Tag: Lewis Black

Lewis Black and his Posse: Comedians at the Copyright Barricades

On By carlunegbuIn FreeLeave a comment

When it comes to the business of copyrights and its protection, one could be forgiven for thinking of comedians as downstairs people compared to musicians. To be sure, this old problem also seems to be a matter of respect as well as money. Not surprisingly, the comedy community these days is trying to do something about it and this time it’s the streaming services that are in their crosshairs for allegedly using their work without paying compensation for it by way of licensing. Enter Lewis Black: the comedian is suing the streamer Pandora in a California federal court for $10 million in copyright infringement damages, for allegedly streaming about 68 of his works without a license. The works in question are comedy recordings.

Black is only the latest comedian to file this sort of claim against Pandora, which is already being sued by comedians like Andrew Dice Clay, Ron White and others, including the estates of George Carlin and Robin Williams.  A win in these lawsuits will be a huge development both in terms of expanding the landscape of available copyright protection and of course turning on an additional money tap for comedians. The other big streamer Spotify avoided similar litigation last year by moving pre-emptively to yank some comedy recording from its platform after it couldn’t agree terms with the copyright holders. In that dispute, Black himself, in a gesture of solidarity with the aggrieved comedians demanded that his own works be taken off Spotify platforms as well. 

But what is really at issue in these cases and can Black and his brethren in fact win?

For starters, it bears explaining that when a work is protected by copyright, it means that the said work is both an “original” creation of the copyright owner as well as a thing that is affixed to a “tangible medium.” The said copyright owner could be an artist, a designer, a writer and more.

Now, though the allegation of the comedians we’re dealing with here is that the streamers are basically not paying for the recording being streamed at all, the question that must ultimately be resolved when it comes time to pay is exactly what particular elements of the comedy “work” should be paid for under a license. In other words, exactly what contents of the work are being licensed by the streamers? (The sort of copyright that comedians hold in their work is known as “spoken-word” copyrights.)  

While the streamers like Pandora and Spotify claim that a comedy recording is a single unified product that should attract only one license fee for the whole work, the comedians, for their part, claim that a comedy recording does in fact have two portions, namely, the recording itself and then the composition, or comedy writing, as separate components. To support their case, the comedians point to the situation with musical copyrights where the license purchaser, say a streaming service, buys and pays for both the musical recording itself as well as the composition of the song lyrics, as separate licenses. This argument was well foreshadowed by Black’s now famous remark that “a joke is just as powerful as a lyric of a song,” with the obvious implication that since the streamers are already paying separately for song lyrics, why not a joke as well.

Then again, one might well ask: if a musical recording and comedy recording are so analogous to each other, how come the two products have been treated so differently for so long and how come the comedians are only speaking up now?

It is worth noting how this question of timing seems to have played into the defense of the streamers as they attempt to fight off the recognition of this additional copyright, namely, comedy writing, which the comedians are seeking. In this regard, the streamers’ argument can be described as one based on tradition, something that some may well perceive as somewhat oppressive.  And it appears to relate to rather philosophical questions about the historical place of comedy in the broader society’s scheme of things and the inevitable value judgments around such questions. In this context, it is common knowledge that comedy’s existing recognition as an authentic art form or rather as “its own thing” is of rather recent vintage.  By contrast, music and the visual arts (think sculpture, painting, et cetera) have long been respected as legitimate art forms with valid claims to their own integrity and thus deserving of protection via things like copyright.      

Now fast forward to contemporary times and it is soon obvious that comedy’s fortunes have changed: with its newfound status as a legitimate art form, basking in the glow of a “golden age,” comedy no doubt has acquired a quite defensible claim to the greater protection of its integrity, just like music and the visual arts. Thus, for the comedy community, there is no better time than now to press this additional claim as part of an overall effort to protect every aspect of their art form and to benefit from it where appropriate. Quite simply, if not now, when?

So, in a manner of speaking, this brings us to a history versus law scenario: the comedy community’s good timing in launching this fight for a bigger slice of the pie is one thing, but whether the court will recognize their claim is quite another, considering the novelty of their claim. Though there is no certainty as to what the court will do, yet, if the comedians can justify their new claims under the law, then history won’t be able to stand in their way and they will win big. As already noted, such a big win will expand the contours of what elements of a work of comedy are protected from infringement and thus available for additional licensing. In this battle for more respect and money it seems like the comedians are the odds-on favorites to win, given the similarity of a joke and a song lyric in this copyright context and the sheer oddness of continuing to treat the two items differently. But, of course, the jury’s still out on the matter.  

Louis CK’s Scandal and the Limits of Cancel Culture

On By carlunegbuIn FreeLeave a comment

Few things in our contemporary public square terrify people as much as cancel culture, a phenomenon that seems to literally banish people from society’s platforms as it disappears them from public view. However, recent events appear to demonstrate that the almighty cancel culture may be losing some of its potency as the arbiter of who stays and who gets bounced from public view. In a documentary released during last year’s summer titled “Sorry/Not Sorry,” some female victims of Louis CK’s infamous sexual misconduct scandal, which broke in 2017, lamented what they perceived as him coming through the scandal relatively unscathed.

The said scandal had erupted following a New York Times story in which Louis CK admitted to exposing himself to several of his female colleagues over the years, a development that led shortly thereafter to his banishment from the public square, including cancellation of his then upcoming movie as well as the scrubbing of his work from HBO’s archives.

But the star comedian seems to have made a successful comeback to his career performances after a roughly one- year hiatus, starting out with a show at the legendary Comedy Cellar and then on with other performances that included a sold- out show at Madison Square Garden in 2021. Plus, short of being canceled, he won the Grammy in 2022 for Best Comedy Album and he has been active on the entertainment scene ever since.

As it happens, Louis CK has defied the odds of conventional wisdom before in his career: In December 2011, for instance, he took the unprecedented step of cutting out the proverbial ‘middleman’ from the distribution chain of ticket sales when he made the video of his Standup Special at the Beacon Theater available for direct download by visitors to his website at a fee of just $5.

Yet his apparent victory over cancel culture, while a good thing for other reasons, has nonetheless exposed the dark underbelly of the entertainment ecosystem which is undoubtedly male dominated and even misogynistic in character, a situation that is the not-so-hidden suggestion of the above documentary. In this regard, it is noteworthy that it was Louis CK’s adoring, mostly male, fans plus influential voices in the public opinion arena, including podcasting king Joe Rogan, that have made possible his soft landing. Aside from Louis CK, there is also the case of Dave Chappelle, another male comedy star, who even more easily than Louis CK survived the cancel culture pushback over his attacks on the transgender community.

In the matter of cancel culture, one can see a clear difference between how Dave Chappelle and Louis CK were treated rather less harshly and, in Chappelle’s case, with relative kid gloves, versus how, say, Roseanne Barr and Kathy Griffin were literally blackballed from the public square in the wake of their own misadventures: In May 2018, Barr posted a racist tweet about former Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarrett and shortly thereafter ABC canceled her career comeback sitcom “Roseanne”, while in 2017, Griffin held up a gory image portraying the severed head of Donald Trump and CNN yanked her from her co-hosting gig of the annual New Year’s Eve Broadcast with Anderson Cooper.   

Making matters worse, the male comedians in question, unlike their female counterparts, did not seem exactly sorry for what they had done and to the contrary even seemed to come off as rather tone deaf. In Chappelle’s case, he boasted that he enjoyed punching down and for his part Louis CK, who in fact got in trouble for masturbating in front of women, said in his 2019 Comedy Special “Sincerely Louis CK”: “I like jerking off…I’m good at it, too. If you’re good at juggling, you wouldn’t do it alone in the dark. You’d gather folks and amaze them.”  For his tone-deaf gag in this album, Louis CK incredibly scored a best comedy album award at the 2022 Grammys, beating out the likes of Lewis Black, Chelsea Handler, and Kevin Hart.  

Can anybody really imagine Roseanne Barr, Kathy Griffin or any other female comedian getting away with this sort of behavior? Speaking of which, Louis CK’s getting away with it is not lost on the documentary’s participants either: “Not only did he get away with it, he’s like rubbing it in our faces,” noted Megan Koester, one of the women featured in the documentary.

All things considered, what happened to the aggrieved women in the documentary is rather unfortunate, as is Louis CK’s apparent non-apology apology for his misdeeds. Yet, in the interest of not throwing away the baby with the bath water, we ought to acknowledge something of a bright side to all this, which is really something worth taking inspiration from, not least for all those concerned about the outsized negative impact of cancel culture on our public square and its discourse. What may be emerging here is the reality that cancel culture, as it turns out, may not be the sort of terrifying and formidably brutal force that it has been cracked up to be; plus, of course, the pleasing fact that cancel culture’s backlash can be overcome, hopefully only in deserving situations, by the concerted action of a self-confident and forgiving society.

More importantly, for our society to get the full benefit of this positive development, now that the door of forgiveness seems to be opening, it is vital that the sort of apparent second chance accorded to Louis CK must similarly be extended to all deserving players in our public square, whether they be men or women. Perhaps especially women and other disadvantaged groups. Human beings make mistakes and the path to rehabilitation must remain open to all who have done their time and are willing to make amends for their misdeeds, cancel culture be damned. Let us dare to celebrate the bright flip side of the coin in the Louis CK sexual misconduct scandal.