9th Circuit Will Revisit "Innocence of Muslims" Takedown Order
The Associated Press, as carried by ABC News, reports that "An 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena will hear arguments Monday by Google, which owns YouTube, disputing the court's decision to remove Innocence of Muslims from the popular video sharing service." At the heart of the earlier take-down order, which was the result of a 2-1 split from a 3-judge panel, is the assertion of copyright by actress Cindy Lee Garcia, who appeared in the film, but in a role considerably different from the one she thought she was playing.
Google is supported in its appeal by an unusual alliance that includes filmmakers, Internet rivals such as Yahoo and prominent news media companies such as The New York Times that don't want the court to infringe on First Amendment rights. Garcia has support from the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Musicians. If the court upholds the smaller panel's ruling, YouTube and other Internet companies could face takedown notices from others in minor video roles.
And for anyone who doesn't remember, this was the film that Obama blamed the Benghazi attacks on. Despite later admitting that, no, oops, that wasn't what caused the attacks at all.
Of course we still don't know exactly what happened with Benghazi since while the Democrats are more than willing to put CIA operations at risk to insult the Bush administration, they sure as hell aren't willing to let anyone know what happened in Benghazi. Maybe in 2022 we'll finally get a Senate report on the truth about Benghazi.
This.
This isn't just about the freedom of speech of the director of that movie.
It's also about the freedom of speech of the actress.
Not being forced to say something you disagree with is also freedom of speech.
So what is more important; the freedom to say something or the freedom to not say something?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
What is happening in Sydney Australia can happen in USA, do you understand that ??
Yes I do. It is the reason given for torture, the NSA crawling up everyone's shit-pipe, the invention of "Homeland" security and scads of other related terrorism theater.
Besides.... what's so important about Australia's hostage situation? Contributors to this site point out the worst case in Australia is fewer deaths than an average school shooting. By the time these and our many, many other Islamist apologists are done they'll have it played down to "workplace violence," whatever happens. So I see no reason to get excited.
In the Benghazi incident only three Americans died
The 9/11 event, over 3,000 perished
The war in Iraq, 650,000 Iraqis perished.
Oops. You only care about dead Americans. Well, 4,000 Americans died in GWB's war. Tell me again why we invaded?
what an awkward for this to come up as america is involved in more oppression, incarceration and war within its borders and across the globe than any other nation since WW2
America has done bad things, no doubt. But I hardly think it compares to regimes like Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, pretty much any regime in Kosovo, Somalia, etc.
The U.S. generally only plays harsh when countries don't play ball (don't sell it oil, support the USSR/Russia over the U.S., etc.). And it has a nasty history of looking the other way when friendly oppressive regimes serve its economic interests (as in Chile, Saudi Arabia, etc.). But life under direct U.S. rule is far from "oppressive." And even in its economic interests, the U.S. will only look the other way for so long if a friendly dictator becomes openly oppressive.
And all of this hardly makes the U.S. exceptional. Pretty much every developed country does similar scummy things in its own economic and political interests. The U.S. is only exceptional in the reach of its economic and military power. Its methodology and philosophy is pretty unexceptional. In fact, U.S. colonialism is pretty light-handed compared with the historical colonialism of other European countries. The U.S. gives its conquered territories at least some autonomy. Compare that the British and French empires.
And if you want to talk heavy-handed, take a look at Israel sometime. The U.S. is downright sweet and cuddly compared to them. When the U.S. wants to stop your nuclear weapons program, they might send a computer virus and some economic sanctions after you. Israel just goes right to blowing up your nuclear scientists with car bombs.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Actors can use copyright to control their image. Otherwise there would be no need to pay Schwarzenegger for the CGI versions of him in the next Terminator movie. When an actor plays a role in a film they sign a release allowing use of their image in that film, but the argument here is that the contract was misleading as to the nature of the film and thus invalid, making the user of her image copyright infringement.
It would be like Arnold agreeing to be in the Terminator 5 or whatever it's called, and then the directors decide to make it a porno with his CGI image and his voice acting used out of context. In that case the contract for an action movie would be invalid and he could use copyright to protect his image,
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Actually, this movie was blamed for anti-Western riots that took place in several Muslim countries. But in fact, its release happened to coincide w/ the 'Arab Spring' uprisings in the Arab empire.
However, the inane aspect about it is that while Republicans blamed Obama for what happened in Benghazi, fact remains that their position on Libya/Qadaffi was no different from the Democrats. If anything, it was Obama who was showing sense dragging his feet in supporting the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrein and other places. And Republicans - from McCain to Hannity all clamoring for Obama to support the anti-Qadaffi uprising in Libya. Obama would have done well to follow his initial instincts and stay completely out of it.
I'm no fan of Qadaffi, but the Qadaffi who Reagan bombed in 1982 was completely different from the Qadaffi post the Iraq war. In fact, one of the few successes of the Iraq war was that Qadaffi decided to discontinue his chemical/biological weapons programs, and repair relations w/ the West. In other words, the Qadaffi who was lynched in that uprising was no longer a firebreathing hater of the West, or a troublemaker throughout Africa. The rebels, on the other hand, had links to the various Muslim Brotherhood movements in Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia, and were not worth supporting, since their rise to power was gonna mean the emergence of an Islamic regime in Tripoli, similar to ISIS. However, the cretins throughout Western capitals and spanning both Left wing and Right wing parties decided that it was worth supporting them in the name of 'democracy'. Well, we saw how long that lasted, particularly in Egypt.
Truth is, and this comes to the heart of that otherwise badly made movie, that Muslim countries cannot stay democratic, once the power is directly given to the people. Democracy means political, religious and other pluralism - in other words, acceptance and tolerance for political, religious and other views that fly against the mainstream. But Islam is not a pluralistic religion that tolerates other religions, and extending that concept, Islamic sects ain't pluralistic either. That's why you have Shias persecuting Sunnis (in Iran, Syria & Iraq), Sunnis persecuting Shias (in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, ISIS controlled Syria/Iraq, Afghanistan and so on), Sunnis persecuting Ahmadiyas (in Indonesia & Pakistan), on top of your usual Muslims persecuting non-Muslims in Egypt, Lebanon, Gaza, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other Muslim countries. Even if the governments in question are democratic, persecution happens, since it's the will of the majority community in each of these countries - that follows a tradition set by Mohammed himself.
As a result, the countries that don't have a major unrest are countries that have anti-Islamic dictatorships @ the top, that keep their Muslim populations hinged. Countries like the ex-Soviet Stans, Algeria, Turkey (before the current Erdogan regime), and Tunisia (before Ben Ali was toppled). Or kingdoms that keep their populations quiet, like Jordan or Oman. Other than that, all the Muslim countries that have gone democratic have also seen Islamic regimes come to power - like Hamas. But the good thing, at least in Syria, is that w/ a full blown civil war going on, you have one group of our enemies - ISIS - fighting the others - Syria, Iran and yes, even Iraq.
The right solution to Benghazi at the time, had anyone in diplomatic circles had a clue, would have been to pull US diplomats & journalists out of all these Arab countries and watch their civil wars from a distance. No handwringing over the rights of people, or anything like that. Just watch them do what they excel at doing - rioting. And keep all Western non-Muslim citizens out of there, warning them that they'd be responsible for their own security if they go despite these warnings and anything bad happens to them - just like Lara Logan.