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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.
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.
Because if she succeeds is suppressing the film, she gets to keep her head.
But meanwhile, because even the more marginally sane decisions of the "Ninth Circus" are routinely blown away by the SCOTUS, this one will certainly not survive. Garcia therefore has a window of a few months to arrange for a new identity.
The complainant is not a random critic who disagrees with the content of the film. And under normal circumstances, an actor would not have the standing to file a takedown notice either. But this woman claims that she was duped into appearing in the film under unusual circumstances and the judge seemed to agree.
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 publicity can only help Ms. Garcia in this case, as making her disapproval known will likely help stop the death threats.
Actually if there was a fatwa put out with her name on it, then the threats won't stop unless it was rescinded.
In any case, all it does is prove to extremists that death threats are an effective means towards censorship.
It's close enough as to make no difference.
Actually it makes a big difference. To file a court case, you have to have "standing". A random person who's pissed off does not qualify. You have to be directly involved in the situation.
I'm also surprised that an actor in a film was able to get any claim of ownership. An actor is expected to know that a movie can change due to rewrites, or editing, or any of the reasons that films normally change between the beginning and the end of the process. But if you can show that the producer was intentionally deceptive- that he planned the whole time to make an anti-Islam hit piece but told the actors something else, then that's a different story.
It's taken down because it falsely represents the views of the actors
What the hell does that even mean? They are actors, pretending to be someone else, i.e. pretending to have different views, thoughts, feelings etc. Its their job to "falsely represent themselves".
From the first-linked article:
'...she later found her footage had been edited for the new film and overdubbed with one of the most controversial lines: "Is your Mohammed a child molester?"'
It sounds like she is in precisely the scenario you describe.