Rapper Snoop Dogg is in legal hot water after posting a viral video of a protester trying to climb a Manhattan office building to Instagram without permission.
Bosses at media outlet FreedomNews.TV filed suit on Monday in Los Angeles federal court over the alleged violation of their copyright.
The “Gin and Juice” rapper has been accused of stealing copyrighted footage of the April incident, in which a protester fell to the ground while attempting to climb the exterior of JPMorgan Chase’s New York headquarters.
Snoop captioned the video “Dummy of the Week” when he posted it to Instagram. According to reports, the post is still on his Instagram page and viewed more than 4.5 million times.
FreedomNews.TV bosses claim the video is an “exact copy” of their original and that Snoop is to blame since he takes “an active and pervasive role” in content posted to his account.
The chiefs also accuse the “Drop It Like It’s Hot” hitmaker of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits the removal of “content management information” used on copyrighted works.
“Defendant intentionally removed copyright management information related to the video,” the lawsuit states. “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.”