MoviesGoogle to fight order to take down Islamophobic movie

Google said it would fight the order by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to take down a trailer for the Islamophobic movie “Innocence of Muslims.” The court issued the order at the request of an actress who appeared in the movie and who filed a copyright violation claim against Google.

The Guardian reports that Google complied with the order, but rather than use its standard takedown notice, has posted a notice specific to the case. Instead of the video, visitors to YouTube see this note: “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by an actress over her 5-second appearance in the video. A U.S. court has ordered Google to remove the video. We strongly disagree with this copyright ruling and will fight it.”

The actress, Cindy Lee Garcia, claims that she was lied to and misled into appearing in the movie, which depicts the prophet Mohammed as a pedophile and womanizer. The amateurish 2012 movie triggered a wave of violence in the Middle East and North Africa, and Google was asked by seventeen countries – among them Bangladesh, Brazil, India, and Indonesia — to take it down. Australia, Egypt, and the United States asked Google to examine whether the video violated the company’s community standards guidelines, but Google said it did not violate the guidelines.

The U.S. request for a review was made by President Barack Obama personally.

Garcia says in her court filing that the script she was given for her role in the film — she was told it would be called “Desert Warrior” – made no mention of or reference to Islam or Mohammed, and that her part was overdubbed in the finished movie.

The court awarded her copyright to her performance in the film, reasoning that she thought it was for a different movie from the one ultimately produced.