Photographer Brings DMCA Complaint Against Amazon Prime Video

Professional photographer Steve Matteo brought a Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint Tuesday against Amazon Prime Video, alleging unauthorized uses, misattribution and omission of authorship credit related to the “wrongful dissemination via the internet” of Matteo’s copyrighted photographic work depicting former NHL star Bob Probert to promote the movie Tough Guy: The Bob Probert Story. Since Matteo created the photograph in 1999, he has not granted any person or company a license to use it, said his complaint (docket 1:22-cv-06392) in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in Chicago. After Matteo’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to contact Amazon’s in-house counsel in June to take down the photograph, Amazon removed Matteo’s copyright management information (CMI) “from its display and conveyance” of the infringing work and substituted its own CMI online, including the Amazon Prime Video brand name, logo symbol and claims to copyright ownership, said the complaint. Amazon’s behavior proves it “knew or had reasonable grounds to know that such actions would induce, enable, facilitate or conceal its copyright infringements,” it said. The suit seeks an injunction, impoundment of all copies of Matteo’s work and an award of damages and all profits that Amazon derived from its unauthorized use of Matteo’s photograph. Amazon didn’t comment Thursday.