Playboy is suing popular urban news website MediaTakeOut for allegedly publishing photos from the magazine’s Azealia Banks nude pictorial without permission. Banks appeared on the cover of the magazine’s April 2015 issue.
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A lawsuit was filed in federal court on Tuesday, The Wrap reports, stating that Playboy was the exclusive licensee of the photos and had even registered the images with the U.S. Copyright Office. But, it claims, MediaTakeOut republished the pictures in March and was even so brash as to put its own watermark on the images.
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“Upon information and belief, defendant knowingly altered and/or falsified copyright management information to conceal defendant’s infringement of plaintiff’s registered and unregistered copyright works,” the suit states.
The lawsuit is asking for damages of “up to $150,000 for each copyright infringement” and up to $25,000 for each violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.