MoviesGoogle asks court to allow reposting of anti-Islamic film on YouTube
Google on Friday asked a U.S. appeals court to allow the reposting of an anti-Islamic movie on YouTube pending a re-hearing of the copyright case which led to the movie removal. Last Wednesday the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Google to remove the movie from YouTube. Google told the court it has complied with the court’s earlier “unprecedented sweeping injunction,” but argued that irreparable harm is being done to Constitutional rights of YouTube, Google, and the public.
Screen capture from the riot-inspiring 'Innocence of Muslims' // Source: nate.com
Google on Friday asked a U.S. appeals court to allow the reposting of an anti-Islamic movie on YouTube pending a re-hearing of the copyright case which led to the movie removal.
Actress Cindy Lee Garcia brought a lawsuit against Google claiming she was duped into appearing in the film, without being told of its virulent anti-Muslim slant. Moreover, she says that words like “Mohammed” and “Islam” were not even in the script for her part in the movie, and that the voice of her character in the movie was over-dubbed to include these words in addition to offensive references to Islam.
She claimed she had been subject to death threats as a result.
Times of India reports that Google told the court it has complied with the court’s earlier “unprecedented sweeping injunction,” but argued that irreparable harm is being done to Constitutional rights of YouTube, Google, and the public.
“Under the panel’s rule, minor players in everything from Hollywood films to home videos can wrest control of those works from their creators, and service providers like YouTube will lack the ability to determine who has valid copyright,” Google argued in its request for an emergency stay of the order.
A lower court had refused to issue an injunction for Google to remove the film from YouTube while Garcia’s case goes forward, but last Wednesday the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the lower court’s decision (see “Google to fight order to take down Islamophobic movie,” HSNW 28 February 2014).
The amateurish movie, which depicted the Prophet Mohammed as a deviant and a pedophile, triggered a wave of violent demonstrations in several Middle Eastern and North African countries in September 2012, which killed dozens.
Garcia was paid about $500 for three-and-a-half days of filming on the movie, which had the working title “Desert Warrior.”
She appears in the movie for about five seconds.
The Times notes that Garcia asked the court to order the movie to be taken down after Google refused her requests to do so.
The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) criticized the court order as a threat to free expression, arguing that giving actors independent copyrights for performances in films is “absurd.”
“In addition to the flaws in the court’s analysis of who could claim copyright interests in a film, the court also failed to give adequate weight to the free expression interests at stake,” CDT senior policy analyst Andrew McDiarmid said in a blog post.
