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Actress Has No Copyright in Controversial <i>Muslims</i> Film

By Marisa Kendall
June 02, 2015

The work of an individual performer in a film isn't protected by copyright law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided when it ruled in an 11-judge en banc decision that actress Cindy Lee Garcia couldn't use copyright law to force Google to remove a five-second clip of the film Innocence of Muslims from YouTube and other Internet platforms. Garcia v. Google, 12-57302. The en banc ruling reversed last year's controversial 2-1 judicial decision by the Ninth Circuit.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski's 2014 opinion ordering the clip's removal “gave short shrift to the First Amendment values at stake,” Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote in the recent en banc ruling. “The mandatory injunction censored and suppressed a politically significant film based upon a dubious and unprecedented theory of copyright,” she wrote. “In so doing, the panel deprived the public of the ability to view firsthand, and judge for themselves, a film at the center of an international uproar.”

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