An actress who said she was duped into appearing in an anti-Islam film that stoked violent protests against the United States across the Muslim world lost her second legal bid to force the video off YouTube. Report by Reuters
Denying a request by actress Cindy Lee Garcia for a court order requiring the popular online video site to remove the crudely made 13-minute clip, a federal judge found she was unlikely to prevail on her claims of copyright infringement.
US District Judge, Michael Fitzgerald of Santa Clara, California, also cancelled tomorrow’s hearing he had previously set for oral arguments over Garcia’s request.
Garcia’s lawyer, Cris Armenta, said she planned to appeal the decision.
The lawsuit, filed in September, names YouTube and its parent company Google Inc as defendants, along with the film’s producer.
A previous motion by Garcia for a temporary restraining order against YouTube’s continued posting of the video was rejected by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge.
Garcia’s case was the first known civil litigation stemming from the video, billed as a film trailer, which depicts the prophet Mohammad as a fool and a sexual deviant. The clip sparked a torrent of anti-American unrest in Egypt, Libya and dozens of other Muslim countries.
The outbreak of violence coincided with an attack on US diplomatic facilities in Benghazi in September that killed four Americans, including the US ambassador to Libya.
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For many Muslims, any depiction of the prophet is considered blasphemous.
Google has refused to remove the film from YouTube, despite pressure from the White House and others to take it down, though the company has blocked the trailer in Egypt, Libya and other Muslim countries.
