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Google Ordered To Remove Anti-Islamic Film From YouTube
cold fjord writes "The Verge reports, 'Google and YouTube must scrub all copies of Innocence of Muslims, a low-budget anti-Islam film that drew international protest in 2012, at the behest of an actress who says she received death threats after being duped into a role. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has granted a temporary takedown order on behalf of Cindy Lee Garcia, who filed a copyright claim against Google in an attempt to purge the video from the web. While actors usually give up the right to assert copyright protection when they agree to appear in a film, Garcia says that not only was she never an employee in any meaningful sense, the finished film bore virtually no relation to the one she agreed to appear in. In a majority opinion, Judge Alex Kozinski said she was likely in the right.' — Techdirt has extensive commentary on the ruling that's worth reading. It seems likely there will be an appeal, with the distinct possibility that Google and the MPAA will be on the same side."
...Streisand Effect.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Doesn't this mean that all videos critical of religion can potentially be subject to similar orders?
The "church of scientology" will be all over this one.
The constitutional protections, and by extension US citizens, take in in the ass yet again.
How can someone who performed in a work-for-hire claim copyright? They own nothing other than the cash they were paid for their services.
Rather than Streisand herself she should just change her name. It sucks to have to do so but that's her only recourse.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
While it's pretty obvious why everyone involved wants this particular issue to go away, it would be...striking... if that sort of legal reasoning didn't end up causing even more of a disturbance among American corporations and their assorted hired guns than the movie did among the hicks 'n zealots subset.
Basically, something that looked a whole lot like a work for hire is suddenly not a work for hire anymore because the hireling didn't really approve of the changes made elsewhere in the production process. It's hard to imagine a theory much more dramatic than that, for any company doing business in copyrighted work slapped together by teams of employees.
In fairness, I don't envy the actress who now enjoys the attention of some of the real dregs of abrahamic monotheism, even by the tepid standards of the genre; but the idea that that makes the movie no longer a work for hire (rather than, say, a reckless endangerment suit) has no obvious 'bright line' boundaries that would prevent it from applying to much less dramatic situations. They say that doing 'rights clearance' in film sucks already, imagine if every cast member, and maybe even the memorable extras, gets veto power based on whether they approve of the post-production special effects or not... That'd be fun to try to insure.
The complainant is not a random critic who disagrees with the content of the film.
It's close enough as to make no difference. Do you really think that EVERY actress/actor who finds the released movie different than the one she/he worked on can get the movie pulled when they have ZERO ownership of it? Absurd.
The movie was never really a problem anyway - all of the protests against it were shams, as are death threats against the actress (obviously). And yet we are willing to let any person who appeared in a movie have a say over release and distribution... it will never work.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Whether you agree with the result of the ruling or not, this should not have been handled using copyright claims. An actor for hire with no ongoing royalties stipulated in their contract has no copyright claims on the content.
If there’s any suit available to this actress, it’s against the producer/director/etc. of the film for misrepresentation. There’s no conceivable way this should be a copyright case. There’s no way that anyone who was paid for appearing in it by the eventual rights holder (producer/etc.) should retain any right to issue take down demands contrary to the will of the actual owner of the copyright.
Short of a contract that stated she retained any rights (doubtful), then I can’t see how this was anything other than work for hire with associated assignment of copyright.
If the hiring was fraudulent, being based on false pretenses, then the copyright assignment is consequently void.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.