Celebrities often reshare their favorite memes or viral videos not only to give their fans a good laugh but to boost their social media engagement. Snoop Dogg is well-known for uploading clips to his Instagram page but according to Billboard, a media outlet is taking the Rap icon to court after they alleged that he copied their content.
FreedomNews.TV reportedly filed a lawsuit against Snoop today (October 18) in Los Angeles over a video that showed a protester attempting to climb a structure at the JPMorgan Chase headquarters before taking a dramatic fall.
The outlet claimed in court documents that Snoop's "Dummy of the Week" post is an "exact copy" of their post and allege that the rapper is in direct violation of copyright infringement.
In addition to infringing the copyright for the video, FreedomNews.TV also accused Snoop of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits the removal of “content management information” used on copyrighted works.
By posting the video to Instagram without any attribution, the lawsuit said Snoop breached that rule.
“Defendant intentionally removed copyright management information related to the video,” the media outlet stated in its lawsuit against Snoop. “Defendant purposefully failed to include the video credit originally conveyed with the video in order to mislead the public into believing that defendant either owned the video or had legitimately licensed it.”
Over the years, there have been several celebrities who have faced off against the paparazzi and similar outlets who have sued them, often over videos and images of themselves. It is unclear what damages FreedomNews.TV is seeking.
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