’ content.

Although the allegations seem clear, the law on the topic is a bit murkier. The comedians are seeking two separate buckets of copyright protection: copyright for the recording of the jokes as well as for the jokes themselves. When companies buy the rights to use a song, for example, they pay royalties both for the composition and for the recording of a performance. While companies purchase both rights for music, they treat spoken word content like comedy albums differently. They typically purchase only the rights for the recordings of comedians’ jokes, not for the underlying writing.

The comedians suing Pandora, Spotify, and other streaming services are now demanding both sets of copyright, arguing that jokes are just as important as the lyrics to a song. There are also separate licenses for specific uses including reproduction and airing a recording in public. Notably, Black and the other comedians allege that Pandora “did not obtain any copyright” in their works. According to Black’s complaint, Pandora “admitted that it did not in SEC filings, and admitted that it would very likely face copyright infringement liability as a result.”

There’s a practical reason companies like Pandora and Spotify have not historically paid for comedy the way they pay for music. Streaming services, like radio, do not buy music rights individually from each musician or label. Instead, they pay a blanket licensing fee to a performing rights organization like ASCAP, BMI or SESAC for the compositions and SoundExchange for streaming rights to the recordings. These middleman organizations track use of the works and distribute the licensing fees to the rights owners based on popularity.

Historically, comedians were not members of these organizations. Streaming services had no practical means to obtain a license to use all the comedians’ works en masse as they do with music. A few comparable organizations now exist for spoken word artists including Spoken Giants and Word Collections, the rights administration companies involved in the comedians’ claims. Pandora, Spotify, and other streamers have not jumped on board with these groups.

Pandora stands to take a big hit if they lose. The comedians are suing for $150,000 per copyrighted work for each act of copyright infringement. Lopez’s complaint alone seeks $5.5 million in statutory damages, while Black is demanding over $10 million. The combined damages total well over $70 million.

For its part, Pandora argues that it already paid royalties for the recordings in accordance with industry custom and that the comedians benefited from “exposure” on the platform. The comedians were happy to cash those checks, claims Pandora, and it’s only because of the cynical folks at Spoken Giants and Word Collections that they now demand additional royalties after the fact. Pandora has, in fact, filed a countersuit, claiming the rights administration companies are “licensing cartels” in violation of antitrust law and that their demands for payment amount to copyright fraud.

Black’s attorneys were quick to point out that his own company is suing the streamer, not Spoken Giants. Word Collections called the streamer’s claims “absurd.” Black’s lawsuit alleges that he “never saw a fraction of a penny” for his 1.2 million annual streams on the service. As argued by the comedians’ attorney in response to Pandora’s antitrust allegations, a supposed “industry custom” of single-source copyrights (or no payment whatsoever) does not save the streamer from violation of federal law.