Controversial Film Tests Limits of Copyright Law
En banc ruling in "Innocence of Muslims" case doesn't bode well for individual actors' claims.
July 13, 2015 at 09:48 AM
5 minute read
At a time when YouTube claims to have more than a billion visitors a month, any teenager with a digital camera can create a video with instant global exposure. Does copyright law give an actor (or a bystander) who appears on camera any right to block distribution of a film?
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit's May 18 en banc opinion in Garcia v. Google, which involved a notorious film that incited violence in the Middle East, indicates that copyright law will be of little use.
Garcia concerned a 14-minute trailer for a film called “Innocence of Muslims” that was uploaded to YouTube in June 2012 by Mark Basseley Youssef, an obscure writer-director. The amateurish work portrayed the Prophet Mohammed as a murderer, pedophile and homosexual. Translated into Arabic, the film sparked violent protests in the Middle East and was linked to the deadly September 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
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