Snoop Dogg is facing a new copyright lawsuit that claims the rapper posted a viral video — dramatic footage of a protester trying to scale a Manhattan office building — to his Instagram without permission.
In a case filed Monday (Oct. 18) in Los Angeles federal court, a media outlet called FreedomNews.TV accused Snoop of stealing copyrighted footage of the April incident, in which a protester fell to the ground while attempting to climb the façade of JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters.
The allegedly unlicensed video, which Snoop captioned “Dummy of the Week,” is currently still live on his Instagram and has been viewed more than 4.5 million times since it was posted in April.
FreedomNews.TV, which is formally called FNTV LLC, claims the video that appeared on Snoop’s feed was an “exact copy” of their original, and that Snoop himself takes an “active and pervasive role” in what content is posted to the social media account.
Snoop is the latest music star to face a copyright lawsuit over allegations of unlicensed materials uploaded to Instagram. Dua Lipa was hit with a case in June over a paparazzi image of herself. Before that, Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande faced similar cases.
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,” FreedomNews.TV wrote. “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.”
A representative for Snoop — real name Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. — could not immediately be located for comment.