Google sued by anti-Muslim film's actress again - Times of India

NEW DELHI: Google has been slapped with a lawsuit by the actress who has faced death threats for her role in the controversial anti-Muslim film 'Innocence of Muslims'.

The actress, Cindy Lee Garcia, has filed an appeal alleging contempt of court's order against the internet company, and that the video with her performance is still available on YouTube. This is despite a court order saying that no copies of the video with her performance should be available on the video-sharing platform.

She had sued Google last year to get the film removed from YouTube, but court denied her appeal.

In an appeal filed on Tuesday, Garcia's lawyer said that copies of the movie's trailer with her performance were still on YouTube until the time of filing. They could also be accessed in Egypt by altering the settings from global to country-specific.

The filing said that the video being available from any computer in the world is in violation of the earlier court order. It also said that Google continues to profit illegally via traffic from the channels that have uploaded the video.

Garcia's legal counsel said the maximum penalty of $150,000 for each video is the "only fair measure of the contempt." He called for Google to submit bonds for the same amount for all 852 channels that have the video uploaded on YouTube, amounting to a total of $127.8 million.

The actress has also complained that Google has only disabled videos with her performance rather than taking them down altogether. She has also raised an issue against the "snide message" that the company has put up on such web pages.

"This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by an actress over her 5-second appearance in the video. A US court has ordered Google to remove the video. We strongly disagree with this copyright ruling and will fight it," reads the message.

In a ruling earlier this month, US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, San Francisco had said Google must take down all copies of the video and not allow any future uploads. However, it later amended the order and said the video may be published on YouTube, provided Garcia's part was cut. Videos featuring Garcia need to be edited or removed from YouTube.

According to Garcia, she never acted in 'Innocence of Muslims' and the portions featuring her were taken from another movie she acted in. In the controversial film, she appears to be asking, "Is your Mohammed a child molester?" She has received several death threats for her performance.

While Garcia says she has copyrights for the part she appears to be playing in the video, Google claims that the Copyright Act distinguishes between a performance and a copyrightable performance. The company has also said in the past that such copyright claims would encourage those who have appeared in amateur videos to get them removed from YouTube.

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